Junk Ensemble's "Five Ways to Drown"- Thursday, June 28

            Dance company junk ensemble uses its piece Five Ways to Drown as a means of grappling with the issues arising from the confining nature of quotidian life. With a captivating set and a poignant combination of dance and acrobatics, the performers draw the audience into their tale of relatable, day-to-day battles.

            The piece follows five characters in their attempts to go about their daily lives and the struggles that they face in doing so. It opens with each character performing a different task behind clouded glass while a voiceover of the youngest dancer cites a long list of ways in which a person can drown. The characters are composed of a diverse array of people who each proceed to drown in their own way throughout the piece in the process of going about their lives. The youngest boy (Joshua Dyson) portrays the younger self of a middle-aged man (Eddie Kay). Also performing are twins Megan and Jessica Kennedy, who portray members of Kay’s family. An older woman (Ingrid Nachstern) appears occasionally as well, starting out very domineering and becoming more sickly as the piece progresses. The dancers alternate dancing by themselves and in groups, thereby establishing the relationships between them all.

            The set and costumes play a strong role in creating the context of the work and drawing the audience into the story. At the back of the stage is a glass wall separated into panes that the audience can see through at times, but which at other times are opaque. This quality puts the audience into the mindset of those who suffer from mental illnesses such as depression, who occasionally find their lives clouded by their illness. Three of the panes are also screens on which images are projected while performers are inside of the old-fashioned bathtub that is at the forefront of the stage. While performers are in the bathtub, interacting with water and flirting with drowning in a more literal sense, their images are displayed on the screens, showing how the feeling of drowning can be magnified beyond the normal range of emotion and seem too immense to handle. The audience is given a very striking sense of suburbia by the floral dresses worn by the two younger women, as well as the couch and wallpaper of the living room segment of the scene and the front porch stoop located in front of the glass paned wall. This sets the story in a hyper “normal” situation, rather than a broken home or other extreme circumstance where one could expect people to be overwhelmed by their situation and feel as though they are drowning. This honest and telling setting lends the work a sense of validity and realness that it is hard to escape in such a typical and relatable space.

            Throughout the course of the performance, the characters each get lost in the drudgery of the day-to-day aspects of living their lives and maintaining human relationships. Even mundane tasks like putting up wallpaper are overwhelming for each of the performers. First the older man, then the young boy, and finally the twins, attempt to place several strips of wallpaper high up on the wall, but none of them are particularly successful. Several different tactics are implemented, from using a trampoline to standing on one another’s shoulders, but the goal of a fully wallpapered wall is never achieved. This act of attempting to cover the wall consumes most of their energy but produces no real result, speaking to the sense of futility that a person feels when they are depressed or metaphorically drowning. There is a constant sense of confinement throughout the piece as well, which is at the root of the struggles of the characters. At one point, two of the characters literally tie themselves together and perform a duet in which every motion that one makes affects the other, thereby limiting the range of motion of each of the dancers. After this, the two sit on the porch stoop and practice tying knots, reinforcing this symbol of confinement. Additionally, more knots are created through the partnering during the trio between Kay’s character and the twins, in which their bodies all become interlaced. This human knot confines the three people involved to their given circumstances and the people with whom they are interacting. These interactions show the relationships between the characters and how these affect the overwhelming sense of imprisonment felt by them all. During the trio, each of the dancers repeatedly steps on the other two in order to raise themselves higher. They cannot reach these heights alone and so they depend upon these relationships with others to progress, but they must literally step on other people to get ahead, a trait that does not lend itself to healthy relationships. Moreover, when Dyson’s character attempts to return to a task that he has been routinely performing, the twins stand between him and his goal. No matter how hard he throws himself into the task of reaching this goal, the twins obstruct him with a nonchalance that is unnerving. This reminds us how even the people who we are closest to can confine and impede us.

            Though all of the dancers give sincere and skilled portrayals of their characters, Joshua Dyson’s performance is the most evocative and gut-wrenching of them all. As the youngest performer by far, one might expect less of him than of the other dancers who have far more experience. However, he dances with a maturity that exceeds his years. He finds a delicate balance between strength and fluidity and, time and time again, demonstrates his skill as a dancer and, more broadly, as a performer. He commits to every movement with what seems like reckless abandon, but is actually intense self-control. Each time he is thrown to the ground by the twins or leaps through the air with what appears to be a death wish, the alarmed audience is drawn further into his tale and grows more attached to his character.

            Five Ways to Drown is a compelling piece, though it leaves some aspects of its story insufficiently addressed. There is some ambiguity as to the nature of the characters and how they relate to one another. At some points, it seems as though the young boy is the past self of the man, while at others it seems like he is more of a son figure. The absence of the older woman throughout much of the work and the contrary nature of her actions—first drilling the boy in an authoritative fashion and then standing, sickly and motionless, staring into the bathtub—raises questions about her role in the story. This ambiguity in the relationships between the characters detracts some from the message of the work as a whole. Additionally, not enough context is given for the final scene, in which the characters expel water from their mouths while dancing to a far more upbeat melody. It appears that the characters have managed to overcome the confines of their day-to-day lives, but it is unclear how they have done so, making it seem almost random. This final moment would be more triumphant if there was a discernible event that had caused it.

            Despite the ambiguities, Five Ways to Drown is a gripping account of the dark side of the average and the mundane. The piece illustrates that even people who seem to have everything going for them can suffer and feel as if they are drowning. One cannot escape or separate oneself from the past either, as the man cannot detach himself from his younger self. Thus, we may be doomed to repeat past mistakes and become entrenched in an unhealthy routine. The act of living and going about routine tasks can be insurmountable for people at times, and junk ensemble has striven to address this actuality in a new and innovative way. 

~Alana Reese

Donal O'Kelly and Sorcha Fox in "The Cambria"- Wednesday, June 27

              

*UC Berkeley and Stephen F. Austin State University's Irish Theater Study Abroad Programs were treated to a special private performance of O'Kelly's "The Cambria" in Samuel Beckett Dance Studio at TCD.  Special thanks to Donal and Sorcha for making the journey to perform for us and participating in a talkback with us afterwards.  

              The Cambria is a play about Frederick Douglass’s journey to and arrival in Ireland written by Donal O’Kelly. The play opens with Douglass boarding a ship called The Cambria under a false name, and closes with his arrival in Ireland and the reception he receives from the Irish people. Douglass is traveling under an assumed name because he is fleeing from persecution after having written a book about his life as a slave. From the moment he shows his ticket as he boards the ship, it is clear that his race is significant to the people around him—the other people on board the ship express surprise that he, as a black man, has a first-class ticket. The audience is quickly introduced to a host of characters, from a young girl who believes Douglass is a minstrel because of his race to her slaveowner father to a singer with strong abolitionist leanings. After his identity is discovered, he believes he will be sent back to his former owner upon arrival in Ireland; however, the Irish people not only welcome him, but embrace him as a hero figure. The play not only serves the purpose of depicting the ways in which blacks were treated, and the attitudes many people had toward them, but also serves the purpose of bringing Douglass’s travels to Ireland more people’s awarenesses; it creates a space for a discussion of the ways race and slavery played a role not only in Irish society, but in society as a whole.

            Throughout the course of the play, two characters in particular demonstrate negative attitudes that many people had towards blacks. On the one hand, Douglass is first approached by the little girl with the music box; she naïvely assumes he is a minstrel because he is black and, as such, wants him to perform for her, but she does not have negative feelings toward blacks. On the other hand, Douglass is also faced with the little girl’s father, Dodd; he not only has the negative feelings toward blacks that his daughter lacks, but also actively enacts these feelings by trying to subjugate Douglass and to “put him in his place”—according to Dodd, below decks rather than in a first-class cabin. These two characters embody two ways in which racism can manifest itself; through ignorance and naïveté, as in the case of the daughter, or through malice, as in the case of Dodd. It would seem that these two characters are counterbalanced by the abolitionist woman, who does not have negative feelings toward Douglass because of his race. However, such a reading of her character is reductive; it is true that she wants to help Douglass, and to do what she believes is right. The problem with this, though, is that she disregards Douglass’s expressed wishes in her desire to help him—he wants to quietly make his way to Ireland without a fuss, but she ultimately reveals his true identity, exposing him to scrutiny and hostility. In the play, these attitudes are represented as specifically American attitudes—these traits show themselves in the American characters, but not in the Irish characters who receive Douglass at the end of the play.

            There are a total of two actors who perform in this piece: Donal O’Kelly and Sorcha Fox. The version of The Cambria that we saw was very toned down; the set consisted of a trunk and a box sitting on a oblong mat patterned like the planks on a ship’s deck, the actors did not once change their costumes, and they sat on the trunk and box and acted out toward the audience. These choices are fascinating, because the actors must then convey everything about the characters they portray through their voices and their (seated) bodies. Although the actors are both Irish, they portray a cast of characters who come from various backgrounds; the actors adopt accents, speech patterns, and voices in order to distinguish the characters, as well as distinct ways of holding themselves as they sit. It would be easy to problematize the fact that we have two Irish (i.e., white) actors playing the roles of several black characters, but that would be ignoring the fact that actors constantly play characters who are not like themselves; both actors also play the roles of American characters, though neither of them are American, and Fox plays many characters who are men, though she is a woman. In spite of having a minimum of props and movement across the stage, O’Kelly and Fox do a fantastic job of conveying character and setting as the play progresses. This allows for the audience to focus on the distinct characters they create, and on the relationships between those characters, which draws attention to the action and trajectory of the play itself, rather than to showy costumes or fancy set designs.

            Before seeing this play, I had no idea that Douglass had ever traveled—or fled, as it were—to Ireland. Had I known that, I certainly would not have expected him to have been welcomed as a hero figure. However, when I stop to think about it, I realize that perhaps this is not as surprising after all; by the time Douglass arrived in Ireland, the Irish people had themselves been oppressed and subjugated by England for many, many years, and may have related to Douglass’s plight as a black man who has been enslaved by a white owner. Certainly, the reception he received from the Irish people upon his arrival indicates that they at least sympathized with his desire to escape from slavery—and with his decision to have done so. The parallel between the oppression and subjugation Douglass experiences and that which the Irish people experience is brought home by the end of the play. When Douglass arrives in Ireland, he is greeted by Daniel O’Connell—a man known for campaigning to repeal the Act of Union, which had officially united Britain and Ireland. The presence of O’Connell necessarily brings the struggle for Irish independence from Britain to the fore, linking it with Douglass’s independence from the man who owned him as a slave.

~Fion Lau

The author

Cork Midsummer Festival- Dylan Tighe's "Record" at the Half-Moon Theatre-

        

         Conceived, written and performed by Dylan Tighe, Record explores the pathologization of mental illness through a performance wrought with pain and emotion. The show is framed as an “alternative opera” and the quotation of Roland Barthes and Friedrech Nietzche at the play’s start both position the show as a ground-breaking defiance of theatrical norms. In many ways, Tighe’s autobiographical discussion of the medicalization of depression and bipolar disorder certainly challenge the boundaries of performance. Through live music, re-lived moments, and film clips, Tighe reveals the agony, alienation and humiliation inherent to his experience of coping with bipolar disorder. Tighe’s work is ambitious yet ambiguous and the blurring of the line between performance and reality produces a deeply moving and complicated performance. Yet ultimately Tighe’s opera collapses upon itself, yielding an illegible and uncomfortable experience for the tortured artist’s audience.

            Tighe’s story is painful to watch and the songwriter-actor-director ensures that his audience is deeply affected by his performance. His appeal to his audience’s empathy is wildly anti-Brechtian, though he subversively utilizes many techniques of the alienation-effect to catalyze an emotional response from his audience. The first quarter-hour of the show is dedicated to making the audience one with Dylan Tighe: he enters the stage with no introduction, the house lights remain on for the majority of his exposition and he periodically makes eye contact with members of the audience as he speaks. Through the videos shown of his early acting career, Tighe literally exposes himself, emphatically mimicking his demonstrated intent to expose himself as a vulnerable human, rather than as performer or patient. The cumulative effect of his carefully laid-out set-up is effective: through the projection of his medical records, medications, dates, and family photos, Tighe destroys the barriers between character and actor and performer and audience. The logical explanation of Tighe’s background is quirky, witty and effective; the employment of several cinematic conventions make the telling of his story meaningful and entertaining.

            Positioned as the re-lived harrowing experience of a man destroyed by mental illness and the medical world, the performance of Record becomes a haunting and devastating piece to watch. Tighe’s music lends itself beautifully to live performance and the experience of watching the exposed and vulnerable artist share his pain through live music against a backdrop of well-chosen, impacting images is incredibly powerful. Tighe’s simplistic lyrics gain significance in the context of Tighe’s lived emotional devastation that is absent from his album. Additionally, the haunting voice of the nurse and the fabulous skill of Tighe’s drummer make each song a glorious, devastating emotional journey.

            While the emotional depth of the piece stands out as the piece’s greatest and perhaps only strength, the allusion to Hamlet in Record is also a stroke of true brilliance that stands out in a piece that remains rather one-note. The employment of the parallel between Tighe and the Prince of Denmark’s experience of crushing emotional impotence is both insightful and heartbreaking. As the ensemble and Tighe read through Act II, Scene ii of Hamlet, the power of Shakespeare’s ability to convey the devastating nature of depression transcends and illuminates Tighe’s inability to speak Hamlet’s words. Enacted in Tighe’s dejected tone, we see the devastating trap of depression in the coupling of the proclamation “what a piece of work is man!” and the admission “and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither.” Trapped in a body and a mind seemingly out of his control, both Tighe and Hamlet embody the crippling nature of mental illness.

            Yet, in spite of the emotional rawness of the performance, the failure of Record to create any salient or satisfying meaning ultimately renders the piece at best a disappointment for its audience. From the get-go, the line between performance and reality introduces complicated questions. Dylan Tighe proposes to tell his own story himself; yet the inescapability of his role as a  working performer, of the dynamic of the proscenium stage, and of the use of numerous theatrical conventions reduces Record to a problematic paradox. The set-up of Tighe’s story is elaborately choreographed and meticulously designed, which creates a marked barrier between the real life of Dylan Tighe and his performance of his life. In the context of this careful set-up, the intrusion of technical glitches and incessant line issues detract from the aesthetic and the tone of the piece. While the performers attempted to mask these mistakes under the guise of the ‘reality’ of the play, the tension between performance and reality hinder the ability of Record to utilize either mode of communication. Instead, the show is left waffling in the superficiality of performance and the ambiguity of reality.

            Thematically, the conclusion of Record took an unusual and wildly problematic turn. Again, the tension between reality and performance rendered Tighe’s piece neither universal nor illuminating, but meaningless. Midway through the show, Tighe and his nurse escape to his doctor’s summer house to be surrounded by sunflowers, tennis courts and oranges. Through hypnosis, positive feelings, and the ocean, Tighe’s nurse, clad in a bright monokini and squeezing orange juice between her thighs, helps her patient find his inner light. In an eruption of ecstatic determination, Tighe rebels against the medical world that has destroyed his life and goes off of his medication. The play closes with Tighe and his nurse embracing and kissing; the action continues as the audience awkwardly exits while attempting to conceal its confusion and disillusionment. Whether Tighe’s escape to this summer home is a fantasy, a joke or a reality is unclear, which makes the ultimate meaning of the play illegible. At face value, the excursion is superficial and frustratingly sexist: are we to believe that only a babe with nice legs and a soothing voice can rescue someone suffering from depression? This interpretation not only fails to address the devastating impact mental illness has on relationships, but more importantly offers merely a simplistic solution to a highly complicated issue. To give Tighe credit, his escape could perhaps be understood as an allegory: perhaps the nurse represents a positive force that Tighe must find within himself to fight his own mental illness, a path that would reflect the suggestion of the medical expert quoted several times during the piece. Yet in either case this portion of the performance remains unclear and problematic.

            Tighe’s performance of Record disappoints the audience it so desperately seeks to impact. In promising catharsis for its viewers, the piece ultimately offers a superficial and nearly offensive exploration of mental illness. Dylan Tighe’s desperation to create and perform a powerful work blinds him to the issues inherent to performing an individual whose identity represents an experience shared by others. Perhaps if Tighe had managed to speak only for himself or perhaps if he had performed a character with a name different than his own, the piece would have been liberated from its manifold problems. Record could have spoken for itself as a man’s expression of his struggle to cope with crippling depression; Tighe’s gorgeous music, his clever use of technology and narration and the fabulous lighting design of the production would have carried the show. Unfortunately, Record was weighed down by its desire to say, do and mean too much. In doing so, Tighe’s emotional masterpiece appeared merely as an offensive display of narcissism.

~Emma Nicholls

Cork Midsummer Festival- "Rian" at the Cork Opera House- Friday, June 22

             At the start of Fabulous Beast’s performance of Rian, a man brings a large harp to the fore of the stage, and sings while three others dance around it, motioning towards the harp as though embracing it.  Set against a luminous green backdrop, the scene evokes an Irish flag, wherein the embrace of the harp overtly represents embracing the Irish nation.  Such a vividly symbolic image could easily be the opening to a work that rehashed hackneyed Irish dance steps and music in the name of preserving tradition.  Instead, Rian blends vibrant music that is recognizably Irish with original contemporary modern dance and a multi-national cast, creating a work that both celebrates and questions tradition.

            The write-up for Rian in the Cork Midsummer Festival program claims the piece is a “journey to explore the tension and harmony between Irish traditional music and modern dance” (8), a theme further emphasized by choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan in a post-show discussion.  The interplay between tension and harmony is visible even before the dancing begins.  The ruling aesthetic of Rian is circular, but the stage at the Cork Opera House is a proscenium, which is a very rectangular format, and tends to demarcate a very clear separation between audience and performers.  The set, designed by Sabine Dargent, appears minimal, consisting of a semi-circular green back wall with a ledge in front of it, surrounding main part of the stage.  Those who are not dancing at any given moment are seated in chairs on the ledge.  The audience, though they are on the other side of the proscenium arch, completes the semi-circle of performers sitting onstage, giving the impression of theater in the round. The lighting is warm and aids the circular format in creating a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere.  Thus the stage itself becomes a site of tension between the medium of the rectangular proscenium and the circular set, as well as the harmony between performers and audience that the set creates.  The men wear grey suits with white shirts and suspenders, while the women wear knee length dresses in varying shades of green.  While none of the performers dress exactly alike, their general simplicity and near-uniformity help them to build an ensemble that does not distinguish between musician and dancer, and draws attention to the performance rather than to the individual performers.

            Perhaps the most obvious tension staged in Rian is between the music, which is Liam Ó Maonlaí’s original work but composed in the style of traditional Irish folk music, and the sort of dance one would expect to see accompanying such music. Traditional Irish dance involves upright torsos, percussive stepping of the feet, and often very little facial expression.  The dancers in Rian, however, used their entire bodies, moving sinuously, sometimes against the tempo of the music, using all levels of the space from the floor up, and sometimes smiling.  While such choreography is perhaps not new to modern dance, the expectation is such that it would be jarring against jigs and reels played on fiddles and accordions.  Yet the result of this unusual combination is the harmony that Keegan-Dolan and company are aiming for—the dance is beautiful, sensual, joyful, and always fits the music.  In a post-show discussion, Keegan-Dolan describes the choreography process as one in which the dancers simply moved to the music as it suited them until they found recurring patterns to choose from.  In the finished performance, the unexpectedness of the choreography makes it appear as if the dancers are have never heard the music before and simply following their first impulses, and indeed, allows the audience to feel as though they are experiencing the traditional Irish music for the first time as well.

            There is also a tension between the “Irishness” of the music, reinforced by the green of the costumes and the sets and by images like the embrace of the harp mentioned above, and the physical bodies of the eight dancers themselves.  The cast includes several Irish performers, but also at least one Nigerian dancer, a Finnish dancer, a half-Indonesian dancer, and an English dancer.  On the one hand, this may point to the fact that the Irish population is no longer a single homogenous group of nearly identical ethnic origin (not that it ever was, as a mix of ancestry from Celtic and pre-Celtic tribes, the Vikings, and Anglo-Norman settlers), but includes immigrants of different ethnicities as well.  On the other hand, the non-Irish performers were not necessarily immigrants, but were simply in the country to dance for the show.  In this context, I think Keegan-Dolan is using non-Irish bodies to argue that the broader nature of folk music like that performed onstage is such that, while every culture has its own particular music, the drive to make music and dance is international.  The harmonious nature of the international ensemble embodies this argument.

            The musicians sing most of the songs in Irish, but further tensions are exposed at one moment in the performance they perform a song in English. A woman sings from the point of view of a man who has just caught sight of his true love.  While she sings four female dancers move slowly and gracefully in a synchronized formation.  But when the singer describes the lover, an idealized “rosy-cheeked” beauty with fair skin, a dark skinned dancer of African descent leaves the group and dances by herself, still graceful but moving counter to the others.  It is clear that she does not fit the description of the Irish beauty described in the song, but it is equally clear that she, too, is beautiful, and before long she is folded back into the group of women dancing onstage.  The brief moment illuminating the Afro-Irish dancer while detailing a more “traditional” kind of Irish beauty comments both on the changing make-up of Irish society—it faces a rising immigrant population, a large portion of which comes from Nigeria—and questions the privileging of white standards of beauty within that culture.

            Fabulous Beast and Michael Keegan-Dolan use the theme of tensions and harmony to great effect in Rian.  They have created a piece that constantly surprises in its exploration of tradition, of the Irish, and of the source of dance itself.  When, at the end of the performance, they invited the audience to join the cast onstage for an encore, it was a final, joyful expression of community and the belief that whatever your traditions, folk is for everyone.

~Julia Price

Cork Midsummer Festival- Siamsa Tire's "What the Folk!"

            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

Cork Midsummer Festival- From Proscenium to Living Room: The Intersection of Audience Participation

          In most theatrical settings the audience is cast simply as a viewer to the story that is unfolding on the stage and regardless of if the forth wall is ever broken they still remain nothing more than a spectator to the event. What transformation then occurs when the audience becomes an integral part of the world being created for both the performers and the viewers? The level to which the audience participates and the manner in which they are incorporated, can have a profound effect on both the running of the show itself, as well as the way in which the show is viewed by both participants and non-participants. From the use of the home as a staging arena in What The Folk? (Siamsa Tire, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland) to the physical involvement of the audience at the end of a traditional work in Rian (Fabulous Beast/Liam Ó Maonlai/Michael Keegan-Dolan), the contrasting approach  to each form of audience involvement lends itself to varying reactions, where the rate of success was measured by what features were kept, what were compromised, and ultimately what was sacrificed.

            What The Folk? seeks to define folk as being a communal storytelling, a means of passing one’s life experiences on to another in hopes that the traditions, dislikes, and intimate details will be kept and shared in future generations. In this way, the four actors, who simply play themselves, don’t seek to set an form of a stage, but rather, welcome the audience into their home, taking them from room to room, offering them tea and cake, and allowing them to glean a little bit about their lives while sitting in various locations of their bathroom. This unexpected experience, one which most audience members are not anticipating, helps to blur the lines not only between pre-show and show, but between audience and listener. Speaking to the first half of this experience, the inability to tell that the “show” had actually started was curious enough, for by the time we made our way to the sitting room with our tea and cake, most of the 15 people “watching” the show, had already begun polite conversation with the four actors, who were explaining how fortunate it was that the festival was able to get them this charming home for their two week stay here. The small, intimate, and fairly forced interaction between actor and audience provided the arena needed for their stories to be told. As the performance progressed the four dancers continually looked to each of the viewers, to make direct eye contact with them in order to make clear that, “This story is for you,” which allowed the audience to transform from spectator to listener. Had these dancers been on a stage, separated by an invisible delineation between performer and viewer, the performance would have lost the welcoming and friendly connection made with each viewer that was the definition of folk itself. However, in a performance so centered around forming a dialogue, a free space to contribute your singular and shared experiences on the subject of Irish Dance, the lack of conversational and physical involvement of the audience during the more scripted “scenes” was perhaps what lead to the differing responses to the work. While many of the audience members were moved so much that to physically participate may have been overwhelming, others were not moved enough by simply viewing. This brings into play the idea of compromise in a production such as this; do you open the conversation to viewers and risk the performance going astray, do you perform in a larger space so as to teach the steps you are performing while then losing the intimacy of a smaller space, do you choose to share more of your songs rather than teaching just one? The choices made in What the Folk? were strong, committed, and well thought out, but missed out on the opportunity to take their story telling to the final level, and impart upon their viewers a song, or a step that would not only unify the group as a whole, but allow the audience something concrete to then re-share, and re-teach in the spirit of folk.

            Perhaps in an even more perplexing manner than What The Folk?, Rian choose to take a very different approach in the way of audience participation. At first glance, this production seems to embody the form of many traditionally performed dance works; the dancers are onstage and the audience simply observes from their seats. Why then does the audience get this certain feeling of inclusion throughout the work? First, the set itself was designed in order to mimic a type of round, a way of allowing the audience to make up the second half of the semi-circular platform that ran around the stage. The massive green cyclorama which ran the entire upstage, helped to enclose the stage itself, to act as a mirror for the audience, to see themselves reflected in the backdrop, alongside the shadows of the dancers being created along it. This attempt to re-create a place of storytelling in an artificial proscenium stage, was one which helped to unconsciously help bring the audience closer into the world of the dance. Second, the facing of the musicians out towards the audience in plain view and in full inclusion with the dance, as opposed to being separated from both the audience and the dancers, allowed the music to transform and transfix almost every member of the audience. The power of music is one which should never be overlooked in a performance, and one which Rian utilized to its full advantage. Music, traditional music, is ancient, it is something that everyone can connect to because it is primal in nature, a core part of every tradition across the globe, and for that reason it has the power to influence listeners' in ways that are often indescribable. As Liam O Maonlai pointed out, even during times of famine in Ireland, or times of great disease in Africa, people would always sit down and make music and dance, and that is exactly what Rian was attempting to do; to sit down and make music and dance, to share these between musician and dancer, and to share both with their ever changing audience.  It is perhaps the last difference between Rian’s approach to audience participation that yield its extreme praises; that of physical participation. It was not enough to establish an  inclusion of the set and cause people to dance in their seats, but at the end of the performance, the dancers crossed their threshold, inviting audience members to join in the sacred place they had been passive members of during the performance. For those whose blood ran thick with the need join in the song and dance, this opportunity provided itself, and for those who preferred to watch, seeing their friends, family, and fellow viewers effortlessly glide into this world that had been created, reaffirmed in their own bodies everything they too had experienced.

If What The Folk? succeed in creating an intimate setting that allowed for more personal looks into each of the dancers’ lives through its colloquial manner and unconventional setting, Rian pushed the boundaries of trying to create the same environment in a traditional space. Through their set, stage set-up, involvement of the musicians and music, and the unique compilement of dances , it was Rian’s  final step, to  open themselves to the  vulnerability of allowing audience members to storm the stage, the leap of faith that allowed the dancers and musicians to fully open their home to the world, that ultimately set it apart, and  made Rian the pinnacle of audience participation.

           

 ~Kasondra Walsh

Arnold Thomas Fanning's "Griswold" at the Civic Theatre- Wednesday, June 20

              

               Arnold Thomas Fanning’s new play, Griswold, confronts the concept of Irish masculinity that is so common in Irish theatre, but with an emphasis on how this masculinity develops when Irish males are outside of Ireland. Fanning furthermore addresses how this masculinity affects the Irish emigrant experience in terms of coping with trauma and maintaining friendships in foreign countries.

            Griswold centers around the lives of two illegal Irish immigrants, Hed (Thomas Farrell) and Taidhg (Shane Gately) living in New York City soon after 9-11. The two have found trouble finding work since the mass paranoia about terrorism after the attacks. Hed, traumatized by the event and the destruction of the city, has become agoraphobic and refuses to leave their home, leaving Taidhg to work to provide for the both of them. They are squatting in a cramped living space filled with objects that Taidhg has gleaned from dumpsters. In searching for a job to support himself and Hed, Taidhg meets the mysterious figure of Mr. G, who he keeps Hed and the audience mostly in the dark about throughout the course of the play. He becomes so embroiled with and indebted to Mr. G that he offers Hed’s services as a masseur (with the proverbial “happy ending”) to pay off his debts and save his own life. Rather than become a male prostitute, Hed betrays Taidhg and leaves, adopting the persona of Griswold and leaving their home for good.

            The set first appears to be simply a chaotic jumble of junk, but it is transformed into a captivating counterpart of the rubble of Ground Zero that exists outside when the lights first dim to begin the show. As an American, the dimming and maneuvering of the lights drew me into the plot in a heart-rending instant as the jumble of junk suddenly created a shadowscape depicting the familiar New York skyline, complete with the Twin Towers, that hasn’t been seen since that fateful day in 2011. Hed, the first character on stage, calmly sits at his desk and throws a paper airplane towards this contrived skyline, furthering the poignancy of the moment and recalling the instants when the attack first occurred. In a talkback after the show, set designer Sonia Haccius described how she examined photographs from directly after the attack and allowed them to shape the set that she was designing. The impossible angles that the rubble created and the monochromatic ashy nature of the area around the Twin Towers were incorporated into the set, tying the chaos of the outside world in to the disruption of the characters’ lives. The set that is created from the interaction between Sonia Haccius and lighting designer Colm Maher skillfully transports the audience to the physical and emotional setting in which the play takes place.

            Griswold examines different approaches to integration and maintenance of an Irish identity by Irish immigrants in foreign countries, a topic with which the playwright has personal experience. Taidhg has no desire to conform to American customs and ways of life, exemplified by his constant insistence on calling dumpsters “skips,” as they are called in Ireland. He is also the one of the pair who voices an eagerness to return home to Ireland. Hed, on the other hand, is fascinated by American culture and traditions. He makes sure to correct Taidhg every time he mentions skips, and appears to have no intention of going back to Ireland. In the excerpts of his writing that the audience is privy to, Hed speaks romantically of the city and people of New York, demonstrating his love and admiration for them. At the very end, when Hed takes on the persona of Griswold, we see that he has been practicing an American accent, the final step in adopting a new American identity. Irish emigration is quite common, and has been for decades. Emigrants must decide upon entering a new country which approach they will take to living there, Hed’s or Taidhg’s. While both are valid, it is clear that the playwright, Arnold Thomas Fanning, sides more with Hed, since in the end Hed is the only one who survives in America. Furthermore, it is because of his desire to integrate that Hed is able to come into his own and make the choices that will ensure his survival, even if it means turning on his best friend.

            The idea of the stereotypical Irish masculinity is one that surfaces time and time again in Irish literature and theatre. Griswold takes this idea of masculinity and experiments with how it is challenged in a setting outside of Ireland. From his first entrance, the audience can see that Taidhg is the embodiment of the Irish manly man. He enters, muscles aching, from the physical labors at which he has been toiling throughout the day, showing that he is clearly the breadwinner of the duo. He demonstrates time and time again throughout the course of the play that he will not shy away from a confrontation, unless his life is very clearly threatened as it is by Mr. G in the final acts of the work. Although Hed is not particularly macho during most of the action, he too possesses some of the typical masculine qualities found in Irish theatre. In particular, he joins Taidhg in the denigration of all of the women mentioned during the play. At any mention by Taidhg of Noreen, a mutual acquaintance who works at a bar, he snorts and calls her “boring Noreen” under his breath. When Taidhg returns to their living space after being gone for several days, he tells Hed that he spent the whole time living in the lap of luxury and consorting with two women. In his account, these women are reduced to their race and sexual proclivity. By putting women down and reducing them to their sexual merits, the men assert themselves as being powerful and “masculine.”

            In fulfilling their masculine roles, Hed and Taidhg both cope with trauma differently. Both suffer after September 11^th, but neither of them show grief in a typical way, because to cry or lament would be considered too effeminate. Hed shuts himself off from the world entirely. He is too afraid of what he might find in the disaster-stricken outer world, so he dedicates himself to home life and the pursuit of his hobby of writing. Taidhg salvages rubbish from dumpsters. This has more potential for productivity since the items can be sold down the line, but this habit of Taidhg’s seems almost more like a compulsion that he must perform to feel more at ease with what has happened in the city. Although their home is filled, Taidhg continues to search for more recoverable items, and encourages Hed to do so as well once he begins to venture outside again. This is more “masculine” than crying or mourning, since it can lead to a profit and involves working with one’s hands.

            Griswold also examines the idea of masculine friendship. Hed and Taidhg have clearly been friends since childhood, since they share mutual schoolday memories. This has forged a significant bond between them. When Hed is incapacitated by agoraphobia after the 9-11 attacks, Taidhg continues to care for and support him, though it would be far easier for him to simply walk away. Additionally, Hed feels hurt when Taidhg won’t share with him what has been weighing on his mind. Hed believes that, as friends, the two of them should be able to share their lives with each other. However, the limits of their friendship are tested as Taidhg essentially sells his friend into sexual slavery for his own benefit, and as Hed makes the decision to become Griswold and condemn Taidhg to certain death. Both of these actions tie in with Taidhg’s and Hed’s respective masculinities. Taidhg is adverse to becoming a male prostitute himself, since there is little room for homosexuality in the Irish masculine ideal. Instead, he signs his arguably less masculine friend up for this fate. Hed, however, protests—“But I’m a bloke!”—and his ultimate decision is to turn on his friend and become a more masculine version of himself, Griswold, who has the machismo to trick Taidhg and Mr. G and to finally leave his home for good.

In the end, the chaos of 9-11 that Hed has been trying so hard to avoid by not leaving his home finds its way into his life anyway, and he must embrace it or perish. In order to survive, he must become a more masculine, more Americanized version of himself than he has been in the past, showing that the Irish masculine ideal can still exist, even outside of Ireland. 

~Alana Reese

Part of our group outside the theatre.