The Star Machine

Cashian, Philip

About the work

The piece takes its title from a chapter in Alan Wall’s book The Lightning Cage which describes a vicious machine, made out of an old iron bed with leather restraints, used in the Chelsea Lunatic Asylum. Patients would be wheeled out at night time and left in the grounds to stare at the source of their madness – the moon.

First Performance: 27 July 2001, Bretton Hall, Yorkshire

Origin

COMA, with funds from the Arts Council of England, RVW Trust and Britten Pears Foundation