The University Times

Jennifer Aust and Nadine Flynn

Since 2009, ANU Productions has been climbing the rungs of the theatrical ladder, becoming one of Dublin’s most recognisable and experimental theatre companies with acclaimed, award-winning productions such as PALS: The Irish at Gallipoli, Vardo, The Boys of Foley Street, and Thirteen, among others. They have been described by the Irish Times as “the company responsible for the most searing and innovative works of the past decade”. Their work aims to portray some of the most poignant events in Irish history through site-specific and immersive theatre which takes place throughout the streets of Dublin. However, ANU thrives to give a different narrative to these stories, a lesser known narrative that exists within the events. By doing so, these events are brought back to life in a completely different way. “[They] are not interested in simply reenacting or recreating events that we think may have happened in the past, but with a desire to reimagine and remake everything that was radical and alive about the past in the present.” These production values have resulted in an active relationship between spectator and audience. Not only is the audience thrown into the middle of the action, but they themselves are witnessing and becoming a part of history. Too often are audience members passive spectators, but by reimaging events on site, ANU establishes an environment which ensures audience participation. It also guarantees an individual experience, depending on how each performance is perceived. Often performances take place in non-constructed spaces, which means the production team’s control is limited. ANU believes that, “[their] work extends the debate beyond interaction between performance and space, beyond how the past is propelled into our present.” Site-specific theatre is not something new, but ANU handles it delicately and by doing so, takes it to new feats. The University Times sat down with Louise Lowe, ANU’s artistic director, and discussed their current work in progress, Glorious Madness.

Louise told us that she had been literally airbrushed out of many photographs of the surrender because of her gender.

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Glorious Madness is ANU’s first commercial commission, as it complements the “Rebellion” strand of the Dublin Discovery Trails app, and is supported by Failte Ireland and Dublin City Council. It stands alone as an interactive tour guided by five different characters who take us through the streets of Dublin and share their eye witness accounts of the events that unfolded during Easter week, 1916. We are given an opportunity to stand alongside these characters in the very same streets where their stories took place. Like many of ANU’s work, Glorious Madness encapsulates a significant moment of our history and brings it back to life through immersive theatre. Glorious Madness is different from anything ANU has done thus far. Louise was adamant on the piece’s position as a work in progress, and while its production maintained the same core creative values as ANU’s existing work, production values differ from the usual ANU fare – and in many ways, this piece was framed as existing in some ways for ANU’s benefit as much as Failte Ireland’s, to foster research capacities and character development and ultimately act as a prologue for their body of work in 2016 – work which will incorporate the 1916 Rising but also focus on other pivotal years for Irish history in the 20th century. Louise rattles off the many and varied centres of primary historical sources which shaped the text of the piece – including the National Library and the Bureau of Military History, as well as working with families such as those of Elizabeth O’Farrell, who delivered the surrender notice from the GPO to Eamonn De Valera, who refused to accept it as she was a woman. Louise told us that O’Farrell had been literally airbrushed out of many photographs of the surrender because of her gender. Louise then revealed that every word spoken was verbatim or written by rebels of the 1916 Rising at the time, a feat of honest and curatorial storytelling, especially as she followed this up with the fact that they created the piece in six days, in the spirit of it being “an incubation of work”, an “activation of moments”, bringing them to life through a set of motifs and vignettes.

Louise’s passion for the historical figures featured extends far beyond what is presented in Glorious Madness, as she imparts little-known facts onto us – such as: Michael Joseph O’Rahilly was “the only rebel leader to die in battle”, as he wrote in letters to Constance Markievicz that “it is madness, but it is glorious madness”. Rebels like these “had massive roles in the Rising without knowing or understanding it”, and as Louise says, “all these people were real, and all had a massive impact on the Rising, but not necessarily at the points that we decided to show”. Louise acknowledged that the fascinating information she was telling us needed a more pivotal role in future work, that “you need this part of it to understand what we did”.

Rebels like these “had massive roles in the Rising without knowing or understanding it”.

Following one presentation of Glorious Madness, a woman looked visibly emotional as she said “they never let us applaud for them”. Louise had a lot to say about this – that history doesn’t end that way. That really, there’s no end to applaud for. It’s still going. Experientially, Glorious Madness exists in and of the past and the present, its costumes trailing in the dirt of the same streets, its dialogue at times muffled by the trams that were taken away and restored back again. Louise discusses this at length: that they’re not pretending that they’ve gone back in time, that the work “exists in real space and real time”, influenced by the modern ideological conventions of the city. Its interior soundscapes are a mix of the sounds of the Love Ulster riots and water charge protests. Clery’s is looted in the past as it shuts down in the present. Rebels proclaim the Irish Republican Army into being out of their wide-eyed audience. But there’s possibility there – men and women run around corners frantically and ask “did you see that?” in a way that makes you believe the past is only around the corner – a bombed-out street in your imagination. Glorious Madness ends for some with a message of “keep an eye out, let me know if you hear anything”, and leaves you walking across O’Connell Bridge with a sense of unease. In a way that exists far and away beyond Glorious Madness, ANU are concerned with the telling of unknown stories. The people portrayed stretch their hands out to you, they ask you to button up their waistcoats, they ask you if they look okay, they want you to link them crossing the road, they want a glass of water, they want to look you in your eyes and shake your hand. These are the silent applauses you can give, and give back as ANU’s audiences. This is how you can thank them for making this for you.