Straight from the heart
FOLLOWING its debut at Absolut Fringe 2010 and its revival during last year’s Dublin Theatre Festival, Amy Conroy’s celebrated play I Love Alice Love I begins a run in the Peacock Theatre this week. The play’s latest revival caps an excellent spell for its young author. In 2011 the Cahirciveen native also successfully debuted Eternal Rising of the Sun, produced in association with the Irish Theatre Institute. Indeed, her solo performance in the latter has just seen her rewarded with a nomination for Best Actress in the upcoming Irish Theatre Awards.
“It’s been a great boost for my company, Hot For Theatre, and for the work itself,” says Conroy.
A playful and self-reflexive slice of documentary theatre, I Love Alice Love I has a warmth and a sincerity that has charmed theatregoers. It centres on a lesbian couple in their 60s who confide to the audience the everyday details of their enduring love and partnership. Along the way, they recall the myriad joys and sorrows encountered during their lives — lives which, inevitably, have observed and absorbed much societal change.
Of course, plays about gay women are few and far between, and Conroy is delighted that its success has seen such subject matter move to the foreground of Irish theatre.
“I think it’s important to see these characters in the national theatre,” she says. “The play was made with a very sincere heart. It was made because we never ever see these characters on the stage. How is that possible? These people are not spoken about. It is a voice that was never given a platform. So it was my pleasure and honour to do it.”
Notably, the play resonates well with the discussions in recent years concerning civil partnership and gay marriage, and the corresponding changes in Irish law. Just as important for Conroy, however, is the fact that the play shines a light on the lives and dignity of the elderly more generally. She is committed to drawing attention to the many people in our society who are far too casually dismissed.
Eternal Rising of the Sun, for instance, centres on the small but provocative window of possibility that enters the life of a troubled Dublin girl when she encounters the world of contemporary dance.
“These are the things that catch my attention,” says Conroy. “I feel compelled to bring these kinds of characters to the stage. The people I’m always interested in are the kinds of people you don’t see, who are invisible, as in I Love Alice Love I, or else the kind who you do see, like Gina in Eternal Rising of the Sun, but who you see and go: ‘Oh Jaysus, there’s that head-the-ball, stay away from her’. And you wouldn’t stop twice to think about her. You wouldn’t stop to see any beauty, any softness, or any sadness underneath.
“With the women in I Love Alice, they’re just ‘old people’. We often see old couples and if they hold hands we say ‘ah, that’s cute’. But these are people with lives, with children, with mortgages, people who fight and who don’t fight. They’re people who we patronise a lot.”
Given her passion and understanding for the characters (“the Alices,” as Conroy calls them), it is unsurprising that the play has struck a chord with audiences.
“I have gotten some of the most beautiful emails and I have been stopped in the street and people have said the most beautiful things,” she says. “That is everything to me. It’s really lovely. That’s why I wanted to do it.”
Following its run in the Peacock, I Love Alice Love I transfers to the Irish Arts Centre, New York for a three-week run, and there is talk of bringing it to further destinations. Conroy is also anxious to revive Eternal Rising of the Sun at some point, while she is currently working on a new play, to be submitted as part of her participation in the Abbey’s New Playwrights programme.
Amidst all the flurry, Conroy cuts a very centred and modest figure, one still focused on her work despite the huge momentum that has gripped her career.
“Sometimes I forget to look up and take in the scale of it all, because you’re working, working, working,” she says. “There are times like this when you’re going into the Peacock with your own show and you have to remember to look up and go ‘well, this is good.’”
* I Love Alice Love I runs from Jan 31 to Feb 18
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
