The show had to stop in order for a technician to come out with a ladder and unjam it. Shout out to all my theatre technicians out there!
My second show was the Abbey Theatre World Premeire Production of Marina Carr's The Boy, a retelling of the Oedipus trilogy. I had learned about the formation of the Abbey Theatre in a course back home, so I was excited to see something in a historic theatre! The Abbey is Ireland's National Theatre, so that meant the production was a spectacle! The costuming was especially gorgeous to look at. While the show may not be everyone's cup of tea, it is a fun adapation of a Greek classic.
My third (and most recent) show was Belfast Girls by Jaki McCarrick, a feminist play about five Irish women escaping the famine in 1850. It was both funny and harrowing as you watch these women search and hope for a better life at the end of their sea voyage. I saw the production at the Smock Alley, and all five actresses were phenomonal. I had literal goosebumps at a couple of the scenes!
After seeing all three of these plays and learning about modern Irish theatre, I have come to learn that the Irish are extremely focused on the power and capability of storytelling. A lot of their work revolves around storytelling or is (re)imagining stories from the past. The course I'm taking at UCD, "Contemporary Ireland on Stage," often discusses how the founding tenet of the Abbey Theatre is to "find in Ireland an uncorrupted and imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for oratory." It is this passion that is still present over a century after the creation of the Ireland's National Theatre. That belief, ultimately, is what Irish Theatre is founded upon.
