Faith Martin Abongo explores new frontiers of consciousness in this trippy genre-bending one-woman show.
A neuroscientist by day, Faith mixes surreal storytelling with soundscapes and movement. As she goes on her psychedelic mushroom trip, she encounters sentient trees, her own ancestors and her young self, as she searches for other planes of existence while navigating feelings of loss.
Faith is an engaging, mesmerising presence, moving between scientific explanations and more abstract thoughts on our brains’ primal nature. The show is split into chapters tackling different parts of the journey, with voiceovers interrupting Faith’s monologue to guide her, or indeed confuse her, as she searches for the purpose of the trip.
For me, the experience was marred by the projected animations which were AI-generated; it would have been far better to commission an artist to make the visuals and they would have looked much more appealing. There’s also a great deal of subject matter to take in, and it’s a little hard to digest in one sitting!
There’s real potential for something interesting in Psilovybin; it just needs a little more polish.
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Psilovybin is at C Alto from 20-24 Aug.