CONOR MCPHERSON’S THE WEIR: NEW MASTER OF IRISH STORYTELLING CONOR MCPHERSON’UN THE WEIR OYUNU: İRLANDA ÖYKÜ GELENEĞİNİN YENİ USTASI dilek inan* ABSTRACT This paper considers the contemporary Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s award-winning play The Weir (1997), as a depiction of Ireland’s storytelling culture, especially in the countryside. Critics and scholars have frequently characterized Irish writers as great story-tellers and Conor McPherson, who has been considered as the new master of old-fashioned Irish art of storytelling, continues this tradition. In The Weir the dwellers of the local pub occupy themselves by drinking, teasing each other and recollecting events from past times. By reciting a sequence of narratives in the form of dramatic monologues, these men wish to impress a young woman from Dublin who has rented a neighborho- od house. They familiarize her to this idyllic part of Ireland by telling a series of stories that include fairies, ghosts, mystery and the supernatural. While acknowledging an ages-old tradition, - a tale of local folklore about fairies - McPherson explores moving themes of loss, abandonment, loneliness and regret through haunting and entertaining ghost stories. Keywords: Conor McPherson, The Weir, Storytelling, Monologue, Ghost Stories ÖZET Bu çalışma günümüz İrlandalı oyun yazarı Conor McPherson’ın 1997 yılında yazdığı bol ödüllü The Weir adlı oyununu özellikle İrlanda kırsalının en yaygın geleneği olan öykü anlatımı açısından inceler. Tiyatro eleştirmenleri ve araştırmacılar sık sık İrlandalı yazarların öykü anlatımı alanındaki ustalığını vurgular. McPherson yazdığı oyunlarda İrlanda’nın eski bir geleneği olan öykü anlatımı sanatının yeni ustası olarak dikkat çeker. The Weir oyununda orta-yaşlı, işçi sınıfından erkek karak- terler her zamanki yaptıkları gibi mahalli meyhanede biraraya gelirler. İçki eşliğinde, sohbet eder, şakalaşır ve geçmişi yadederler. Karakterler, Dublin’den gelen ve İrlanda’nın kırsal bölgesine yeni yerleşen genç bir kadın karakteri etkilemek üzere dramatik monolog formatında öyküler anlatırlar. Peri, hayalet, gizem ve doğaüstü olaylar içeren öyküler vasıtasıyla Valerie’ye bulundukları kırsal yöreyi tanıtırlar. Karakterlerin birbirlerine anlattıkları bazen eğlenceli bazen düşündürücü öyküler sayesinde, McPherson nesillerdir süregelen öykü geleneğine dikkat çekerken ayrıca karakterlerin yal- nızlık, sıkıntı, pişmanlık gibi duygular içeren iç dünyalarını yansıtır. Anahtar Sözcükler: Conor McPherson, The Weir, Öyküleyici Anlatım, Monolog, Hayalet Öyküleri * Doç.Dr., Balıkesir Üniversitesi İngiliz Dili Eğitimi Irish drama and Irish playwrights McPherson, as one of the most prolific have played a significant role on world the- young Irish playwrights along with Martin atre. As a contemporary playwright Conor McDonagh and Marina Carr, finds a new McPherson has inherited a rather strong theatrical voice and device in order to pre- dilek inan Irish dramatic tradition which boasts its sent contemporary Ireland. Irish folklore, fame with chief names such as Wilde, She- which is full of versatile, witty and inven- ridan, Goldsmith, Congreve, G.B. Shaw, tive stories, provides great resources for J.M. Synge, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett, McPherson’s plays. He makes use of mo- and Brian Friel. These world-renowned nologues and storytelling technique in his playwrights have not only created stori- plays which have mostly linear narratives. es that have become central to Western One needs to bear in mind that, on one literature, but they have also created new hand, the contemporary Irish playwrights theatrical attitudes politically and stylisti- are fostered by Celtic folk tales and are no- cally. Within the twentieth century, from urished by the values and stories of the old the efforts of the Irish literary revivalists days; on the other hand, they have inheri- like W. B. Yeats to extremely important ted a very different Ireland from their pre- government efforts, Irish folklore has been decessors. Once a traditional rural culture, assured a central place within the identity today Ireland has become a predominantly of the Republic of Ireland – a country of urban country that is supported by the tales, myths, and legends and thus Irish global economy and is part of the new in- storytellers have become world-famous formation age. Indeed, Heilpern is among for their wit and inventiveness. The extra- many other critics who does not approve ordinary range of Irish stories comes from of the backward-looking view of Ireland a folklore tradition more than 2,000 years that seems to dominate the new dramas old, which successfully blended Celtic, with their impoverished rural types, the Christian, and English influences to create seemingly endless supply of stormy nights, some of the most distinctive oral literature of ghosts, goblins and Guinness: “It’s as if in all of Europe. Although the traditional 62 Ireland were still locked in the turn of the format for Irish storytelling is dying out, 20th century and its flattery of fanciful ste- its legacy continues in books and in po- reotypes of melancholy Irish manhood. As etry. One of the most popular themes for stories has been the spirit world. Ireland if it has never become a part of the contem- has been widely known to be inhabited porary globe” (Heilpern, 1999). However, by all manner of fairies. The fairies were McPherson brings old and new Ireland notoriously mischievous, and a vast array together to question the place of myth and of stories described the mysterious tricks storytelling in a skeptical modern world. they played on innocent mortals. In The Weir, he uses the idea of super- Tiyatro Araştırmaları Dergisi, 36:2013/2 • ISSN: 1300-1523 natural visitation as a way of exploring his Doritt Cohn has described as the “transpa- favorite theme of the ingrained solitude of rent mind, allowing audiences entry into the Irish male. He uses typical Gothic equ- the characters’ consciousness; their moti- ipment to recognize an ages-old tradition, vations, history, or point of view” (Cohn, the idea of wayfarers assembling under si- 1978: p.5). McPherson’s plays are based ege to swap information and accounts of on narratology. In this respect, his mono- lives as they do in Boccaccio’s Decameron, logues reveal his characters’ consciousness and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The and their moments of epiphany powerfully Weir makes a lively case for the spirit of especially when sharpened by lighting that tradition and for the important value and staging effects. As Castagno observes of telling stories. In this respect, this study monologue allows telescopic glimpses of will begin with ‘storytelling’, which is an characters beyond the capacity of conver- inseperable part of McPherson’s writing sational discourse, thus ensuring a grea- presented in the form of monologues and ter possibility of “knowing the character” WEIR THE MCPHERSON’S CONOR uninterrupted speeches. Then The Weir beyond the plot-limiting function as an will be interpreted in the light of storytel- “agent of the action” (Castagno, 2001). In- ling, dramatic monologue and the “pub deed, each one of McPherson’s attentively play” genre. crafted monologues in The Weir and elsew- Conor McPherson, known for his here contemplate traditional structures of “amazing gift for storytelling,” employs play structure: beginning (exposition: sen- storytelling device in the form of mono- se of place and context), middle (discovery: logues to enable the audiences to enter the climax, realization), end (reversal, choice, minds of the characters. His plays such as resolution). Rum and Vodka (1994), The Good Thief, The monologues are effective in port- This Lime Tree Bower (1995), St. Nicholas, raying the transition of the character’s The Weir (1996), Dublin Carol (1999), Port mental and emotional states. McPherson Authority (2001), Come on Over, Shining mainly achieves capturing the audience’s City (2004), The Seafarer (2006), and The 63 interest through gothic stories. Indeed Birds (2009), demonstrate the playwright’s his texts composed for both the stage and mastery in using storytelling as a device in screen, such as The Seafarer and The Ec- dramatic plays. lipse respectively, are equipped with got- Storytelling and monologue have a sig- hic narratives. Galvin, too, examines “the nificant status in narratology. Narratology monologued ghost stories that shape The deals with uninterrupted speech mostly in Weir” (Galvin, 2010). Galvin interprets the form of monologues. In reality-based that McPherson views ghosts and super- drama, monologue may theatricalise what natural experiences as metaphors for “the Tiyatro Araştırmaları Dergisi, 36:2013/2 • ISSN: 1300-1523 unknown, the existential and the unfinis- incorporated the extended monologue as a hed business of our lives.” (Galvin, 2010) core dramatic device. Contemporary drama Similarly, Ronald K. Fried has highlighted critic and scholar Clare Wallace analyses the presence of fairies, ghosts and other the monologue form in McPherson’s plays dilek inan supernatural types in McPherson’s “other- extensively and she underlines a relations- worldly tales”. In an interview with Fried, hip between monologue and questions of McPherson has acknowledged that there ethics. Wallace highlights “the pivotal qua- are a lot of people who have nowhere to go lity of ambivalence that might serve to dis- in his plays and that in that kind of situati- tinguish the modern monologue from its on the characters can talk to each other. In predecessors” (See Chambers, 2012: