Things to keep you up at night

CHAIR Lovett’s drama world premiere comes to Cavan County Museum

Actor Aaron Monaghan answers the phone in a half whisper. By New Zealand time it’s 9.30pm and his one year old daughter Ada is asleep.

Aaron and wife Clare Monnelly are appearing as a married couple in a new Irish and New Zealand television co-production called ‘The Gone’. It seems they can’t believe their luck.

“We were kind of going: we have a kid now so it will be a long time before we get to travel again, or certainly travel on a big journey, and then this opportunity came along - it’s a once in a lifetime chance, might as well!”

As soon as Aaron returns to home, he’s no time to contend with jetlag, he’s straight into filming ‘The Vanishing Triangle’, currently being shot in Dublin and Wicklow.

Yet it’s neither The Gone, nor The Vanishing Triangle that the Celt is calling long distance about, which is just as well as he’s contractually unable to discuss them at this early stage anyhow. The third ball Aaron’s juggling in his seemingly infinite headspace is Tara Maria Lovett’s play ‘The Whispering Chair’. Livin’ Dred’s set to perform the world premiere in the new performance space at Cavan County Museum in Tara’s adopted home of Ballyjamesduff.

‘The Whispering Chair’ features two couples Aggie and Hugh Burke; and Maud and Con, an armchair, and the menacing backdrop of the Civil War and its repercussions.

Aaron’s introduction to The Whispering Chair came through an approach by Catriona O’Reilly in the Cavan Arts Office to work as an actor on the play which had been commissioned by Cavan County Museum. At that stage it was in “early development” and by Aaron’s reckoning it had “another draft or two” before it would be stage ready.

Agricultural poetry

Used to playing couples, Aaron and Clare, not for the first time, played the two couples for a read-through for Culture Night 2020. With two actors simply delivering simply the script, the play was absorbing, a true testament to Lovett’s understated skill.

“The text is beautiful,” admires Aaron. “It’s very very Cavan. It has beautiful turns of phrase. I keep on describing it as a very agricultural poetry – it’s language that your mother or grandmother would say over the kitchen table, and she just manages to make it beautiful.”

It would make you wonder the heights to which it might be elevated through a full production. Aaron is at pains to ensure drama realises its full potential as a visual spectacle.

“This play has kept me up for a year, trying to figure out how to do it,” he admits, noting the paradoxically that more complex plays with up to 10 actors on stage at any one time have been easier to direct than the challenge posed by ‘The Whispering Chair’.

“It’s a very simple play in many ways, but the more you press on this play and pull at threads, the more questions it raises and becomes very, very intriguing.”

Transition

The action shifts between scenes with Aggie and Hugh set in the 1920s and Maud and Con set in the 1990s, which posed more challenges.

“You have to keep a sense of flow throughout the play, so as it goes back and forth and it’s only two characters, the audience catch up on that very-very quickly.

“So by the time you get to scene 10, you have to be very very clever about how you transition from one scene to the next. The first time you do it the audience will be like – ‘Oh that’s very clever’, the second time you do it, they kind of go ‘Oh, seen that already’, and the third time you do it, they’re already ahead of you so we’ve had to design a production that’s quite physical.”

Aaron admitted that director Bryan Burroughs and talented young cast Catriona Williams and Naoise Dunbar were still working on the “very tricky” staging.

The majority of Livin Dred’s plays see them revisit older works, but occasionally showcase new writing. They were also keen to mark the decade of the centenary, and with Civil War a core element to The Whispering Chair, Aaron’s interest was piqued.

“The play poses the question of inter-genarational trauma. It’s handed down from one generation to another, and it’s a question of which couple will survive, if any will survive.

“I think Livin’ Dred is the perfect company for this play’s world premiere,” he says with a confidence that suggests he is resting a little easier in the knowledge that their production will indeed help the script reach its full potential.

Aaron was eager to mention how Livin’ Dred partenered with Creative Ireland and the Mill Theatre in Dundrum and the museum which provided funding which enabled them to stage three productions for school groups, mainly TY students, from across Cavan to enjoy the show for free.

“We are very proud of that because we are really hoping that for many of those students it will be their first time seeing a play, we are really proud of that.”

The Whispering Chair will be performed at Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff on Friday, October 21 at 7pm, and Saturday, October 22 at 2pm. Ticket price €15 can be booked online at: livindred.ie or walk in.