NEXT WEEKEND at the Town Hall Theatre, there will be an intriguing new play which conjures up 50 years of local history amid a story of typical Galway life and enduring friendship.
Tales of Galway is a devised play celebrating aspects of the people’s history of Galway drawn from stories that were taken from a series of reminiscing workshops with a wide variety of older Galway residents.
Workshop participants were encouraged to delve into their past and explore the richness of their youthful experience of growing up in Galway. The result is a uniquely Galwegian event, devised and performed by local actors.
The workshops that laid the foundation for the play were run by Sinead Hackett, who also shaped the resultant stories into the final stage script and is directing the play. Over a Sunday evening chat after rehearsals she outlined how the play evolved and the kind of story it seeks to tell.
“It started off with the workshops I ran where we gathered a whole range of memories and stories about Galway life and the progression and changes the city has undergone from the 1950s up to the present,” Hackett explains.
“We particularly focused on stories from the east side of the city, from the Bohermore and Mervue areas. Once we
had gathered the stories I worked on pulling them together into a script that would work onstage.
“What I’ve done is come up with a central storyline of these two girls from Bohermore who have a close friendship that endures from the 1950s onwards. One of them ends up having to go to England while the other remains in Galway, but they stay in contact. Around that fictional story we bring in all the actual historical tales and memories that people told us.”
The play evokes things such as the early years of the Mervue estate, which started being built in the 1950, the games that were popular with kids, or the financial hardship that saw housewives pawning their husband’s suits and then reclaiming them in time for Sunday Mass – only to pawn them again on the Monday.
“Times were hard back in the fifties,” Hackett notes “but people pulled together a lot. There was that real community spirit.”
A big part of the show revolves around the many recollections of the dances in Seapoint and the Hangar, with the males and females lined up on different sides of the ballroom as they waited to choose their dance partners.
Hackett is keen to thank all those who helped make the show happen and especially Chick and Maureen Gillen, Celia O’Connor, Margaret O’Boyle, Jimmy Higgins, Bernie Divilly (who does the show’s choreography ), the Darcy sisters from Bohermore, Matt and Mary Hackett, Nora Cahill, James Casserly, and Mary Moore.
Tales of Galway is at the Town Hall for two nights only, on Saturday June 4 and Sunday 5. Tickets are €8/6 so come and enjoy a trip down memory lane and see what it’s been like to be a Galwegian caught in the ebb and flow of life over the last 50 years.
Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
