It’s an understatement that theatre in Ireland has held an esteemed and integral place within the nation’s recent past. Our national theatre has been the home of many game-changing productions crucial in the formation of a uniquely Irish cultural identity. Names of male writers such as Yeats and O’Casey are rung out in every English class across the four provinces and beyond.
Female figures such as Lady Gregory and Maud Gonne are key to the narrative of Irish cultural formation post-independence. Yet, the stories of the women involved with the Abbey Theatre are seldom recalled by anyone but the odd woke theatre history student. These are stories that deserve to be told. It is this recognition of the need to revise the male-dominated historiography of Ireland’s theatrical past that spurred on the idea for Gonne Girl.
Sitting down in Kaph with Annie Keegan and Gráinne Holmes Blumenthal, the respective writer and director of the upcoming Scene and Heard show, I immediately become aware of the long-held passion and excitement behind Gonne Girl. This a show that through comedy and upbeat performances aims to set the story straight on the relationship between Gonne and WB Yeats. Keegan animatedly recalls the negative reaction students had to Gonne when her secondary school English teacher told the students about Gonne’s rejection of Yeats.
“I thought there must be more to that story”, Keegan explains and after researching various biographies, the play came to fruition in May 2017. Holmes Blumenthal laughs when she admits that when first performed for DU Player’s Aurora Festival, “the events seemed so absurd that you’d think they were made up, but there is actually evidence to back it up”.
Yeats’s romantic obsession with Gonne is justly ridiculed in the show while the focus is placed on the character of Gonne and her version of events. Keegan speaks knowledgeably about Gonne and tells me how often within discourse she only ever seems to exist within the shadow of Yeats, at times being referred to as “The Adulterer’s Muse”. One of the aims of the show very much seems to be to flip the traditional patriarchal narrative and expose the well-known truth that there are two sides to every story. Gonne Girl aims to delight the audience of Smock Alley with the fun and farcical writing of Keegan, previous chairperson of DU Comedy. Women in Irish theatre are still fighting the battle for equal opportunity and representation. From the lack of female directors within the Abbey’s 2016 programme that sparked the Waking the Feminists movement, to the scandal surrounding the Gate’s Michael Colgan, it seems ever imperative to tell the true stories of women in theatre with volume and strength.
Starting off in the Trinity Rose Garden to the Smock Alley stage, the makers of Gonne Girl are ambitious for the future with hopes of developing the show to a full 55 Minute performance. Going by the name of Unamused Theatre, Gonne Girl has been developed by Annie Keegan, Gráinne Holmes Blumenthal and Laura McDonagh. All Trinity graduates, they represent some of the Trinity dramatic talent taking part in this year’s Scene and Heard festival.
Gonne Girl will be performed in Smock Alley Theatre Main Space, February 24th to 25th. Tickets are available on the Smock Alley Website and at the box office.
