Putting on a Play in Oscar Wilde Country
Citadel Arts is a community-based company in Edinburgh to which I belong. We receive (meagre) funding from the Arts Council, Town Council and Business, and we work with the elderly, the handicapped etc… in fields like story-telling, reminiscing and drama. It is managed by Liz Hare, who is a theatre director and lecturer.
We had received some funding to work with folks in one Home for the retired, to make them talk about their lives, and then write and produce plays based on our harvest. My play Father of the Man was one of the five one-act plays which resulted from this, and we produced them and performed them at three or four venues in Edinburgh. It dealt with a man who had lived through the second world war, who had missed out on college, but who somehow managed to make something of his life. He was living at the Home, with occasional bouts of lucidity, otherwise he was suffering from dementia. I was inspired by this theme and thought it would make for good theatre. On the last night, Liz and I were approached by a man who told us that he worked for Scottish National Health Service, and that they, with other Medical Institutions abroad had organised an International Mental Health Conference which was going to take place in Dublin in five or six weeks. Would we be able to be part of this conference, by performing my play to Conference? He did not have much money, but would arrange for enough to fly our troupe to Dublin, and pay for hotel and meals. We checked with our actors for availability, and were able to say that we would be delighted to attend.
The transport arrangement for the early departure was a source of worry. Our actress Catriona was to get a taxi in Portobello, come pick me up in Viewforth, and the other actors Bobby and Yvonne were to come in their car from Pennicuik to Liz Hare’s in Shandon, and we would all meet there, whence to the airport in one cab. The plane was at eight in the morning. The unendearing Ryan Air. The next problem was air travel phobia! One of the actors dreaded being airborne and absolutely had to have a window seat, but with no-frill airlines, this could not be arranged in advance. However they made sure that they were at the head of the queue the moment the flight was announced. Another snag was the ox bone! We needed it for the show. I got a nice impressive knuckle-bone from a pet shop, and just as we were lining up for the baggage check, I realised that it would be visible during the x-ray scan. But the security man was probably not awake and didn’t see the menacing looking contraband! And all went as well as we could have hoped.
In Dublin, we found that five people taking a taxi from the airport was much cheaper than the airport bus. The hotel was cheap and cheerful, and the moment we put out things in, we dashed to Dublin Castle where the
conference and the show were to take place. We discovered that no maps we laid our hands on acknowledged the presence of the castle in the fair city!
Oh aye, chap at the hotel said, but I’ll tell you. You’re walking, right? Turn left on Lower Gardiner street, into Talbot street, you will see the Spike, that’s O’Connell Street, you will see the General Post Office, you can’t miss it, it’s
still got the bullets in the pillars*. Proceed along it until you reach the Liffey; turn right until you get to the famous white bridge, cross it and you are in Temple Bar. Take Dame Street and ask for the City Hall!
The City Hall, I asked dubiously.
Aye, the castle is just next door. But he hadn’t quite finished. There is a better route for the way back, he said, and proceeded to spell it out for us.
We found that crossing the road at the traffic lights demanded a certain flair, as Dubliners seemed annoyed at us for waiting for the little green man. It seemed that you crossed over the moment the incoming traffic seemed to be giving you a more than 50% chance of getting to the other side with most of your limbs!
When we got to the castle, we found that it was surrounded by what looked like a car park on one side, and a rather dreary red-bricked building on the next, no trouble having been taken to ensure visual harmony, which surprised us, as Dublin is a tastefully laid out city. I surmised that the perverse Brits must have governed from the castle, and as such, it was not its most endearing building.
We knew next to nothing about where we were going to perform, what the stage was like, where would the actors change? Would we have the very simple props that we needed. Liz had tried to find out, but when she had managed to talk to someone at the castle from Edinburgh, she had been told they would find out and get back to her, which they did not! But it turned out that there was a proper stage, where the speakers to the conference were to address their audience. A very helpful technician/trouble-shooter called Tom promised us (and later delivered) everything we needed. A screen, two tables
and chairs, glasses to replace those we had brought along but got broken en route! We even managed a rehearsal on the spot. This went on satisfactorily, except that the bone rolled off the stage. We hoped this wouldn’t happen tomorrow!
The next headache was that the performance was to take place during the lunch break, between gruelling talks about persona and commonality by eminent professors from Reykjavik or Athens. Who, we wondered were going to forego their meal in order to come to a show by some anonymous little troupe from Edinburgh? We networked like mad, going to Wine get-togethers and smiling ingratiatingly to everybody we crossed on the castle grounds. We even woke up at crack of dawn the next day in order to attend talks and workshops, not in a worthy effort at seeking knowledge, but so we could smile and nod some more at eminent professors and health professionals.
At one fifteen, when curtains were set to rise, there was not a single person in the audience. We had come all this way, spent good Scottish Arts Council and NHS money taking the show to Dublin for nothing! But since we all like a happy ending let me tell you what followed. At one twenty, people started pouring in, in droves, and to my amazement we ended up with a full auditorium (250 people). The play started at half past one. The actors were well-rehearsed, having performed at least half a dozen times in Edinburgh, and everything went on without a hitch. We had a short Q&A session after, and one of the questions to the actors was how they managed to get it so right? How could they play so many different parts with such ease? It was very heartening. The applause was very satisfying, but I wasn’t going to let a unique opportunity slip by. When would I ever again be on a stage on Oscar Wilde’s neck of the wood? I was going to take a leaf from his book. Ladies and Gentlemen, I said, since I am in Wilde country, let me applaud you for being such an interesting audience!
But Father Of The Man was not by any means the best theatre we experienced during our brief visit across the Irish channel. On the way back to the airport, we had a garrulous cabbie, Jim, who used to be a Blue Beret, seeing service in a variety of places, from the Lebanon to Jerusalem, The Gambia and Kosovo. It was rush hour when we left, and the trip took over an hour during which Jim spoke non-stop, in fruity Oirish, telling us about his wartime experience in those war-torn countries. His monologue on the No Man’s Land incident could have been presented on stage unedited and been worth an Emmy or a Bafta! The Blue Berets had arrested a Hizbullah man and immediately the Israelis came over to their headquarters in their tanks, armed to the teeth and demanded that the alleged terrorist be handed over to them. J.R, the Irish commander explained that he was not empowered to hand over anybody to the Israeli army, but could only ask the civilian Lebanese police to take over. The suspect was then delivered to the Lebanese who took the prisoner and proceeded to drive him to Beirut. Immediately the van, with the man, four Lebanese policemen and an Irish blue beret drove away, Israeli helicopters appeared in the sky and tailed the van for a while, and then swooped down on it and bombed the vehicle to smithereens, killing everybody inside. Soon after Hizbullah sent word to the Irish that for the loss of their brother, two Irish soldiers would pay with their lives, and within a week, they made good their lugubrious promise.
* During the Irish war of liberation, the Post Office was the theatre of an epic battle between the IRA and the English army.
