INSIDE STORY: What would the leaders have thought of Ireland today?

INSIDE STORY: The Proclamation is the forthcoming production by the Townhall Cavan and it promises to be a departure from the Rising commemorations to date. DAMIAN MCCARNEY spoke to two of the artistic driving forces behind the show, SIOBHAN HARTON and PHILIP DOHERTY to find out what they have in store for us.

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“It’s an artistic dream park through a hundred years of Ireland,” says Philip Doherty, and conscious of how that might sound he laughingly adds, “...is the tagline we’re kind of struggling with.”
It’s all hands to the creative pump as the Townhall Arts Centre plans an audacious spectacle for our delectation on this momentus anniversary. Because it’s primarily Philip’s brainchild, it’s natural to expect a drama, but it promises to be much more than that.
“It’s an immersive theatre experience,” hypes Philip continuing the struggle, “it’s interactive theatre, promenade piece.”
His final volley is an “artistic human zoo”.
Essentially they’ve gleaned 16 words from the 1916 Proclamation, which inform the themes for 16 “experiences” relating to the last century and will stage them throughout the Townhall venue to create a seamless trip through the last century.
“It’s in snippets - three minute flashes going through the whole time,” enthuses Siobhan, finger-clicking like a clapperboard with each word. “You’re brought from scene-to-scene-to-scene-to-scene on this journey.”
Philip calls it, “Looking at all the different decades but done through a fevered dream of Ireland through a hundred years.”
Sounds like a live performance of Reeling in the Years.
“Don’t say that!” a laughing Siobhan commands.
“You’re kind of right though,” concedes Philip, “music’s going to be a huge part of this and going through the last hundred years the music we’ve created has been unbelievable.”
Kicking off with the signatories drafting the Proclamation, the audience - of just twenty at a time - meander through the belly and nooks of the Townhall, and even roam outside at times.
“We’re turning the whole Townhall into a playground, we’re using the spaces in the backyard and the sides as well, so it’s a loop,” says Philip.
What if it’s lashing?
“That’s okay,” Philip insists, “a lot of it’s inside and actually if it rains it adds to the excitement, because we’ve a Swamp of Truth.”
No point in asking to elaborate on the swamp - while happy to describe scenes, they’re eager to keep them as a surprise for the audience. However they agree that there’s a Monty Python flavour to it.
“It’s very satirical, cartoons nearly, but really going as truthfully as possible into what happened over the last 100 years,” says Philip.

Relevant
The pair promise The Proclamation will be a departure from the official 1916 commemorations.
“It’s very interesting that all of the celebrations for the centenary were very reverential, very commemorative, very respectful, but it didn’t really say anything about today, and here and now, and how it’s relevant to us, and I think for theatre to be important it has to be relevant to us. Whatever way it was programmed it was not rendered into something that’s important to a modern audience, because if you look through a hundred years of Ireland and you look at the Proclamation, you wonder: what would the leaders have thought of Ireland today?”
‘Get the guns out!’ the Celt retorts.
Philip suspects that’s likely the case.
“That’s really interesting territory to work with, especially working with the Proclamation, when we’re going through all the language, what would they think?
“So to show the domino effect of that Rising right up to now, and to turn around and start celebrating how wonderful we are - it didn’t feel right, it felt dishonest.
“At the end of the day they [the rebels] were dreamers, idealists, and they were brave and courageous, and that can’t be taken away from them. The dreams they had for Ireland, they were idealistic, and it would have been wonderful if this had have happened. But to see Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny and Brian Cowen sitting beside eachother during the commemorative marches, while the whole public weren’t allowed into O’Connell Street and it being edited cleverly by RTÉ was very very interesting, and it says a lot. The role of an artist is to point these things out: ‘That’s not right; that’s not right.’”
The Celt hurls Philip the question he posed himself: what would the rebels think of contemporary Ireland?
“I don’t know if they’d want another bloody Rising, but I certainly don’t think they’d be happy with the fact that we don’t have sovereignty anymore. That’s the main word - sovereignty is the main thing that we’ve lost.”
Loss of sovereignty in terms of EU membership? Financial obligations?
“Ownership of our country: we don’t own our country, we don’t own our currency. So sovereignty - I think of all of them, that’s one thing we’ve let them down on.”

Counterbalance
The Celt wonders if it’s not unfair to focus on the flaws of modern Ireland when there’s been much progress over the last century. Philip insists they haven’t neglected the “hopeful” aspects, and present a rounded view.
“It’s very easy to be constantly critical, but we are trying to counterbalance that - some wonderful things that have happened over the last hundred years. And I think overall there is an uplifting feeling in the end.”
He delights in considering if he’d taken an alternate approach.
“It would be funny if you went for complete triumphalism and how wonderful we are! It would be even worse if we had: ‘We’re the worst country in the world’. There has to be both sides.”

Nuggets
Since it’s a break from the conventional commemorations, do they expect it to cause upset?
“If we thought of that, we’d never create anything,” says Siobhan. “We don’t aim to upset anyone, our job as artists is to show it the way we see it, hold up a mirror to people and say, look this is what’s going on - it’s up to you.”
However, they don’t expect the content to jar with the audience.
“No one can deny anything that we’re showing has happened. It’s fact reimagined in a different way,” says Philip.
Swamps-full of surrealism and humour should also smooth the edges.
“For such serious topics, we’ve tried to keep it witty,” says Philip, “and that keeps people alert and excited the whole time on that humour ride through the whole thing. It’s going to be very colourful.
“It’s very easy to come at it in a blunt way, we’re trying to do it in an artistic way as we render it as best as we can.”
Siobhan adds, that the show is littered with “nuggets” of genuine facts, swaddled in absurdist humour.
One such nugget was inspired by the rebels’ surrender. When Padraig Pearse officially surrendered to the Birtish commanders, he was flanked by nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell who had attended to the wounded fighters in the GPO. However, given the position of the camera that captured the vital moment, all that can be detected of O’Farrell in the photograph is her legs beneath the hem of Pearse’s broad overcoat.
“In some photos she was airbrushed out, but in the ones I’ve seen, all you can see is this woman’s legs,” says Philip. “Just legs.”
One Dublin playwright described the manipulation of the photo as being ‘Eirebrushed’. The Townhall crew have delighted in bringing a surreal twist to O’Farrell’s legs, and many other details, that may not hit home immediately.
“That’s what I want people to go away with,” says Siobhan. “There will be lots of those ‘Ah-a!’ moments afterwards.
“You want them to feel like children again, go through a hundred years and come out of it as if they’ve come out of a playground or theme park of sorts, but they’ve looked at the most heavy political issues - and they go, ‘God I enjoyed that, I feel like a child again!’
“And that’s the challenge, to make adults play again. That’s one of the reasons why it’s this immersive experience - they become part of the journey - they’re the hero of the journey.”

Ethos
The show requires a cast and crew of about 100. While that sounds like a logistical mind boggler, it’s a step back from the 150 involved in their last such live extravaganza, The Ship of Fools in the Seahouse in Hallowe’en.
“We’re still recruiting,” Siobhan casually notes of need for costumed extras. At the time of the interview there’s just a fortnight before the show, but she betrays no sense of panic in signing up volunteers.
“That’s the community we have around us, that we know that they are very supportive.
“I had a phonecall from a 70-year-old woman the other day, saying she wants to be involved in it, so there’s people coming in from everywhere to it.”
In creating such ambitious projects, this is where the ethos of the Townhall comes into its own. It’s got a kaleidoscope of talents from which to draw: dramatists, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers.
“It’s been great working with visual artists and designers, because I’ve written out a script of sorts, but it all has to be told visually, it all has to be told almost as a silent movie, and to tell the story without boring people with a half hour scene in a kitchen or a pub.”
In addition to their Townhall colleagues, Sally O’Dowd and Joe Keenan, they’ve enlisted a host of contributing artists including the likes of renowned artist Rita Ann Duffy, filmmaker Padraig Conaty, and Hacklers headman Damien O’Brien. Some of the artists are taking responsibility for directing individual scenes, under Philip’s overall directorship.
Supported by Cavan County Council’s Arts Office the Townhall are staging the 40-minute show for free, every half hour from noon to 5pm on Saturday, April 23, the actual date of the Rising.
All this effort for one day?
“On this run,” says Philip “There’s no reason why this can’t go on over the next four or five years, this production in different guises, with different extras in different parts of the country.”