Souls, Shadows and Secrets: Revisiting Irish revolutionaries in Barry Monahan’s new play
Ethan Dillon as Eamon de Valera in Souls, Shadows and Secrets
“A dream come true” is how senior lecturer at UCC’s School of Film, Music and Theatre, Barry Monahan describes his play, which will have its premiere at the Everyman this month.
Originally, this Meath man taught film components in the English department of the university. A film and media studies department was born and became part of the School of Film, Music and Theatre. Monahan, who has written and directed the play, pursued drama and theatre studies at Trinity College Dublin. His doctorate looked at Irish theatre and film.
Monahan says that at 51, his play isn’t going to be the beginning of “a wonderful career” writing for theatre. It actually has its genesis in the offices of the Cork International Film Festival. Last year, in the final year of the decade of centenaries of Ireland’s revolutionary period, Monahan was asked if he’d like to do something to acknowledge it.
“I said that I had an idea for something that could really work. At the Triskel, we did an early incarnation of during the film festival. You could probably best describe it as a tableau vivant with representations of Countess Markievicz, Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins on stage. I had to work this out with traditional Irish music and old news reel from Pathé from 1916-1927.”
Monahan was encouraged to develop the project with its film and music components. He wrote monologues for the characters.
“Thanks to connections in the Irish film archive, I got beautiful old images of Cork and also some of the burning of the city. We had images of the three political figures.”
This piece of work-in-development at the Triskel was a great success with people being turned away at the door. “I said to Ciara Chambers who is producing it that it had to go further. I spoke to the cast and said that we were going to put a coherent three-act play structure on it. It would have actors playing the three main roles. People coming to see it would experience a set of character arcs. I knew it could be incredibly powerful."
"I rewrote it and added a fourth character that is fictional. Her name is Kate. She tells her own personal story and reflects on the times she’s living in. She talks of her relationships with her husband and father, through a series of letters. So really it’s a strong narrative now. The political characters of the time are embedded into Kate’s story. She would have seen Markievicz, de Valera and Collins on newsreels and in newspapers. Kate is not active politically. But I think the story has strong female characters represented, making it a predominantly female look at the history of the time, both through the politics and through the emotional encounters narrated by this fictional character. Kate and Countess Markievicz tell stories about Eva Gore-Booth (Markievicz’s sister).”
The play focuses to a small extent on the split between the two sisters. Gore-Booth was a pacifist while Markievicz was an active revolutionary: “The Markievicz character is really explored. She is this eccentric but very intelligent, creative and politically aware person. There’s a very kind part of her character as well. She spent time with the working classes in Dublin, fighting on the streets beside them.”
The Michael Collins character is more fleshed out now than it was in the early stages of the play.
“It’s actually all about loss. Collins was a very young boy when he lost his father. Markievicz left her young daughter in the hands of her grandparents when she went travelling and became active in the arts in Dublin. But she struggled with leaving her child behind her.”
And of course, de Valera, through impoverished circumstances in the US, was effectively abandoned by his mother at the age of two and sent to Bruree in County Limerick to be reared by his grandmother.
“It’s always about abandonment or loss and trying to find the self again and what impact that had on the characters’ politics. But you have to be very careful. The history of these characters has been brilliantly written. You don’t want to betray that.”
Monahan agrees that there is an element of bravery about exploring Ireland’s revolutionary history in a new play. “We’re obsessed with it. When Neil Jordan made his film about Michael Collins, there were as many people giving out about it (as praising it.) I don’t know how he managed to hold it all together.”
It remains to be seen how audiences will respond to this play that was so well received in its development phase.
- Souls, Shadows and Secrets will premiere at the Everyman on August 21-22
