Ah, the capricious muse. Isn't it funny how one could start out writing a play inspired by the story of the original movie foley artist, as Michael West did, and end up only keeping the title Foley and chucking out all the rest? The interesting and eponymous Jack Donovan Foley (born to Kerry parents in New York, 1891), inventor of "foleying procedures" for moving pictures, simply doesn't come into West's monologue. Neither do any of those people today whose fascinating job it is to provide synch sound, by foot, by hand, or by snapping celery sticks (perfect for the sound of breaking necks), to accompany film images.
West will only concede that the Golden Age of Raidio Eireann in the 1950s and its "incredible voices" - including that of Micheal O Muircheartaigh - figure in his play. "It was the voice really, that was the trigger," he says, coupled with "the ideas of Orson Welles, and the way radio speaks to you, it's such an intimate thing." Plus, he adds: "I liked the name." Corn Exchange, one of the most surprising theatre companies around, can do that sort of thing.
West, who has translated many classics, including Beaumarchais at the Abbey, recalls performing commedia dell'arte characters to 1,000 ravers at the Ormond Multi Media Centre in 1993/94: "They were all blowing their whistles and raving the sweat; it was terrifying, but it was also totally exhilarating." In 1995, these brave performers formed the nucleus of Corn Exchange. The director of Foley, Annie Ryan, unleashed her Chicago-style commedia dell'arte on unsuspecting audiences at Dublin's Temple Bar Gallery in Cultural Shrapnel. Manic deconstructions of classics such as Streetcar, Big Bad Wolf, Baby Jane and The Seagull followed, as well as West's A Play on Two Chairs (currently touring Holland). And who could forget taking a back seat in their 1998 site-specific, Car Show at the Dublin Fringe Festival?
The foley artist notion did provide the initial impetus for their first monologue: "Imagine if your sound effects didn't match up," says West. "That gives a pretty good idea about being alienated from your own life. I thought that was a good metaphor for the difficulty of talking about life, relationships, and the meaning of things, that you don't hear the sounds at the right times." However, these musings - "just ideas. They don't engage anybody" - led to a creative cul de sac.
During a circuitous incubation period, including some intense days in Annaghmakerrig with Ryan and Bennett, arguing about "the actual details of this guy's life and the meaning of the piece," Foley found its emotional core. "As his life grew to fill the space, all the other stuff seemed like a gimmick. While you can't make a show out of sound effects, you can out of this voice of someone narrating their life."
Foley was transformed into "an exploration of a man who is thinking back on his family, his background, his values, his traditions, and why he shoved it all out". It ended up being "about a rural Protestant - that kind of disintegrating class". What draws West to this theme? "I'm a Prod," he offers. "That world is so bizarre. Getting older you realise that was such an amazing bubble that you lived in If you grow up as a Prod in the South you are part of a very small community, but it is a very defined community." When driving through the country with his parents, who are from Kerry and Cork, "all the time you see these little closed churches," he explains. This sense of "a place dwindling", infuses Foley. "It is about decay, and the reality of entire traditions going under."
Limerick actor Andrew Bennett, a collaborator since their meeting at a 1993 Barrabas Theatre workshop, shares West's Protestant background. "The more I found out about his background experiences, the more it seemed like he was perfect," says West. As the voice of Frank McCourt in the film of Angela's Ashes, Bennett is surely voix du jour in Limerick.
Foley promises the type of lyrical, transformational, story theatre Annie Ryan learned at Chicago's Piven Theatre Workshop. Experimenting with storytelling techniques recently in the children's play Jack Fell Down (produced by TEAM Theatre and nominated for an Irish Times Theatre Award), helped West to focus on "the emotional side of theatre". Foley, a straightforward story, marks a new stylistic departure for him: "This is the first time I have done sustained narrative. At the beginning I was much more interested in stage craft, like how do you make inanimate objects do things?" As a foley artist would?
Foley runs for three nights at the UnFringed 2000 Festival at the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick from Thursday, February 3rd. Booking from: 061-319866. It will be broadcast on Lyric FM's Artzone on January 28th
