The place is the thing for writer with a vision

A decade on from his first play, some of Tom Swift’s eclectic back catalogue has been collected for posterity, writes Alan O’Riordan

A SURVEY of Tom Swift’s Selected Plays, just published by Carysfort Press, reveals a remarkable breadth of style and subject matter. There’s The Nose, his recasting of Gogol’s absurdist story as a satire on Irish officialdom; Doctor Ledbetter’s Experiment, a gothic tale of a Victorian Christian scientist unhinged by Darwin’s theories; and Swampoodle, his recent excavation of the history of an old Irish slum in Washington DC. We can add to that uncollected works such as the madcap, retro-futurist Yokohama Delegation, or the contemplative, spare Across the Lough.

Perhaps you could put this down to Swift bringing the inquiring mind of a professional journalist to bear on his work as a playwright. Or maybe it has something to do with his peculiar modus operandi as one half of the site-specific theatre company, the Performance Corporation (the other half is Swift’s other half, his wife Jo Mangan). For most writers, a play begins life as a blank sheet of paper, or a blinking cursor; but for Swift, it’s different.

“Most of the time the idea comes from the place,” he says in the bustling café of Dublin’s Science Gallery. “If you get inspired by the place, if you’re excited to be in the place, ideas start to come. It’s always scary, but I certainly feel I love a deadline. Maybe that’s the journalist in me. You can have all the time in the world, faff around and come to the same conclusion. It’s great to have a place in mind. You can imagine the set precisely, and take references from it.

“I think that sometimes it’s subliminal, it can’t be helped. For example, when we did Lizzie Lavelle and the Vanishing of Emlyclough, which was done in Belmullet and created for the sand dunes down there, the whole Shell to Sea thing was rumbling on. We were trying to avoid all that conflict, but we ended up with a piece about two warring tribes, sort of a Romeo and Juliet thing. So, the place always comes out.”

Last year’s Swampoodle is another good example of Swift’s method. It was set in the Uline Arena in Washington — a disused 9,000-seater indoor stadium where the Beatles made their first American performance.

“We were impressed by it,” says Swift. “This single-span, poured-concrete arch, now just a car park. An amazing place, and the more we delved, the more we found out. We didn’t know about the Beatles, or Malcolm X speaking there, or that it used to be the Irish ghetto of DC. I was writing it in Ireland, so I was trying to create a mini Swampoodle, and covered the place with pictures and newspaper cuttings about the crime-ridden streets.”

A script is a blueprint to recreate, to a greater or lesser extent, a writer’s vision. But with Swift’s work, it’s a little different. The plays themselves grow out of specific places, and are pretty much unrepeatable, so tied are they to their locations. This writer saw Dr Ledbetter’s Experiment in an Edinburgh medical school, replete with Victorian lecture theatres and a dungeon. “They are very delicate objects, site-specific plays,” he admits. “It always loses some little thing when you shift it. Even Drive-By, where all you need is a derelict yard and a couple of cars. For me, Cork will always be the best.” Drive-By was part of the Midsummer Festival in 2006, performed in the yard of R&H Hall in Cork’s docklands.

Swift’s Selected Plays is published to mark the Performance Corporation’s 10-year anniversary.

“We were married a wet week when Jo asked me to write a play,” says Swift. “At that time I was working for TV3 as a producer. Jo had the book Candide on her shelf for years and she thought it’d be nice to write a stage version.”

Candide was a hit at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2002, and its fresh style had critics reaching for hybrid descriptions, comparing it to a cross between Black Adder and South Park, or Gulliver’s Travels meets The Third Policeman. It was, in other words, an early example of Swift’s eclecticism.

Right now, Swift is soaking up the atmosphere of Marsh’s Library, one of Dublin’s hidden architectural gems. He is reworking a Bram Stoker story, The Judge’s House, as part of a theatrical audio experience at the library for the Bram Stoker Festival later in the month. Further ahead, the company will be hosting a site-specific festival at their base, the beautiful Castletown House in Celbridge, next August.

And, when he’s not looking forward, Swift does allow himself a moment of reflection: “Yes, I am proud of the achievement of the company, that we were insane enough to do the kind of stuff we’ve done, and that, 10 years on, we’re still here.”

* Selected Plays by Tom Swift will be launched on Saturday, Oct 13, at 6pm with a rehearsed reading at the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare.