MY first starring role came this year when I was asked to take part in a small film, Cuireadh Chun Cainte, which is currently being screened at second-level schools all around the country.
The half-hour film aims to guide students through the newly structured oral Irish exam. Current Leaving Cert students will do the exam for the first time in the spring next year.
The newly devised oral Irish exam will represent a maximum of 40 per cent in the Leaving Cert Irish exam as opposed to the maximum 25 per cent a student could hope to gain in the past. During September, a DVD of the film was sent to every second-level school in Ireland.
The offer of the part in the film came out of the blue, when I was contacted by an executive at Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge, the central steering council for the Irish language community, which co-ordinated and orchestrated the film's making along with Irish teachers' representative group, Comhar na Múinteoirí Gaeilge. As a former examiner of the Oral Irish exam at Leaving Cert level, I drew a little on my own experiences in the mid 1980s when I arrived to play the part. As in any exam situation, the arrival of the examiner into a school creates a maelstrom of emotions, and consequently, our film, Cuireadh Chun Cainte, could be seen as a story of fear and loathing, of trial and retribution, of birth and rebirth!
Students sit in terror outside a door, waiting to be called in by the examiner, a complete stranger, for a conversation. In my experience, it is the arrival of the examiner at a school which creates that crucial tension when students can become nervous, excited or even monosyllabic. My character had to be stern yet approachable, friendly without being overly familiar. Cuireadh Chun Cainte, which literally means "an invitation to talk", is the story of what happens when students are asked to converse in Irish, read poetry in Irish, pose questions, talk about themselves and generally exhibit their levels of fluency in Irish.
The film was made in a southside Dublin secondary school. The phonetics and clarity of the words were uppermost in our minds at all times. Éamonn Ó Dónaill, director of education at the Irish training and language consultancy, Gaelchultúr, was the film’s linguistic consultant. He was on set at all times to monitor the various dialects that cropped up. As someone who comes from the small Gaeltacht of An Rinn in the Déise in west Co Waterford, which has its own dialectic character with words, grammatical characteristics and phonetic idiosyncrasies that are found only in this one corner of the world,
I was curious to know how my pronunciation of certain words and phrases would be viewed: but all dialects were treated respectfully and allowed breathe, as long as the meaning was clear at all times and the dialogue was understandable. "Sally, not Hally," offered Tristan Rosenstock, a member of the production team, Red Shoe Productions, at one stage. "As in Lay Down Sally," he explained. "Maybe you're thinking of Halle, as in Halle Berry," quipped a voice at the back. "Always," joked Marcus Lamb, the professional actor who plays the part of the film's narrator.
I had to think myself into the part of the examiner as I felt that I should play a complex character, a driven educationalist, an everywoman of sorts, whose mission is to separate the wheat from the chaff, the brains from the brawn, the swots from the shirkers, the scholars from the dullards. Like me, those who play the young students in the film were also inexperienced actors. I’m convinced that Honí Ní Chuaig and Ben Ó Mathúin, both secondary pupils themselves, who play the students with speaking parts, will, in time, become stars in their own right. In their roles, they had to read, recite, converse and ask questions of the examiner.
A discussion early on in the shoot helped me understand the intensity and commitment to the project of our director, Paschal Cassidy, and our producer, Maggie Breathnach, when they stopped the cameras rolling in order to make a definitive decision about my reading glasses. Should they be left on or off, they wondered. It was a kind of existential dilemma. The said spectacles can embody so much that is educative and traditional, reductive and manipulative in our psyches that it took some moments before filming continued. Mainly, the glasses were left on the table beside me for the duration of the shoot.
Since making this film, I find myself watching actors such as Natalie Portman, Kirsten Scott Thomas and Nicole Kidman in a whole new light. I listen to hear how they deliver their lines. I’ve noticed how they rarely look into the camera but at the actor opposite. They impress, each appearing by turn tense, sympathetic or stressed. I find myself wondering how many takes it took to capture a particular scene, and how many times Portman had to say her lines before her director, camera man, sound man and producer all nodded happily as one and she was able to breathe and move onto the next scene. I wonder if she found it difficult to walk naturally towards a table, while steering some young person, and still manage to deliver her lines perfectly, glitch- free and in a natural and fresh way.
There will be a special screening of the film at this year’s Oireachtas na Gaeilge 2011 on November 4th at 6 pm in the Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney when the red carpet, undoubtedly, will be rolled out for the stars.