2017 Katie Roche, Research Pack
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ABBEY THEATRE RESEARCH PACK KATIE ROCHE TERESA DEEVY Researched and compiled by Marie Kelly (School of Music and Theatre, University College Cork) CONTRIBUTORS Fiona Becket, University of Leeds Caroline Byrne, theatre director Amanda Coogan, performance artist Úna Kealy, Waterford Institute of Technology Marie Kelly, University College Cork Cathy Leeney, University College Dublin Chris Morash, Trinity College Dublin Kate McCarthy, Waterford Institute of Technology Barbara McCormack, Hugh Murphy, Valerie Payne, Róisín Berry, Maynooth University Morna Regan, dramaturg/writer Eibhear Walshe, University College Cork With special thanks to the Abbey Theatre Archive and the Teresa Deevy Archive, Special Collections & Archives, Maynooth University, Co. Kildare. For more information see https://www.abbeytheatre. ie/about/archive/ and www.deevy.nuim.ie Cover Image: Caoilfhionn Dunne as Katie Roche © Ros Kavanagh KATIE ROCHE, RESEARCH PACK 2 WELCOME PHIL KINGSTON From 26 August to 23 September 2017, the dramaturgy and Caroline Byrne’s expressionistic Abbey Theatre presented a major revival of staging turned this Katie Roche into far more Teresa Deevy’s ground-breaking play Katie than a reverential museum piece. The audiences Community and Roche. It was over 80 years since this daring saw a specific, thrilling and thought provoking Education Manager meditation on freedom, duty and pride in take on Deevy’s classic story. Coincidentally at the life of a young woman made its world the same time another artist, Amanda Coogan, premiere on the Abbey stage. presented a performance art based response to Deevy’s work in collaboration with Dublin In its initial press release the Abbey explicitly Theatre of the Deaf in Talk Real Fine, Just Like A recognised that the political climate had Lady. influenced its programming - “The Abbey Theatre is committed to elevating the work of women in Finally Deevy was back in the wider cultural Irish theatre. Katie Roche is a brilliant play from conversation and one immediate question was the Irish canon. Welcoming Teresa’s work back to where is the context for people to understand our stage is just one way we hope to correct the her work better? Thankfully Dr Marie Kelly of issues of gender inequality that we see in our own University College Cork offered to present society today.” (Graham McLaren and Neil Murray, aspects of her own and her colleagues’ Directors of the Abbey Theatre). Much of the painstaking work for a wider audience. press reaction also acknowledged the historical and cultural significance of the production actually Welcome to this Katie Roche Research Pack, happening. a first for the Abbey Theatre in terms of the multiple contributions and gathering together of But what also emerged was an appreciation existing scholarship. We hope it contributes to a of how theatrical works, for all their canonical greater appreciation of Teresa Deevy and the art importance, are also mutable. Morna Regan’s of drama that she so loved. KATIE ROCHE, RESEARCH PACK 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 5. INTRODUCTION 46. FROM THE ARCHIVE Marie Kelly Light Falling on the Teresa Deevy Archive / Barbara McCormack Letters From the Past: Correspondence between Teresa Deevy 7. ABOUT TERESA DEEVY and James Cheasty / Waterford Institute of Technology Archival Teresa Deevy : A quiet subversive / Úna Kealy Research Project / Úna Kealy and Kate McCarthy About Teresa Deevy / Cathy Leeney Teresa Deevy in the light of her contemporaries / Chris Morash 53. RESPONSE TO DEEVY / COMPARATIVE READINGS / Teresa Deevy: Themes in context / Cathy Leeney CRITICISM Teresa Deevy: A bibliography / Eibhear Walshe and The Teresa Deevy: A playwright worth reviving / Eibhear Walshe Deevy Archive Women’s’ performances: The family drama of Teresa Deevy and Marina Carr / Fiona Becket 32. KATIE ROCHE: PLAY AND PRODUCTION Production history / Abbey Theatre Archive 65. BIBLIOGRAPHY Plot synopsis / Cathy Leeney Interview with the director - Caroline Byrne / Marie Kelly 69. CONTRIBUTORS Interview with the dramaturg - Morna Regan / Marie Kelly 44. TALK REAL FINE, JUST LIKE A LADY Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady: A response to The King of Spain’s Daughter / Amanda Coogan with Úna Kealy and Kate McCarthy KATIE ROCHE, RESEARCH PACK 4 INTRODUCTION MARIE KELLY It has been an honour and privilege to contours of Katie’s subjectivity, Joanna put together this information pack as a Scotcher’s minimalist set design echoes Appia resource for those with an interest in the and Craig with its towering receding side walls School of Music and Theatre, work of playwright Teresa Deevy and her that lead the eye towards a guillotine shaped University College Cork 1936 play, Katie Roche. shard of glass that hovers ominously over the rear of the stage. On the floor a deep bed This new production of the play at the Abbey of loose soil covers pristine white marble. In is enormously significant in the context of recent this austere and unwelcoming environment, local and world events that have pushed issues illuminated by the glittering sharpness of of inequality and mobility unprecedentedly to Paul Keogan’s lighting design, we feel every the fore. Katie stands for those on the margins, inch of the architecture of Katie’s effort and those without place and voice, those who exist discomfort. Dwarfed by its monumental between one unknown and another. In this boundaries, rebuffed by its hard surfaces, and staging of Deevy’s play we are not told the story stumbling to gain a foothold on the shifting of Katie’s peripatetic reality, we live it through soil beneath her feet, Katie heroically refuses the prism of the sensory and psychic moments to be subsumed. Somewhere beneath the of her conscious existence. mess and dirt there lies the grandeur of marble, Katie’s potential, her greatness. It is towards Emphasized through the semiotics of birth, the hints of this potential that Teresa Deevy’s metamorphosis, and transcendence, Caroline character is propelled in the course of her Byrne’s production offers a kaleidoscopic view play and Byrne gets right to the nub of this in of Katie’s interior world as she transitions from the expressionism of her stage action, Morna silence towards expression, questioning to Regan’s careful/pared back dramaturgy, and an knowing, from stasis towards movement and adept and sensitive cast including Caoilfhionn change. Capturing the intense and unforgiving Dunne (Katie), Sean Campion (Stanislaus), KATIE ROCHE, RESEARCH PACK 5 Kevin Creedon (Michael), Donal O’Kelly (Reuben), Dylan Kennedy (Jo) Theatre), Phil Kingston and Lisa Farrelly (Community and Education, and Siobhan McSweeney (Amelia). Abbey Theatre), Amanda Coogan (performance artist), Úna Kealy and Kate McCarthy (Waterford Institute of Technology), Fiona Becket Coming into her own by the end of the play, Katie makes a pact with (University of Leeds), Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin (University of Limerick), Amelia to be brave in her quest: ‘I was looking for something great to Cathy Leeney (University College Dublin), Chris Morash (Trinity College do’, she says’ and ‘now surely I have it’. In this production, Katie leaves Dublin), Eibhear Walshe (University College Cork), Christie Fox Amelia’s embrace and moves to a position behind the glass wall where (Westminster College, Utah), Dee Maher (Smudge Design). she stands facing the audience. Amelia turns to face the audience too, but she remains trapped forever on the other side. Through its powerful mise en scène and this striking closing image, this new Abbey production of Deevy’s play celebrates the astonishing forces of human indefatigability and self-determination in circumstances of oppression and disempowerment. As I gathered material and engaged with Deevy (and Katie) through the work of the artists and scholars who have so generously contributed to this pack, these forces were at the forefront of my mind. I hope that this endeavour will generate discussion around this hugely important playwright, and that it will enable and inspire many future productions of her work. My sincere thanks to Caroline Byrne (director), Morna Regan writer/ dramaturg), Valerie Payne, Hugh Murphy, Róisín Berry, and Barbara McCormack (the Teresa Deevy Archive, Special Collections and Archives, Maynooth University), Mairéad Delaney (Archivist, Abbey KATIE ROCHE, RESEARCH PACK 6 ABOUT TERESA DEEVY KATIE ROCHE, RESEARCH PACK 7 TERESA DEEVY: A QUIET SUBVERSIVE ÚNA KEALY Caoilfhionn Dunne as Katie Roche © Ros Kavanagh Teresa Deevy made no claims to being available in 1930s Ireland. Cathy Leeney a political radical, a feminist, or a social describes Deevy’s work as a “complex revolutionary: and yet she was all of these and authentic articulation of personal things. Her plays, particularly those written dilemmas within a matrix of private and for the Abbey in the 1930s imagine into life social circumstances and expectations a cast of characters who must negotiate […] not skewed by stereotypical masculine and survive, often with great difficulty and / feminine dichotomies”. 1 Similarly, distress, the ever-decreasing freedoms Eibhear Walshe (2003) asserts that KATIE ROCHE, RESEARCH PACK 8 Deevy’s examination of the often self-destructive struggle for documenting women’s ‘lives, beliefs, desires and activities’ to address freedom and self-fulfilment is not confined to female characters.2 the relative lack of documentation of these things and combat ‘elisions To suggest Deevy’s sole concern is with the confinements and one-sided historical accounts’. 5 Deevy’s plays, as Christie Fox endured by