presents
Belfast Girls
by Jaki McCarrick
directed by Julie Proudfood
at the Den Theatre until June 14th
ARTEMISIA’S MUCH ANTICIPATED BELFAST GIRLS BY CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED PLAYWRIGHT JAKI MCCARRICK MAKES ITS U.S. DEBUT
AT THE DEN THEATRE IN WICKER PARK
The mission of the Artemisia reads as follows: “Artemisia produces plays that empower women, gives playwrights career-altering opportunities and brings groundbreaking new theatre to Chicago audiences, who are engaged as a vital part of Artemisia’s play selection process.” Given this commitment to theatre and emphasis on giving voice to women, Playwright Jaki McCarrick’s searing shipboard drama Belfast Girls is a good fit for the company’s 2015 season.
Directed by Artemisia Artistic Director Julie Proudfoot, Belfast Girls takes place abroad the Inchinnan, a ship that sailed from Belfast, Northern Ireland to Sydney, Australia in 1850, during the Great Famine, where nearly a million lives were lost to starvation and disease. During this time of poverty, uncertainty and rampant death, Ireland’s workhouses and poorhouses were bursting at the seams until Statesman Earl Grey came up with the ingenious Orphan Emigration Scheme allowing and encouraging young, strong, Irish women to board ships bound for Australia, a new colony in earliest stages of development. Young women were needed to serve as wives, servants to the wealthy and farm workers. To the denizens of the workhouse, without family, friend or patron, the opportunity to start a new life seemed like a dream come true.
Jaki McCarrick’s play follows the passage of five young women who have been through hell but believe they are blessed enough to dream of a new life in Australia. McKenzie Chinn is Judith Noone, a Jamaican ex-patriate living in Ireland. As a Black woman in Ireland, Judith is brutally realistic and tries to keep the girls tightly tethered to the harsh light of reality, working tirelessly to squelch all the fantasies they have about their opportunities once they dock. There are moments when you want to smack her as she bosses the girls around and tries to put them in their place. She meets her match with Hannah, (Caitlin Chuckta), a hardened streetwoman who just laughs in her face. Hannah has no intention of dirtying her hands in the soil of an Australian farm, she’s going to use her feminine wiles to trap a rich man into marrying her so that she can spend his money and live like a Queen. She wants to get started on board ship when Judith reminds her “How many bairns” she’s already killed and to bloody well stay away from the men on board. “Do you want to land with a belly out to here?” she scolds. Their other shipmates, Molly (Cassandra Schiano), Ellen Clarke (Lindsay Tornquist) and Sarah Jane Wylie (PattyMalaney) are fearful of what to expect, but believe they have a better chance of survival fleeing the ruined homeland.
The voyage is rough. Put five street-hardened women together anyplace and there’s going to be some backstabbing and hair-pulling. Sardined together in small quarters for an inordinate length of time is going to spark some unruly behavior. Sometimes just the opposite occurs, with the frightened girls huddling together under the covers for comfort and affection. Director Julie Proudfoot sees the girls as “A gang of undesirables, forced together and adrift of seas ‘between worlds.’ Ironically, the journey is both catastrophic and completely liberating for them. Aboard the Inchinnan, these prostitutes, orphans and field hands become stateswomen, philosophers, teacher, lovers and finally, in the truest sense, friends. “
Belfast Girls is a thought-provoking work of historic fiction and tremendous imagination. The cast beautifully bands together and jostles through the angry waters, leaving behind their familiar life, with only a prayer for a better life in the newly cultivated soil of Australia.
Belfast Girls runs through June 14 at the Den Theatre in Wicker Park, 1333 N. Milwaukee Avenue, accessible by #56 Milwaukee Avenue Bus or take the Blue Line and get off at Division. Tickets and information are available by visitingwww.artemisiatheatre.org or by phoning the box office at 832-819-4336.
Ruth Smerling for Theatreworld Internet Magazine
Comments
Post a Comment