GALWAY-BASED playwright Christian O’Reilly, whose plays have been staged by Druid and Rough Magic, will see his latest play premiere at the Galway Theatre Festival in a production by Decadent Theatre Company.
Entitled Here We Are Again Still, the play was commissioned by the Galway City Council under the Per Cent For Art Scheme, whereby a portion of the funding for a local authority capital project is reserved for spending on an original art work.
The play features three characters; widower Paddy sits on the same bench outside his flat every night, unable to sleep since the death of his wife. His elderly neighbour Imelda does her best to drive him indoors, but there’s no talking to him. Then one day Paddy is annoyed to find a troubled young man called Tony sitting on his bench.
Despite his reluctance to connect with anybody, Paddy strikes up a grudging acquaintance with Tony and discovers in him a damaged soul struggling to deal with the past and fearful of the future. Set in a concrete landscape on the edge of playing fields, Here We Are Again Still reveals itself as a moving and funny play about two broken men trying to make their way back from the margins.
Over a Monday evening coffee, author O’Reilly explained how his new play came about;
“Megs Morley, the city council’s public arts officer, approached me about doing a theatre project based around Walter Macken flats,” he said. “I wanted very much to involve the local community in the project - to whatever extent they wished to be involved, which is always a question with public art anyway.
“Over the summer of 2008 we ran a series of storytelling sessions and about a dozen residents came along regularly to the sessions and we asked them about their lives etc. I then went away to think about all they had said and also reflect on my feelings about it.
“The flats also overlook Mervue United’s soccer pitches and I was training there every Thursday. I used to see one of the residents watching us train and that gave me the initial idea of the story, for the character of Paddy.”
Interestingly O’Reilly’s script largely eschews documentary-style details relating to the flats for more universal observations on the emotional travails and consolations of his characters.
“In the early stages of the project I did have another idea that was more literally about the world of Walter Macken flats but to be honest it didn’t really work as a play and I had to jettison it,” he discloses. “It’s funny when you write for a commission like this you’re under a degree of pressure that isn’t there when you’re writing speculatively or for a commission from a professional company. In that instance if the script isn’t deemed suitable it just doesn’t get staged, but here there was an expectation of producing the work, so if the script isn’t coming together you’re wondering ‘What the hell am I going to do now?’
“The initial idea was too rushed but the second one was much more about my feelings about the place rather than details that were specific to it. What it was largely fuelled by, and one of the main things I was struck - and humbled - by, was the sense that these people living alone, many of them elderly, simply got up and faced each day, often without a support network of family or community.
“The courage it can take to do that, especially when you are isolated, is something that came across to me very strongly. That was the thing I was left with and that I wanted to express in the play.”
O’Reilly also finds himself pondering how the play will be received by the residents of the flats.
“A big question for me is how will they feel about this play,” he acknowledges. “One resident has read it so far and she was very pleased with it. It remains to be seen if it will be more widely accepted. It does raise the wider question about the function of a play; is it to challenge, to entertain?
“You don’t want it to cause offence but you don’t want it just to be a bit of PR either. When you engage in a community project what responsibilities do you have to the community, to yourself, to the people who commissioned it, to a wider theatre audience?
“It becomes complicated to figure all that out. On the other hand what I love about these kinds of projects is that you get to discover a world and people that you mightn’t otherwise know anything of and that is a great privilege for me as a writer.”
Directed by Andrew Flynn, and designed by Eoin McCarthaigh, Here We Are Again Still features Eamonn Hunt (Paddy ), Andy Kelliher (Tony ), and Brid Ní Neachtain (Imelda ).
The play runs at the Nuns Island Theatre on Friday October 23 and Saturday 24 at 8pm and from Tuesday 27 to Saturday 31 at 8pm. There will be one further special performance at Mervue, for the community who did so much to inspire its creation.
Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777.
