Gina Moxley: Putting my play on at the Crawford has stirred old memories
Gina Moxley brings the immersive I Fall Down to Crawford Art Gallery as part of Cork Midsummer Festival.
As a kid I was really into drawing and writing. I wasn't that interested in anything else. A very unusual couple used to come into our bar (The Angler's Rest in Carrigrohane, near Cork), and the woman, Margaret, would always ask to see my drawings and make her posies from the garden.
They were a gas pair, very exotic for the time. They drove a Citroen DS and dressed like film stars. Mornings were when they'd come for a few drinks, maybe to get it out of the way. She always ended up doing a twirly, improvised flamenco up and down the bar. All clicking fingers and Ha-cha-cha's. I adored her, so full of life and gaiety. Of course, she may just have been locked.
I don't really know how it came about but she thought I should be encouraged and paid for me to take art classes in the Crawford. I must've been 10 or 11 and the art school was still in the Emmet Place building at the time. I don't remember any details about how I got there, but I do remember walking through the door on my own for the first time, I loved the autonomy with my sketch pad under my oxter. It felt right.
There was no question in my mind from then on, I was going to be an artist. I had an uncle in Canada who was a graphic designer and that somehow gave me permission. I never even considered another option.
Our piece for Cork Midsummer Festival, I Fall Down, has had a long gestation, partly due to covid. Initially it was very much focused on Florence Syndrome, where the tourist is so overwhelmed by the stress of travel and the immense beauty of art that they experience panic attacks, fainting, and sometimes temporary madness. An art attack basically.
I thought that combination of travel, art and psychosis offered great opportunities theatrically. Then during the process of research and writing things began to morph, as is always the case with any idea.
When I read about the huge overhaul that the Crawford Gallery is due to undergo I decided to get in touch with the director, Mary McCarthy, to see if she would be interested in allowing us to use the galleries for the eventual performance. She was. Then the Everyman Theatre, with Naomi Daly, producing and Cork Midsummer, came on board as partners and so we were all set to make the show in what we thought would be an empty building just before the massive renovation of the Crawford. Then the building works were put back, so the galleries wouldn't be closed this year, which caused us to jack-knife in a different direction and then double back.
It's like time-travel being back in the building, particularly the older bits. Like screen grabs of memories at each corner. The room where there was an etching press and we made fake student cards. The beautiful library where I first began to write short stories. The gallery where we once did life drawing, and a nun student fainted off her bench at the sight of a new male model who hadn't got the dress code and came out as bare as the day he was born. The poor nun hit the deck and had to be carried out. I hope it was euphoria.
My desk in what was the studio upstairs where I spent three years making art that has the exact same concerns as my plays - how women are seen and the undermining of jaded stereotypes - with a bit of boldness and humour. And the lecture theatre, so much of what happened in there sort of brackets the show - the history of art without women and the iconoclast Joseph Beuys. It's a special chance to present some work in it before it is demolished to make way for the atrium of the new tower which will be central to the re-imagined building. And to breathe a sort of correction into its DNA.
With this show I really wanted to make it differently to work I've made before. And that has been a challenge as it takes me a long time to figure what the piece is actually about. We definitely know what it's about now, you'll be glad to know. I'm really excited for audiences to come with us on a wild journey through the building and to be part of making a work of art. It is going to be gas.
I have been ridiculously luck with the collaborators we have assembled, John McIlduff who directed my last show, The Patient Gloria, is at the helm again, and to be fair he has his hands full. I'm particularly delighted to welcome choreographer and performer, Emily Terndrup who has recently moved to Cork. It's got art, opera, dance and stunning video and sound design in an amazing location. The excitement...!
- I Fall Down: A Restoration Comedy is at Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, as part of Cork Midsummer Festival on June 14-18, https://www.corkmidsummer.com/whats-on/i-fall-down-a-restoration-comedy
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