What is folk? While we tend to throw this word around on an
almost daily basis—folk music, folk dance, etc—many of us have not actually
spent the time to sit down and find out what it really means. Siamsa Tíre’s performance of What the Folk! at the Cork Midsummer
Festival attempts to explain what folk means to the Irish people, and the
company is quite successful in fulfilling their goal with an alternative take
on performance. It seemed as if the performers
were meant to feel like the audience’s best friends from start to finish. Therefore, it is quite easy for the viewer to
forget that he or she is watching a performance and not actually sitting with a
group of old pals. This is what made the
production so spectacular.
After the initial five or so minutes of
stepping foot into the house, I found myself feeling at home with the
performers and wanting to engage in the conversation with them. They were absolutely charming which helped
formulate these feelings for myself and the other audience members, but the
production elements also greatly contributed to the easiness of fitting in with
them. For one, we were welcomed into a
beautiful house in a beautiful area of Cork, and the house was brightly lit so
that it felt as if we were coming over for a house warming party. Only 15 or so audience members were allowed in
at once, which made the show feel incredibly intimate—as if everybody knew one
another. The performers were
additionally wearing everyday clothing, making us fit right in with them as
opposed to feeling inferior, or like we were there to solely watch them talk at
us.
To be
quite honest, because of the naturalistic setting and costumes, I wasn’t even
sure if the performance had started until about five minutes after entering the
house. When I realized that the moment
they opened the door and offered us drinks was the start of the show, it was
magical. As someone who has been
attending the theatre since age five, I can honestly say that this has never
happened to me. Before this experience,
I remember thinking that I was not thrilled to be going to an “on location”
performance for fear that it was going to be some sort of avant-garde show attempting
to be edgy, but I could not have been more wrong. I came out of the show feeling refreshed with
a spirit that could not be brought down, but also with a much larger knowledge
of the Irish Folk scene that I had not even thought about in the past.
When a
person thinks of Irish Folk Dancing, he or she probably thinks of a girl dolled
up in a wig, wearing a sparkly dress while tapping her feet furiously. As this may be correct when looking at the
competition style of Irish dance, this is actually not at all what the
non-competitive style is like. The show
seemed to bash the competitive style in a light-hearted way, and after reading
the program note in the Cork Midsummer Festival brochure, it made sense as to
why they continually differentiated between the non-competitive style and the
flashy competitive style. The Siamsa Tíre Company
described What the Folk! as an
attempt to look “beyond the clichés to the passion and pain of a lifetime of
practice, graft and dedication” (11).
While two of the women seemed to quite dislike the competitive style,
one of the others, Helena, who used to be a competitive dancer, would
demonstrate the differences for us. It
seems clear that the show put the element of distaste for this style in it so
that the audience would realize that the competition style only makes up part
of Irish dance, and it should not be the stereotype or cliché of all Irish step
dance.
I also
had the pleasure of learning more about these differences from Helena
personally with just four other audience members. From the moment I stepped into the house, I
was completely drawn to her—she looked so young and was so mesmerizing with her
charming personality that I just needed to learn more about her. While in her room for just a few minutes, I
felt like she was one of my close friends.
She told us about some of her injuries from dancing, but also casually
talked about how much she loved living in this house in Cork. It was during times like these that I
actually had to question if this was improv or not—something again that I have
never really had to do at the theatre.
I have
been using the term “performance” and “performers” to describe this show and
never “play” and “actors.” This is
something that I want to make clear in reviewing this show. The four people did not seem to be actors or
even acting, but rather telling a story, not putting on a play. The same program I mentioned earlier tells
the viewer to “Visit us and be part of the conversation” (11), supporting my
claim that the people are performers telling us a story, exercising our minds,
and engaging us in a genuine conversation of what folk is and what folk means
to them. Keeping with this, it is easy
to see why there may not be a traditional plot that is usually found in a play,
but there are several themes. Of course
one is that folk does not just consist of made-up girls wearing sparkly dresses
competing for awards, but perhaps the most important, and overall goal of the
entire production was that folk is so much more than just a dance or a song,
but it is something that has brought people together for years, and continues
to bring them together today. For the
last ten minutes of the conversation, the four performers told stories about important
people in the Siamsa Tíre, the most prominent being about the death of Martin
Whelan. At first, I was not completely
sure why they were telling these stories, but when Anne, the eldest of the
four, began to tear and almost whisper, “Folk is Family,” everything fell into
place—from the second we walked through the door, to the moment I signed their
guest book, they brought me into their world, as if I was part of their family.
~Lauren Hart
"What the Folk!" performers
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