Natallia Valadzko: A theatre more interested in words than action

Is it possible to write a play only about language? The space of interpretation, between the stage and the audience, makes theatre a fascinating medium for experimentation. On stage, w ords make it possible to accomplish the most using fewer means. Colourful descriptions can paint objects, decorations, and characters on stage.

Reviewing the renowned Irish plays of the 20th century it’s easy to notice that many of them employ poetic and authentic language, and incorporate it into the content of the play. Some theatregoers may protest the lack of action on the Irish stage, so apparent (or rather absent) in the works of, say, the Nobel prize winner, Samuel Beckett. But the mere opposition of action and language may as well hamper a unique opportunity for new emotional experiences and reflection.

Narratives are so pervasive that life is commonly constructed as a story, drawing in audiences with everyday expressions like “writing a new chapter”, or “the protagonist of your own life”. Plots or, broadly speaking, histories, have been seen as stories with a beginning, middle, and end – all of which are linked by a cause-and-effect relation. The art of storytelling brings us back to the oral culture of the past, to Greek myths, Celtic legends and folktales, to a group narrative consumption, and not a solitary one.

The role of Celtic mythology and folklore cannot be overestimated in the development of the Irish Literary Revival. Cultural nationalism has been promoted through the use and re-interpretation of the authentic Celtic legends. They were not considered in any way inferior to the classic Greek ones - on the contrary, it was an attempt to de-Anglicize Ireland, retell and reinvent the national identity. Yeats and Lady Gregory wanted to show that “Ireland was not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment […] but the home of an ancient idealism”.

While Yeats was insisting on the sovereignty of language on stage and the plays that meant to bring “intellectual excitement”, J.M. Synge believed that since he could not write in Irish, he should write as an Irish in English, with the Gaelic rhythm and structures seeping through. This was his answer to the burning question of which language to use on the stage of the National Theatre.

Synge managed to go beyond “a crude stage Irishman” and refine the speech with idioms and Irish cadences to create an authentic experience of the “entire reality of life” that combined realism and beauty. He insisted that the use of dialects was crucial to convey the sense of locality – to put the written work in a particular place and time. He was especially inclined to do so in order to capture the regional differences.

Giving voice to characters might be the most basic mode of representation – and yet, the words “from a subject” instead of “about an object” are vital for the theatre as the nation’s mirror. The twentieth-century Irish drama was intent on giving agency to the Irish people to renegotiate and rearticulate their identities, their place, and the place of their nation in the larger scheme of things. It was essential to introduce characters who were native and spoke for themselves.

The phenomenon of the stage Irishman might have been most prominent between 1827-1890. However, the residue of the portrayal of the Irish as drunk, childish buffoons has lingered and can be found even in contemporary plays. Interestingly, the trope of the stage Irishman is not confined to the English audience, but it is embraced by opposing political and religious factions. For instance, Northern Protestants paint the stage Irishman as brutish superstitious buffoons – Irish Catholics, on the other hand, have often used this concept for channeling the inferiority complex and its coping mechanisms: by humorizing famine, emigration, language, and religion.

It was all about controlling the narrative. The tool for being heard and seen can be easily found in Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City. Reanimating bodies is an incredible theatrical technique that plays with time and space, turning dead bodies into subjects capable of telling their own stories. It turned out to be quite a diverse representation of the society at the time of the play – a myriad of voices, which included a judge, soldiers, a priest, an RTÉ commentator, a sociologist, a pathologist, and a forensic expert.

Irish drama has often employed words on stage for their power of transformative storytelling and providing agency and representation. The problems of “now” have been addressed using the source materials containing the old knowledge, and aspirations for the future were materialized due to the disruptive force of imagination.

Natallia Valadzko

Cover illustration: Zofia Klamka