They Go Out in Joy is a work-in-progress that began at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, Ireland. Based on a collection of pre-war photographs of Irish emigrants taken just before their departure from the island (one copy of each photo was left with relatives who stayed behind), the project will involve a series of short performance/video portraits, each responding to one photograph. The movement work in each video will be built in part around a description of the figure in the photo and a “gag” idea that I’ve written about each of them. Some of these descriptions and gags are posted below.