'The whole body has to be talking'
Mikel Murfi to stage entire trilogy in one day
Imagine writing a one-man show, where your character is unable to speak. For many playwrights such a constraint would put a full stop to the project, but for Michael Murphy - better known by his stage name Mikel Murfi – it presented a way into creating a very special character, Pat Farnon. Pat may be non-verbal, but yet he has plenty to say.
Michael has since developed Pat’s story into a trilogy, and for the past 13 years has performed the plays everywhere- from illustrious stages in New York to lesser spotted GAA clubs in the wiles of West Cork.
Along the way Cavan venues have hosted each of the Pat Farnon instalments – ‘The Man in the Woman’s Shoes’, ‘I Hear You and Rejoice’, and ‘The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey’. However this Saturday, April 18, Michael brings the entire trilogy to the Town Hall Arts Centre for one epic day of theatre. The Cavan Town venue has described it as the theatrical highlight of the year, and given Michael’s stature in theatre circles and the adulation the plays have garnered, it’s hard to argue otherwise.
And yet the character at its centre, Pat, seems at first glance an unpromising source of drama.
Genesis
The genesis of deciding to make Pat ‘non-verbal’, can be traced back to Michael’s training in acting. In the late 1980s he attended the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq where the emphasis was placed on theatre as a visual medium.
“Lecoq’s big thing with us was to reclaim the theatricality of theatre, because theatre can do things that film and radio and TV can’t. And he was pressing us to take advantage of the possibilities in theatre,” recalls Michael, who actually undertook further training to qualify to teach Lecoq’s method.
“When I was writing ‘The Man in the Woman’s Shoes’, I had about six pages written and I thought Jesus ‘I’m writing a radio play’. What can I do to make this inherently theatrical - to arrive at a conceit that is purely theatrical and I found myself writing: ‘I can’t talk. I can’t talk.’
“And when I wrote those lines I went, ‘Jesus I’m in!’
“Because I figured a theatre is the only place in an artwork where you can very successfully tell 200 people that you can’t talk, and then talk for an hour. They will buy into that idea, they will go: ‘Okay, for the next hour we will believe that you can’t talk, but we can hear your thoughts’. It’s a lovely intimacy the audience get to have with Pat that even his best friends don’t have.”
Language
The shows explores Pat’s rich inner life, and he recalls being approached by a woman after a show in New York.
“She said, ‘I just wanted to say I have a six year old child at home who is non-verbal’. And she said, ‘I can now go home and think that all this wonderful stuff might be going on in her head’.
Michael continues: “It’s not just people who are on those spectrums who are non-verbal.
Pat says himself to the audience at one stage, ‘I spend most of my life inside my own head, and I don’t mean to be smart but so does everyone else’.
“And if we could all see the goings on in every one else’s heads we would all have to admit were all daft as brushes.”
Passion
Michael is passionate about the physicality intrinsic in communication and demanded of stage acting. As such the interview is all the more enjoyable for taking place over Zoom, where Michael comes across much younger than the funereal promo images of Pat.
“The majority of our communication is non-verbal,” he explains. “Eighty per cent of communication is non-verbal, twelve per cent is tone, and only eight per cent is language.
“The front row of the audience can just about see your eyes. After about five rows they no longer have access nearly to your face. So every thought that you have has to be run down and into the body - and the whole body has to be talking, because otherwise you won’t reach the back row.”
Despite the shows involving only one actor – no costume changes, no set, and only the bare minimum of props, the stage is populated with 15 or so characters, all conjured up by Michael.
How he does this is reminiscent of how a skilled artist can suggest details to the viewer without actually committing them to canvas. He notes a scene from ‘The Man in the Woman’s Shoes’ where Pat walks into a café where he meets his pal Hubie and a waitress.
“The audience will see Pat, Hubie and the waitress consecutively, in about four seconds - twice.”
Requited love
While he acknowledges his own role in portraying this, he gets a kick out of this playful conspiracy between performer and audience.
“The delight for an audience is that their unconscious mind goes: ‘I saw them all’. I’m always thrilled by that aspect of it.
“My real satisfaction is in being able to show something to people, knowing well that they have the gift of the imagination to see.”
While Pat is brought to life for the audience, at times during the interview it feels as if Michael is speaks of the character almost as a real person.
“He’s such a gentle person, if you get a chance to meet him, he’s a very special person,” he says.
A silly question wells up like a burp the Celt can’t suppress:
“Pat Farnon, do you love him?”
“Yeah I love him,” replies Michael without hesitation. Both Michael’s parents come from County Monaghan, and he regards Pat in the same light as one of their siblings.
“What I’ve been trying to say with these shows – everybody who gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night is doing a remarkable thing,” he says noting the worth of those who are on “a very modest journey” in their life.
Dedication
“When you see someone as simple and as generous and as kind as Pat going through a lifetime, it’s nice of us to acknowledge that nothing remarkable needs to happen. You just need to be there, be there for the people who love you, be there for the people around you, concentrate on them and just do your best.
“So I say to people, I love meeting him. It’s like going to meet your favourite uncle and spending a day with him.”
Spending a day with Pat is actually an option this Saturday as Michael brings the whole trilogy to the stage. The first show starts at 1pm, the second at 4pm, and the final instalment at 8pm.
“I am always humbled and astounded,” he says of anyone coming to see his shows, and notes one woman from Dún Laoghaire has come to see it “eight or nine” times.
“It’s a beautiful thing for them to be able to do, it’s a beautiful thing for me to be able to do.”
Michael volunteers that going to see the trilogy is a commitment, and requires people to be generous enough to themselves to give over a day to the theatre.
“Those people have a lovely experience where collectively they are sharing something.”
That something may well be the theatrical highlight of the year.
Mikel Murfi brings the Pat Farnon trilogy to the Town Hall Arts Centre on Saturday, April 18. The Man In the Woman’s Shoes begins at 1pm; I Hear You and Rejoice commences at 4pm; while The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey starts at 8pm.