With ‘Lilies’ Joseph Walsh ponders bravery and safety
Ghost Light Theatricals was born as Joseph C. Walsh contemplated bravery and safety.
The former artistic director of Garden Theatre was visiting New York City and experiencing soul-stirring moments: Joaquina Kalukango baring her soul in the final show of “Paradise Square,” Beanie Feldstein giving her all despite being replaced during her final turn as the star of “Funny Girl.”
Walking the streets of Manhattan, he knew what he wanted to do when he returned to Central Florida.
“I thought, ‘I want to offer an organization that really is about hope and safety,” he says, with safety meaning both physical and emotional well-being.
The ghost light — the simple bulb left burning onstage in theaters not in use — immediately came to mind.
“The ghost light is a symbol of hope of returning, and it offers safety to the theater’s ghosts and the workers when they arrive, so they don’t fall off the stage,” he says.
When Walsh’s Ghost Light Theatricals opens “Lilies: or the revival of a romantic drama” Sept. 15, it will be little more than a month since he had his revelation.
When he left the Garden Theatre in June, Walsh said he was mentally and physically tired. But working on a play he holds near and dear to his heart has invigorated him.
“I’m feeling really good,” he says with a hearty laugh. “I’m happy.”
Walsh first encountered “Lilies” while in college.
“All the theater students were fascinated with Brent Carver,” who had recently won a Tony Award for his searing performance in the musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Walsh recalls. So when someone dug up a movie called “Lilies,” in which Carver starred, everyone watched it.
Walsh watched the “very strange and artistic and melodramatic film” again and again.
Later, while interning at the Public Theater in New York City, he stumbled across a copy of the stage script in a reject pile.
“That’s how I found out it was a play,” he says. “I’m still working off that book.”
Written by French Canadian playwright Michel Marc Bouchard, “Lilies” is set in 1952 in a prison, where an inmate named Simon invites an old friend to watch as he and fellow prisoners stage a play to explain the events 40 years ago that resulted in his incarceration.
“I fell in love with it,” says Walsh of the English translation of the script. “It was so beautiful, so poetic, so different than anything I’d ever read. And I thought, ‘Someday I’m going to do this play.’ ”
So he did.
With his Wild Oats Productions company in the United Kingdom, he presented the London premiere. Then, with a mini-tour through London’s Greenwich Theatre, he staged the Irish premiere.
That production had a full-circle moment when Carver came to see the show in Dublin. In a surreal moment, Walsh recognized him in a pub after the performance. But that production also revealed the personal power of the story, with people telling
Walsh watching the tale unfold was cathartic.
“There was an excitement in Dublin that I hadn’t experienced before,” he says. “I think the connection between sexuality and Catholicism caught the attention of an Irish audience.”
Without spoiling the plot, “Lilies” grapples with issues of sexuality, religion, power and hypocrisy.
In the era of “Don’t Say Gay,” Walsh sees the play’s message as a warning of sorts.
“This is a story of two young people in love,” he says. “It is a cautionary tale of what happens when we aren’t allowed to embrace love. I think it can breed a lot of conversations.”
Indeed, Walsh is planning a series of post-performance discussions with religious, political and community leaders about the issues raised in the play.
For this, a 15th-anniversary production and its Florida premiere, Walsh is finding things have changed since his last staging a decade ago.
He has been able to cast more diverse actors than previously, and the discussion on sexuality, gender roles and more has evolved.
Walsh says he has changed, too. “My experience of being part of the Central Florida community,
being an artistic director and seeing other directors’ work has changed how I work,” he says. “Working with people like Roberta Emerson and Felichia Chivaughn” — both of whom directed acclaimed productions at the Garden — “has opened my eyes to new ways of working.”
Walsh hopes to expand his fledgling Ghost Light Theatricals to include education efforts and consulting work with theaters on diversity and inclusion.
But first, there’s the run of “Lilies.”
Walsh sees it as a re-introduction of himself to Central Florida. And this time it’s a more personal one.
“I wasn’t brave enough before to say ‘this is my story,’ ” he says. “Fifteen years later, I’m brave enough to say it. I wanted to come back and present a work that meant a lot to me and represented my point of view. I wanted to share something of myself.”
‘LILIES’
When: Sept. 15-24
Where: Theatre South Playhouse in the Marketplace at Dr. Phillips, 7601 Della Drive in Orlando
Cost: $20-$30
Info: theatresouthplayhouse.org