‘Long-Legs Sheila’, a brand new family friendly street performance from the creators of ‘A Snail’s Tale,’ is making its debut at the Cavan Arts Festival on the 16th May.
Featuring Sheila The Curious Heron, a bird of inordinate size and incredible inquisitiveness, accompanied by a travelling ex-raver and birdwatcher extraordinaire, Sheila takes to the land to search out fish, frolics, fun, and where possible, people to dance to tinny rave music!
‘Long-Legs Sheila’ is the brainchild of artist Caoimhe Dunn, coming to her one evening as an almost fully formed show. Quickly jotting down a simple design for the heron puppet, it was that image that sparked the imagination of performance and life partner, Dominic Palmer. Together, they have created a gentle, surreal, funny show centered around the gawky, leggy heron Sheila and her dance music and bird obsessed keeper, Pierre.
Since its debut performance at Spraoi in 2022, ‘A Snail’s Tale’ had spent three incredibly rewarding years travelling around national festivals, park parties, and events, garnering great acclaim and hugely warm responses from organisers and audiences alike; it was in fact set to go international in the summer of 2025.
Caoimhe and Dominic had also started work in earnest on a brand new show for 2026, pulling on the expertise of local Wexford found sound musicians, The Lunatraktors, and dramaturg friend Donal Gallagher. Initial meetings had gone incredibly well, with passionate discussions and huge laughs leading to a very definite idea for what was then called ‘One For Sorrow, Two For Joy.’
Unfortunately, in early 2025, Caoimhe was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had to pull back from all commitments in order to undertake treatment. Initially mooted to finish in late 2025, the treatments in fact ended up taking much longer, finally finishing in March of this year. It was a grueling year, taking its toll emotionally and physically. But even as the final bout of radiotherapy was looming, Caoimhe had already started work on making ‘Long-Legs Sheila’ a reality, securing our debut show in Cavan from that initial design image alone.
Like ‘A Snail’s Tale’ before it, ‘Long-Legs Sheila’ is based around a singular, giant puppet brought to life, with intimate character work and audience participation, playing to both Caoimhe and Dominic’s strengths as creators and performers.
Dunn Create will also be returning to the Loughcrew Fairy Festival later this year, taking ‘A Snail’s Tale’ and ‘Long-Legs Sheila’ out into the gorgeous Loughcrew grounds, a triumphant return to one of our favourite festivals.
Caoimhe and Dominic are thrilled to be returning to the road with this exciting new showcase of their unique comic vision, and of Caoimhe’s incredible character design and building skills.