This may have been the most unusual show I’ve ever seen, and one of the best. Siobhán O’Loughlin was a young woman riding her bicycle on a rainy night. She collided with another cyclist and seriously broke her left hand. She lived alone and had only a shower in her apartment. She couldn’t shower one-handed and feared getting the cast wet. She started asking a series of friends if she could use their bathtubs to bathe.
This was the origin of her show Broken Bone Bathtub. It is literally performed in a bathtub, naked and strategically covered with bubbles. She engages with the small audience, exploring loneliness, vulnerability, fear, embarrassment, and emotional recovery. O’Laughlin asks the audience to help with uncomfortable activities she can’t do herself like washing her back, putting conditioner in her hair and applying lotion to her good limb. The show ends with a kind of emotional catharsis.
O’Laughlin has performed the show all over the world. Check out https://www.siobhanoloughlin.com/ .
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