Culture That Made Me: Cork playwright Gina Moxley on the Angler's Rest, and great theatre
Gina Moxley will perform her latest work, I Fall Down, in Cork, Galway, and Limerick.
Gina Moxley, 69, grew up in Carrigrohane, Co Cork. In 1995, her debut play she won a Stewart Parker Trust Award, one of many prizes during her career in theatre, including a prestigious Fringe First at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for her play in 2019.
She was elected to Aosdána in 2020. Her show will run for four performances at Cork’s Firkin Crane (September 18-20) with additional dates in Galway and Limerick. See: dancecorkfirkincrane.ie.
I used to live in a pub called the Angler’s Rest. Rory Gallagher used to come in with his entourage, and John B Keane and Siobhán McKenna were also customers. My grandmother adored Siobhán McKenna. There were very few women of her stature around the place. At the time, the ladies’ toilet in the bar was our bathroom, the family bathroom. Siobhán McKenna signed the bathroom mirror with her name in lipstick. We didn’t see our faces for about two years trying to brush our teeth, ducking around Siobhán McKenna’s signature.
I was fascinated by the circus growing up. I thought, I didn't know you could do that — you could wear huge shoes and drive around in a stupid car. I was brought once to Betram Mills Circus — in the Lee Fields, I think — with my grandmother, who was a very strait-laced, cross person. A clown asked her for a 10-shilling note. He took it, rolled it up like a fag and set it on fire. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. Do you know who you're dealing with? You're a brave boy.’ Then we'd go home and we'd set up a circus out the back. We had a very cranky dog called Sammy. We'd dress up poor Sammy with necklaces and handbags. He was the act in the circus. So, whatever you saw, you picked at.
I’ll never forget Rough Magic’s production of Caryl Churchill’s in 1984. It was brilliant. Caryl Churchill is a phenomenon. An extraordinary writer. She's so diverse. Her range of subject matter is enormous; it changes the whole time. In , a group of famous women from history are having a meal together. It was one of those moments of, oh my God, how could I not have thought that was something you can do? Theatre is all about how you tell stories, being radical, dealing with information and text differently. I was blown away by that show. It made me want to follow my heart and do acting. I haunted Rough Magic to give me a play. And they did.
Boldness goes into my choice of music. I was very much into punk. At Crawford College of Art, I did my thesis on punk. The college paid for me to go to England to see some concerts. I remember seeing Talking Heads supporting the Ramones. I was into all that anarchic energy. I went to Liverpool for another punk gig. Everyone was pogoing and gobbing. It was extraordinary. I used to smoke like a trooper. I was trying to get fags out of the cigarette machine. I couldn't get them out. This guy just ripped the whole machine off the wall. I filled my bag with about a thousand fags. I was 19 going, “Oh my God, England!” I went into the loo and there was Siouxsie Sioux from the Banshees. She had a baby’s nappy on like a legionnaires cap. She had a kettle for a handbag. The amount of ironmongery in the place. I felt like such a culchie.
I loved the work that Pat Kiernan did with Corcadorca. I was lucky to be in a few of his shows. He was a nursery for a lot of Cork actors. He was a great director. He was adventurous. He was radical. He was fearless in taking on site-specific work, which I don't think anyone else was doing at that point in Ireland. We did a play called by Georg Büchner, in Haulbowline. The Navy used to pick us up from Cobh and bring us over to work. It was extraordinary. It was thrilling every day to go to work. We could be in the middle of a show, a monsoon could happen and there was nothing for it except to keep going — the actors would just pull up the hood on the anorak and keep going.
Eileen Walsh was in a show I wrote, , and then subsequently she was in . She was repeating her Leaving Cert when she was in my show — she was just 17 — and then left school. I thought her father would clobber me. She was fully formed. She was fearless. She's also hysterically funny. She has such an emotional range, which was really sophisticated for a kid at 17. She could tap into stuff that you wouldn't imagine somebody of that age could be coherent about. She was willing to be gawky and awkward and eejit-y, which is a great quality in a woman.
A seminal play I saw was Fiona Shaw when she was in university at UCC. was the name of the play, which was enough for your head to be scrambled. She was magisterial. Briefly, we crossed paths at school in Scoil Mhuire. She may have been a year behind me. I have a feeling the play was on in The Granary. This was the late 1970s. The play was so far out. She comes from a family of doctors, so she's got a great medical science brain as well. Things that I didn’t have a clue about.
Simon McBurney has a company called Complicité. He did a show called in Edinburgh in 2015. I saw an interview with him in the paper. He was saying, “Yeah, the show is on in 10 days' time; I haven't written it yet.” I thought you are my hero! The most frightening thing you could possibly do to yourself! I went to the opening of the show. All the audience were wearing binaural headphones. He's on stage telling this story about a photographer's journey into the Amazon. He was doing all the sound things with an empty water bottle. It was like your ears were telling you one thing, you were hearing the Amazon, but your eyes were telling you another thing. It's like your brain could not compute what was going on. It was exceptional.
Joël Pommerat is a French theatre maker. I saw his show called . It was unpredictable. It was circles of different stories, a puzzle of stories — you had no idea what the link was between them. At one point you think you hear horses around and you smell them. You think they’re going to come in next to you, but it was sound and smell. I don't know if the smell was real or I imagined it. It was almost a continuation of the spirit of the circus. Unpredictability was absolute. You didn’t know what was happening.
I loved Joan Rivers. She was hilarious — bold, bold, bold. I love that she didn't give a damn what anyone thought of her. She could say the unsayable. She always used herself as the butt of a lot of jokes. I have a thing where I don't want to be a role model; I want to be a rogue model. Be bold, it’s so boring otherwise.
