Pluck of the Irish
Two fierce shows kicking off Luminato boldly represent the new Ireland
Ireland is changing.
It’s a worldwide headline following the result of last weekend’s referendum, in which a two-thirds majority voted to overturn a constitutional ban on abortion. This follows a similar referendum legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015.
This may not sound like the Ireland many people still think of — a traditional, Catholic, family-based culture, rich in song, myth and writing, if not rich in financial terms. But these constitutional changes reflect a nation that’s been in the midst of massive evolution on many fronts for the past 30 years.
Two acclaimed productions opening Toronto’s Luminato Festival this month speak directly to the country’s contradictions and its vivacity.
RIOT, by the Dublin-based theatre and events company THISISPOPBABY, is an audacious, kitschy cabaret featuring a six-foot-tall drag queen named Panti Bliss, and spoken word poetry that cuts to the heart of the country’s social inequities. With Swan Lake (in its Irish-language translation Loch na hEala), the contemporary dance/theatre company Teac Damsa weaves Irish myth through the famous ballet story and sets it in the country’s midlands against a score of live Irish/Nordic folk music.
Seeing these two very different productions in quick succession might give you a feeling of cultural whiplash, which reflects the experience of today’s Ireland. The country moved from pre-1990s underdevelopment into an economic and cultural boom in the ’90s known as the Celtic Tiger. The Irish population rapidly diversified as a country that had previously known only outward migration welcomed immigrants from eastern Europe, Africa and beyond.
I was one of those newcomers lured by the infectious cultural energy and sense of possibility in the Celtic Tiger days. I moved from New York to Dublin for graduate school in 1997 and ended up staying a decade. As such I missed the bad part: the bottom fell out of the Irish economy in 2008 when it was revealed to be too dependent on foreign direct investment, but the country has now boomeranged back to rapid economic growth.
Old and new, religious and secular, rural and urban, entrenched and progressive collide in today’s Ireland, creating an environment that is complex, fluid — and a superb crucible for creativity.
“The Irish through their literature and theatre deal with really deep issues,” says Josephine Ridge, Luminato’s artistic director, “but at the same time there is also this incredible joie de vivre and connection with life that comes through, a contradiction between being bleak and ecstatic at the same time. Both of these pieces encapsulate that.” THISISPOPBABY, founded in 2007 by Jennifer Jennings and Phillip McMahon, made a name for itself with edgy theatre productions, performance/ music spaces at summer festivals and a pop-up late-night club in the basement of Ireland’s national theatre. RIOT came out of an ongoing discussion “over a glass of bubble,” says McMahon. “What would our Riverdance look like?” The goal was always to create “contemporary Irish performance with mass appeal.”
The stars aligned for them to produce RIOT in 2016, the 100th anniversary of the start of Ireland’s journey towards independence.
“In some ways we were trying to present an alternative view of the centenary celebrations,” says McMahon.
“Everything was looking back. We wanted to think about presenting the Ireland of the future.”
He and Jennings put together a cabaret made up of “crazy acts from alternative cabarets and gay clubs, heroes of ours from underground performance,” says McMahon. Acts include pop music, circus and the comedy/dance duo Lords of Strut, with Panti Bliss providing sass as MC. A serious current runs through in the form of spoken word poems written by Emmet Kirwan and performed by Kate Brennan, including “Heartbreak,” the story of a single mother that became a viral video. The theme of all the poems is the artist as revolutionary. “The question underpinning the journey is ‘Does art have the power to change things?’” says Jennings.
One line from “Heartbreak” imagining an Ireland that will “stand in awe of all mná” (the Irish word for women) took off as a slogan in the run-up to the abortion referendum. “We had it printed on jumpers and are walking around town in them,” says Jennings.
The atmosphere in Dublin in recent weeks was fraught, she says, as the Yes and No sides debated fiercely. “It’s kind of digging up some deep collective trauma, the cumulative effect of how Ireland has treated its women.”
“We are in a culture war here, the old Ireland and the new Ireland prising apart,” says McMahon.
Michael Keegan-Dolan’s work springs from similar observations made from a very different geographical perspective. He spoke to me from his home on the Dingle peninsula in the far southwest of Ireland, noted for its wild beauty and tourist appeal. “Even Luke Skywalker was here,” quips Keegan-Dolan: he can see Luke’s island from The Last Jedi from his front window. Swan Lake/Loch na hEala merges the familiar story of the ballet, in which an evil sorcerer turns a princess into a swan, with the mythic Irish tale of the Children of Lír (which is believed to have inspired Tchaikovsky’s version). In wondering what would make a man curse women for all eternity, KeeganDolan thought of the tradition of a younger son joining the priesthood “for socio-economic reasons, to support the family. That’s a recipe for misery and tragedy. What are you going to do with that energy if you’re 24?”
He was also put in mind of John Carthy, a young man with depression who blockaded himself in his home in County Longford in 2000 and was eventually shot dead by police. For Keegan-Dolan this points to a larger concern: “I get very frustrated with the mental health situation in Ireland, how complicated it is for people to find supports that are not drugbased. I am sure we are not the only country in the world that has this problem.” Swan Lake/Loch na hEala makes scathing reference to many of Ireland’s aging institutions (the church, the police, the medical system) alongside stunningly beautiful passages of contemporary choreography, and is laced with bursts of dark humour. “The Irish laugh at what is serious and take serious what is laughable,” says Keegan-Dolan. “That is the response of people who have been traumatized.”
His country is fast-moving, Keegan-Dolan allows. “We’re still catching up with ourselves.”
Still and all, he says, “I wholeheartedly love Ireland, with all its problems. You meet a good person; you meet an a--hole. … It’s an amazingly sophisticated language and culture. The way we have surprised and thrived is breathtaking.”
RIOT runs June 5 to 16 at the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre. Swan Lake/Loch
na hEala runs June 6 to 10 at the Bluma Appel Theatre. See luminatofestival.com for information.