Playwright Vincent Woods arrived as an exciting new voice in Irish theatrein the early 1990s, but since then he has been concentrating more on poetrythan on plays. With the opening of Woods's 'On the Way Out' inManorhamilton, Co Leitrim, tonight, it looks like Woods is back, writes Karen Fricker
Vincent Woods is on the way back in. He was one of the most exciting Irish playwrights to emerge in the early 1990s, with three plays produced in the span of four years by Druid Theatre Company, in Galway. Among them was At The Black Pig's Dyke, a brilliant, elegiac evocation of ProtestantCatholic conflict in Northern Ireland incorporating mumming and storytelling traditions, which won the Stewart Parker Award in 1992 and toured extensively throughout Ireland, and to Britain, the US, and Australia.
But since that time Woods's playwriting seemed to slow down - not that the man himself hasn't been busy. He is an accomplished poet, and has been working successfully in that vein, editing The Turning Wave, an anthology of poetry and song from Irish Australia, and publishing a new volume of his own poems, called Lives and Miracles, with Arlen House later this year.
He has written two plays for children, neither of which have been produced in Ireland; a radio play for RTÉ; and a stage adaptation of a novel; and has worked as a lecturer and writer-in-residence at NUI Galway.
Still, the theatre world watched and waited for a significant staging of a Woods play - and is finally being rewarded. This week sees the opening of On The Way Out, a play for three actors written by Woods and produced by the adventurous company Skehana. The play itself isn't completely new: it's a rewriting of Woods's first dramatic effort, John Hughdy/Tom John, which Druid produced in 1991, while Maelíosa Stafford was Druid's artistic director. Stafford, who now lives in Sydney, Australia, has returned to Ireland to work on this new production as a collaborator and performer. The production premières at the Glen Centre in Manorhamilton, in Woods's home county of Leitrim, tonight, and over the next 27 days will travel to 20 venues. Some are established theatres like the Watergate in Kilkenny and the Town Hall in Galway, but most are small town halls and school auditoria.
Bringing theatre to under-served areas is very much a key focus of the work of Skehana, which toured Tom MacIntyre's The Gallant John-Joe to similarly out-of-the-way venues last year. That production, a solo show featuring Tom Hickey, was nominated for two Irish Times/ESB theatre awards, and recently enjoyed an acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
In addition to extensive touring, the other fundamental principle behind Skehana is providing established writers with an opportunity to work in a supportive and open environment.
"We are not here to discover new writing talents," explains producer Mary McPartlan. "We want to give experienced writers a chance to see new work produced in a collaborative setting, and to give them a chance also to return to existing plays and rework them."
On The Way Out is set in Leitrim and consists of two monologues, one by 90-year-old John (played here, as in the original production, by Des Braiden), and the other by his 50-something son Tom (played by Stafford). Both men are looking back on life as they face death. Their monologues are involving and surprising, full of a sometimes startling irreverence: John's first line is "Fuck the Pope!" Isn't Woods afraid of shocking people?
"Nuns saw the original production and loved it," he replies. "I don't recall any negative reaction - at least none directed towards me. The character is very vivid and strong, but it's based on a kind of black humour that is very real to me. There is a sense of playfulness."
A subject greatly pressing on the mind of old John is what will happen after he dies: not the afterlife, mind, but how the neighbours will behave.
As he sits in bed he imagines his son in the pub "tellin' them all that the auld fella is on the way out. And they'll be sittin' round the counter like sick hens, wonderin' will there be a free drink in the next days."
For all his hard talk and bravado, John reveals a deeper fear when he wonders whether the traditional funeral rituals - clocks stopped, mirrors covered - will be enacted for him. "The play is a celebration and a mourning of the loss of identity, culture, and language," says Woods. "Fewer and fewer people remember the rituals, let alone carry them out. John might not have told his son he wants those things, and his son might not bother with them - they are of the past, about ways that are going."
The play's focus on the relationship between past and present is further reinforced by the use of a female narrator (played by Fiona Kelly) who tells fanciful stories of the King of Spain, preceded by poetic "runs" that she speaks along with the two men: "It was a long time ago, it was not a long time ago, it was yesterday, it was today, it was the day before . . ." Who is this female character? "She's a memory, a presence, a muse . . . people will make of her what they will," says Woods. "In this production there is a more clear impression that in some ways she represents Mary Flynn, John Hughdy's wife and Tom John's mother; in the earlier production she was played by a young girl on a swing, and I was never really happy with that. Here she is on stage the whole time - there is more direct contact."
This play is clearly a reflection of Woods's deep engagement with a rapidly changing Ireland. He has made a documentary about the devastating results of systematic forestation on Leitrim's land and economy, and speaks with passion about the damaging effect that new EU laws on farming will have on small farmers in Ireland: "It will be interesting to see how that will be reflected in voting on the new Nice treaty," he muses. On one level, Woods seems to be wearing his politics less on his sleeve in this play than with, say, At The Black Pig's Dyke, where we saw border violence played out before our eyes - but the message is there all the same.
"This is a human story - of the lives of a father and son in a particular place," says Woods. "Politics is a vague background in their lives. It's not really important to them - which is interesting too. They live within a changing social order, but if you listen to the son it's as if he is disenfranchised in his own life - dislocated in modern Ireland."
You might think that coming back to a play he wrote over 10 years ago would give Woods his own sense of dislocation, but he clearly seems excited by the whole experience. "I have always wanted to come back to this play," he says. "Des Braiden's portrayal in the original was magnificent, and he and I have always said we wanted to do it again. So when Mary McPartlan asked me if I wanted to do something for Skehana I said I wanted to do this - I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could go back and expand on this play. The second part, Tom's part, was too bald the first time - it's a deliberate confrontation with suicide, but it was underdeveloped in terms of character and motivation. So I more or less began with him, and we have extended the first half as well."
In what is a rather unusual set-up for professional theatre, there is no credited director in the production programme; rather, Woods and Stafford are serving as co-directors, with additional assistance from John O'Hare, a colleague of Stafford's from Sydney - and from the performers themselves.
"It's kind of a Skehana philosophy not to use directors in a traditional way, which can be great, and can be fraught with difficulty," says Woods. "But here everyone has the same goal."
In addition to this production for Skehana, Woods is under commission from the National Theatre for a new play, and has written, also for the Abbey, an adaptation of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, which he hopes will see production next year.
The Irish theatre scene is a bit slower these days than it was a decade ago, but Woods is optimistic that an upswing is due: "I think a new wave will come. There are many new venues now, and new academic courses.
"But I feel the true power of theatre can only come from the individual, and then from a group of people with a commitment to vision and the creation of something true. More and more theatre is about commercial concerns - will it get to New York? Will it be a huge hit? We need to have theatre happen for its own sake."
