Program for The Speckled People
Tuesday, October 11
Tuesday morning we had our first talk-back in a very theatrical setting: the Abbey Theatre’s Peacock Stage (second stage) rehearsal rooms. CTC Artistic Director Byam Stevens led off with a review of his New Paradigm for the Theatre, which encourages theatre goers to forego the critical paradigm (sitting in judgment) and replace it with a paradigm that focuses on engagement.
Elms College Professor Robert King talked about the challenges and rewards of seeing each production with a fresh perspective, particularly when reviewing a play that one has seem before, i.e. not comparing productions but considering whether each production succeeds on its own merits and aspirations.
After the talk-back many of us headed off to The National Gallery. The museum is undergoing extensive renovations, so many of the galleries are closed temporarily. To cope with the space shortage, the museum has staged a “Masterpieces from the Collection” exhibition.
Among the treasures is Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ, a stunning image executed with incredible technical proficiency. The dominant feature in the painting, the black armor of the soldier taking Christ into custody is both magically illuminated by moonlight and a powerful symbol of militaristic oppression. The painting also features a self portrait of the artist — the man carrying the lantern in the upper right hand corner of the painting.
There’s also a gallery devoted to highlights from the museum’s collection of works by Irish painters, which includes a haunting work by Sir John Lavery: his wife costumed as the Irish heroine Kathleen Ni Houlihan. Executed in pale blues, greens and grays, it features a frame within a frame, and Kathleen gazing out at the viewer with her arm resting on a Celtic harp (the symbol of Ireland).
Tuesday night we went to the famed Gate Theatre, founded by Michael MacLiammor, for the world premiere production of THE SPECKLED PEOPLE, by Hugo Hamilton, based on his best selling memoir of the same title. It tells the story of a young boy growing up suburban Dublin in the postwar period. His mother, a German national, speaks German, his Irish father speaks Irish and forbids English to be spoken in his house — “walking out the door onto the street was like a daily migration into the English language.” As the boy is forbidden to speak English, he is an outcast in his peer group, and because he speaks German he’s bullied for being a “Nazi.”
The play raises provocative issues about:
1) the meaning of “home” — is it a place, a group of people, a cultural language construct?
2) the connection between language and identity
3) the way in which children develop contexts for ever increasing comprehension of the world around them.
A wealth of topics for our Wednesday talk-back!
