The artistic legacy of writer Stewart Parker is widely recognised among his peers, so why has his work taken so long to make a comeback? Jane Coyle talks to some of those he influenced
Sixteen years after his death, Stewart Parker is still very much alive and at large. Paddy Dies, the first, and only, collection of his poems, has just been published by Summer Palace Press and his play, Heavenly Bodies, is about to receive its Irish premiere on the Peacock stage of the Abbey Theatre.
In the words of Parker's niece, director Lynne Parker: "He's right back at the centre of things, where he belongs."
Parker was speaking at the launch of Paddy Dies at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast last weekend. She was surrounded by friends, family and fans of the writer, who, as publisher and co-editor Kate Newman explained, started out as a poet.
"We have had to get through the past 16 years, an indispensable part of our lives, without him," reflected Lynne Parker. "The reason that we have made it is that the work still exists. Companies like Tinderbox and my own company, Rough Magic, have produced it and taken it abroad. Now here we are with this book, another new work by Stewart Parker. It's a wonderful thing to have."
In the spirit of such occasions, there was much reminiscing, and serious talk too. Guardian journalist Robert Armstrong, now based in England, looked back fondly to his and Parker's days in the Queen's University's Drama Society.
"He used to show up at Dramsoc rehearsals, to watch at close quarters and in great detail how to make things work on a stage. He was, in effect, studying the basics of his craft," said Armstrong. "As a writer, he was a mixture of enthusiasm and iconoclasm. He had that big Belfast quality of direct, in-your-face honesty and ability to tell it as it was. He was a guy who seemed full of possibilities, able to translate a fresh vision of the polarities and issues of the Northern situation into living theatre. My memory is of him running around with his eyes wide open - fearless, fun and boyish."
Poet Michael Longley admitted that the publication of the poems had prompted him to "remember back to the early days, listening to the recording of his radio play The Iceberg and going to Dublin to boost the audiences for Spokesong. Back in the 1960s, John Malone invited me and Stewart and Seamus Heaney to talk to some sixth-formers at Orangefield School and I recall the effect he had on those young people".
One of those "young people" was Belfast-born poet Gerald Dawe, who was much taken with Parker.
"I met him when I was a young lad in school and he impressed me then as being a man about the world, open and energetic and yet somehow shy," Dawe said. "He was completely interested in writing, not in the idea of the lifestyle that went with it.
"The voice and influence boils down to one word: sanity. I think he had that kind of passionate inner life that comes from thinking long and hard about what was happening to his city and why. He also had a great sense of the wider world and wasn't cramped by his own ego in embracing it."
Actor Stephen Rea was another who fell under Parker's spell. After his death, he wrote movingly: "I fell for Stewart the day and hour I first saw him. He was an exotic figure in Belfast in the 1960s. He carried an umbrella and was going to be a writer. He possessed a serenity and wisdom denied the rest of us and his friendship was a reassuring central presence in our lives. He came out of east Belfast and he belongs to all Ireland."
That sense of belonging to all Ireland was echoed by Co Donegal poet Cathal O Searcaigh.
"I never knew Stewart, but I do know that he was really interested in Irish," he said. "At the time, there were all kinds of Berlin Walls around Irish; it was as though it had committed some atrocious sin and had to be chastised. Now things have changed and Irish has become fashionable. I think Stewart would have approved."
In the eventful years since 1988, the Parker legacy has continued to assert an enduring influence over successive generations. Writer and former Stewart Parker Trust Award winner Tim Loane never met him, yet his has been an ever-present and inspirational guiding spirit over Tinderbox, the company Loane co-founded in the same year that Parker died of cancer at the age of 47.
One of Tinderbox's earliest productions was Parker's Catchpenny Twist. In 1999, the company staged a revival of another of his plays, Northern Star, directed by Stephen Rea in Rosemary Street First Presbyterian Church, a venue inextricably linked with the history of Henry Joy McCracken and the United Irishmen. The opening night brought together public figures, politicians and church leaders of all shades and opinion under one roof, a scenario Parker would have relished hugely.
But it was Field Day's 1987 premiere of Pentecost, in Derry's Guildhall, which left an indelible impression on Loane. And seven years later, Stephen Wright directed a memorable revival of the play for Tinderbox.
"It was my first introduction to real theatre," recalls Loane. "I was struck by the fact that here was a writer whose characters spoke the way I did and talked about the same things I talked about. He understood so well the subversive value of theatre and that's something that's been sadly missed in the years since his death. Nobody has come forward to fill that gaping hole. In my view, he's the best ever."
Nicholas Kent, artistic director of London's Tricycle Theatre, is another who cherishes fond memories. His production of Pentecost in 1987 opened just weeks after Parker's death, a fact which undoubtedly added resonance to its magnificent finale.
"The end is wonderfully brave," says Kent. "It bares its soul in a way that English drama never does. It is impassioned and hopeful, and it offers hope in a way which only people, not governments, can. From the first day of rehearsals, we were conscious of his spirit watching over us."
Yet for all that Parker remains an eloquent and inspirational force, his plays are relatively infrequently produced. Kent has his own theory as to why this is the case.
"Stewart was much more interested in the 'now', in making a difference to contemporary issues," he says. "As a result, the plays don't last as long as they might, because they engage with the politics of the time. Not that that in any way diminishes his stature. I find it difficult to imagine Pentecost having the same impact today, since the Good Friday Agreement. He was an evangelist, who was particularly adept at grasping and translating the issue of the time."
Lynne Parker, who directed the highly praised Rough Magic production of Pentecost in 1995, only partially agrees.
"I do think that there was no better time for Pentecost than when it was first done," she says. "But it is such a magnificent play it can move with time. I look forward to having another crack at it one of these days."
In his review of that 1995 production, Irish Times critic Fintan O'Toole argued that "one of the things that makes theatre so interesting is the way in which the meaning of a text changes with time . . . Pentecost seems a much more enduring play than it did its premiere for Field Day. While the bleak political landscape describes was still very much intact, it was hard to laugh wholeheartedly. Now, with the political heat turned down, Parker's subversively serious humour can be given full play".
Talking about the current climate in theatre, Gerald Dawe speculates on how the "now" referred to by Kent might play into Parker's writing were he still alive.
"The way theatre is at the moment, sensation and event management seems to have taken over, so the intently literary and theatrical nature of Parker's writing is up against it," he says. "Who can say what he would be writing about if he were still alive?
"I can, however, well imagine him speaking his mind on the present situation, in which Europeans are being pitched against the current American administration. He certainly would have been thrilled by the ending of the Troubles. Maybe he would have dramatised the period of denial and memory loss we are living in now."
John Fairleigh, who was a close friend of Parker, is director of the trust set up in his name to help and support young writers struggling to make their voices heard. He sees a correlation between the aims of the trust and the irregularity of productions of Parker's work.
"The puzzle is why his plays have not become closer to the core of the Irish theatrical repertoire," he says. "They are all entertaining and, at the same time, profound and challenging, offering a window into the personal and political histories of 20th-century Ireland. Critical appreciation is developing apace - a growing wave of commentators and students seems to be drawn, entranced, to the whole repertoire. But we are lucky if we see a Parker production in Ireland once every two or three years.
"It is because Stewart had such a hard time getting his early plays into production, that friends set up the trust in his name to give a boost to Irish playwrights when they are starting out and most need a bit of practical help and encouragement."
Lynne Parker's Irish premiere of Heavenly Bodies, Parker's extravagant play about flamboyant playwright Dion Boucicault, hovers on the near horizon. It was published in 1989, along with Northern Star and Pentecost, under the title Three Plays for Ireland.
The designation of the plays as a trilogy has caused a degree of eyebrow-raising, but Gerald Dawe believes there is more to it than meets the eye.
"I'm not sure if Heavenly Bodies really fits in, but I don't see the trilogy as being set in some hard-and-fast structure," he says. "Stewart was fascinated by the notion of playing and play-acting. He would have been aware of how the culture he grew up in was ambiguous about the 'value' of acting, even though there always was great belief in entertainment. Heavenly Bodies is about acting and its cost, so maybe it is, in fact, the key to all of his writing."
Heavenly Bodies, by Stewart Parker and directed by Lynne Parker, opens at the Peacock, Dublin, on Monday and runs until Saturday, July 31st