LAST TWO DAYS

Wednesday sees the second of the Druid Debuts (I’m unable to see the third on Friday, but have read it) - A LOCK OF FIERCE ROARS by John McManus, a piece of raw untutored exuberance which is one of the most remarkable experiences I’ve ever had inside a theatre, and certainly at a playreading. Moliere’s Miser meets Reservoir Dogs with a bodycount to rival Hamlet at the end. If I tell you that this is a vigorous, Cavan-set comedy about one man’s fierce fight to hold onto his loot, and the thieving bastards who are trying to get it off him, at the time of Ireland’s switch from the punt to the Euro, then this hardly begins to describe the fierce, foul-mouthed energy of the piece and the wonderful showmanship which a cast of four great character actors managed to bring to it.

To me, this feels like a play, and a writer with a future.

It seems clear to me by now that an equivalent to the British ‘new playwriting industry’ simply does not exist in Ireland. There are relatively few outlets for new plays, so the onus is on writers to gravitate towards those companies who put them on and for directors and literary managers to be alert to what is going on around them. The relatively few openings require everybody concerned to be quite tough in their decision-making, and this can be a good thing.

I think in recent years – and especially during the Blair years, the years of Instrumentalism – there has been a tendency in Britain to encourage ten writers where perhaps only three merited it. In the name of opening up ‘access’ I believe a lot of money has been targeted at the whole training and development end of things. A fine thing in itself, but my argument would always be, be clear about who the three good writers are and support them in a meaningful way – not encourage ten writers to think they have a future in a brutal and unforgiving industry. They don’t.

My last live performance – unless you count some of the great street music I heard (check out Mutefish, they deserve to be massive!) – was Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre’s reworking of Giselle, set in the stifling (fictional?) town of Ballyfeeny.

As the great Irish playwright John B. Keane once said, a play about sex in Ireland is always ahead of its time. This took a while to get to me, but its central section – the havoc wrought in this stifling small town by the unleashing of potent sexual forces – had the seats tipping up all around me – at least 15 people leaving the performance.

Well more fool them! This was about as good as dance theatre gets, and I was completely won over by a multi-national company of spirited actor/performers.

For me my trip has been a terrific experience.

The west coast of Ireland (my taxi driver said on the way to the airport: ‘on a clear day and with a fair wind you can smell Dunkin Donuts in New York') feels a long way from England – certainly much further than Dublin – and that was a bracing experience for me. In fact I barely heard an English accent the whole time I was in Galway..

There is a sense of community – and a theatre community – that simply does not exist at home. Somehow, somewhere it has values which transcend the purely commercial (although much work I saw was preoccupied with how crudely venal Ireland is itself becoming), and a sense of reverence for storytellers of all sorts.

Perhaps, at one time, there was nothing to do but tell stories. To while away the time. To convince people they were alive. In Britain we have always been more interested in selling stories, not telling them, and that’s a different thing entirely…

Wednesday

Two days of intensive new writing activity in which I begin to get a grip on the way Druid do things here.

The reading of YELLOW BOOTS on Monday (the Russian play) – one of three ‘Druid Debuts’ – is a success in that it shows up both the strengths of the piece and the areas the writer may still want to have a look at. If the writer takes the ‘positives’ from the experience – ie what she has learned dramaturgically, and the immense kudos of having had a reading at one of the world’s most famous theatres – then the experience will have been a good one.

It may be that this play finds a home; it may not. But the reading is one rung on a ladder into the heart of Ireland’s theatre writing community – a charmed circle in a land where writers are revered (a sighting of Brian Friel or Tom Murphy in the street is a cause for comment).

Yesterday I conducted a session with some of the younger writers in Druid’s orbit – many of them also (script) readers for the theatre – the very first rung on the above-mentioned ladder, and, it seems to me, an excellent way in.

I always say to aspirant writers – get yourself inside a theatre somehow, anyhow – even in the box office, or as an usher. What better way than by reading and critiquing the work of other writers?

Yesterday lunchtime, a performance of two Enda Walsh one-act plays, well done by Thomas and Sarah Lynch. The first deals with the aftermath of a child abduction – distressing for any parent – and I think I’ll leave it at that.

Weekend

Saturday night, and a play to contradict Thomas’ theory (though he hotly denies it) – MIMIC, an extraordinary monologue (quite unlike anything I’ve seen apart from perhaps the Wooster group) that was also a Condition of Ireland play – an account (underscored by piano) of a stand-up comedian famed for his mimicry returning to the homeland he has abandoned years before – a play about a man who doesn’t know who he is returning to a country – a new Ireland – that doesn’t know what it is, or what ‘accent’ to speak in. Not always coherent – or quite sane – but intermittently compelling...

Sunday gave me a chance to observe some Druid New Writing activity – first read-through of a new play to be given a rehearsed reading on Monday afternoon. Another tale of trappedness, but – a relief for me – this time not in a small Irish town, but in the post-Soviet provinces. The writer is a Russian woman resident in Ireland for 7 years. The tang of the unfamiliar was bracing; also the opportunity to see an Irish director and actors at work (although I have observed this before, having had a play on in Cork in 2002).

Interesting digression about geography. In Ireland you go ‘up’ to Dublin, wherever you’re coming from. In Britain we seem to obey the points of the compass, going down to London from John O Groats and up to it from Cornwall. In Russia, apparently, there is no equivalent. Many Russians never visit Moscow in their lifetimes...

Evening ends with spectacular Festival parade – a European-influenced piece of street theatre with giant puppets, masks and a demonic circus. Excellent.

Friday Night

Friday Night

A bit of a blur. Was sitting in a bar reading a thriller by a writer who I once knew (and worked with) as a playwright, when I was accosted by a man who noticed the book and claimed also to know the author.

One thing - or rather one drink - led pretty swiftly to another and I was soon introduced to a cast of some of Galway's thirstiest people...

Some excellent and mostly unprintable stories - chiefly from a man who claimed to have spent the bulk of his thirties playing bodhran in Riverdance, had a mate who’d had both arms bitten off by a tiger, and once busked his way home from Zurich for a bet...

At about midnight the first man and I were discussing M. Sarkozy's impending - and keenly anticipated - visit, in the street, when our conversation was gate-crashed by a beautiful woman in a chip shop queue. A new discussion evolved, and I abandoned my friend to the tender mercies of this lovely girl, and headed gratefully for my bed.

Everyone knows everyone else here. They also knew your father, your mother and the people who used to live in your house. So you have to be very, very careful what you say. And who you say it to…

Looking forward to some sun tomorrow, and a trip to the seaside.

Day 4

Every second building is a restaurant here, every third a bar, every fourth a venue – this, truly, is entertainment city...!

Another slice of Enda Walsh today – a touching Galway Youth Theatre production of CHATROOM (originally, I think, a National Theatre Connections piece), following on from last night’s dance: Tania Perez-Salas ‘s Compania de Danza, beautiful but without the mental (or physical) tautness of the previous night’s circus. And I always think it’s a copout using Arvo Part’s beautiful Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten as an underscore – a case of borrowed majesty.

Talking to Thomas in the bar later about the central position of storytelling and the monologue (one of Michael Billington’s personal betes noires!) in Irish theatre. He made a point which at last shone some illumination on the whole thing for me. The great Irish writers don’t aspire, in his opinion, to put the whole world on stage, or write ‘Condition of Ireland’ plays like Brit and American writers sometimes presume to. Each play, each story within the play has the status of a barroom or fireside story addressed to you, the audience. The intention simply to hold the attention of that audience for the duration of the gag, the story, the play, through the self-conscious artifice of story-telling…

Myself, I prefer genuine confrontation, but it would certainly explain a lot!

They say it only rains twice a week in the West of Ireland. Once for three days, once for four. Please shine, sun…

Day 3

Managed to do some writing of my own this morning - there's nothing like a break from childcare and the admixture of art and drink to get the synapses open!

Talking to writers in the Druid orbit it becomes clear that no organisation such as Script exists in Ireland. I had imagined that I would be leading a workshop or two here, but I think my sessions next week with the local writers will be concerned with much more basic questions such as:
How do I get my play in front of an audience? What kind of career structure is there for playwrights in Britain?

An extraordinary night at the circus last night. Circa's BY THE LIGHT OF THE STARS WHICH ARE NO LONGER had me mesmerised - a synaesthesia of acrobatic skill, hypnotic lighting and beguiling music. Not so impressed, however, were some of my companions, who felt - in common with some twitchy 8 year olds in my vicinity - that this wasn't really what had been promised on the can ie it wasn't a jolly circus with tricks and clowns, but something much closer to contemporary dance (and not proper dance either, sniffed another).
Maybe I don't get out enough, but I loved it.

A long walk home through Galway's club district last night - a bit of a saturnalia, but without the thuggish edge that wo uld accompany such scenes everywhere in England from Gateshead to Cheltenham.

The river here is the fastest-flowing I have ever seen. Mesmeric too, in its own way, a raging torrent which is, frankly, terrifying. Many of the bridges are fitted with anti-jump balustrades. A good thing too, in my view.

Day 2 Proper

Been here less than 48 hours, but already feel terrifically at home. Galway at Festival time is like a mini Edinburgh - the streets teeming with musicians and entertainers. My guest house overlooks a pub and a funeral directors, so that all feels as it should...


Saw the new Enda Walsh at Druid last night - a particularly fine example of a very particular type of Irish play. The shadow of Ireland's great writers lies long over the work of many contemporary Irish playwrights, but in The New Electric Ballroom the echoes of Beckett feel playful and justified, and the rewards for an audience who stick with this fine stab of thwarted love and trapped emotions in a small seaside town are considerable. Beautiful performances all round from a very strong cast.


Good story in the pub last night. Apparently, Beckett was once accosted in the streets of Paris by a man who professed to being a mime artist from Dublin. Beckett - terrified, backed up against a wall, and in any case believing the Irish to be the most non-physical of all peoples, replied, simply: "Swiss Navy", and legged it. (Think about it...)


Am being ably and staunchly looked after by Literary Manager Thomas Conway, himself in the throes of rehearsal for a play which opens next week.


There's something very open and fluid about festivals - people are up for a chat and you are never on your own for a second. Every town should have one!

Alan Pollock