‘How to be
the perfect Romantic Poet:
be born
male.’
LIZ
LOCHHEAD
When the TLS asked me to review Charlotte Headrick and
Eileen Kearney’s Irish Women Dramatists earlier this year, I did
some research into the commissioning of female playwrights in Irish theatre
companies. I contacted Patrick Lonergan of NUI Galway who sent me some
statistics about the Abbey. Suffice to say, I was gobsmacked: since the new
Abbey Theatre building opened in Dublin in 1966, six plays on the main Abbey
stage have been written by women - Edna O’Brien, Jeanne Binnie, Elaine Murphy,
three plays by Marina Carr. That’s a total of four women commissioned, compared
to approximately 320 plays staged during this period that were penned by
men. I wrote a longer feature than I was commissioned to write and the
TLS decided to publish. They are shocking stats but they are in keeping with
stats on female playwrights in the UK and US, though the Irish figures have not
improved more recently as they’ve done elsewhere. (Irish playwright Nancy Harris is right when
she says that the problem is widespread, check out Ellie Horne’s feature on this for The Guardian). The
Royal Court under the helm of Vicky Featherstone has tried to rectify this poor
record of female commissions, and five out of the six plays currently on at the
Court are by women.
New Writing has exploded in the UK and Ireland in the
past fifteen years. So the fact that so few new voices, particularly from Irish
women, have managed to find their way to Irish stages is striking. I lived in
London until 2007, so it was just easier for me to get my work staged in London
rather than Ireland. Besides, in the UK and US there is a multitude of vibrant
cutting-edge companies eager to embrace the voices and stories of Irish women
dramatists. Some of our work has even won prizes. But as a writer who has had
five productions staged between the UK and US, and about twenty readings and
attachments/inclusions in a variety of schemes etc, the problem with taking ones
wares elsewhere permanently is that there are only so many
‘Irish stories’ the UK and US want to listen to. They have their own stories,
too. You can then do one of two things: stop writing your Irish stories (Martin
McDonagh has currently got a play on at the Royal Court set in the North of
England) and start to talk to the ‘host nation’ about itself, take on the wider
canvas – as did George Bernard Shaw or Wilde. But at that point you are a
writer from Ireland and that’s all. And that’s absolutely fine if that’s what
you want. Or, you can try to get the heavily subsidised theatres in your own
country to give a sliver of a fig about your work, to pay you some
attention.
The problem with the Abbey, specifically, is complex.
Diversity applies not just to gender but also to colour, class, sexuality etc. If
you are a subsidised national theatre, there is, I think, a certain onus on you
to reflect and seek out the national experience. The female
experience, the black/brown experience, the traveller experience, the
experience of people from Donegal and Dundalk, from islands off Cork. Even
Yeats got that. Not for nothing did he send Synge to the Aran Islands. Except
that there are now quite likely playwrights from the Aran
Islands (possibly even female ones), from all over the land, and they all have
stories to tell. It’s 2015: the white male urban Dublin story is not the only story in
Ireland. But while there is a greater diversity problem in Irish theatre -
gender disparity is without doubt the worst aspect of it.
That we are having this conversation in 2015 beggars
belief. It recalls to me a visit I made a few years ago to an exhibition of
work at the Serpentine Gallery in London by the American artist, Nancy Spero
(who was very influenced by the writings of Antonin Artaud). On one of her
pictures (in the Codex series, I think) she says, ‘full female liberation will
be the last revolution’ (I’m grossly paraphrasing). She’s right. There are too
many vested interests in keeping us pesky ladies in the back seat (check
Eleanor Tiernan’s reference at #wakingthefeminists to the screeching voices!) and there’s no point in
ruminating on the root of this. Prejudice is hard to extinguish by quick
persuasion. Let’s go there another time. For now, what we need are improved
policies, legislations, quotas. Yes, that horrible word that Orwell hated. But
Orwell was a man, he didn’t need quotas. At least the quotas will ensure there
is no slippage and that the Republic of Ireland does not become the Republic of
Gilead. And if female-written plays fail – then so what! No one on earth can
tell what play will succeed or fail. There are no guarantees in the theatre. If
we knew what the public loved we would all be multi-millionaires. Guarantees
belong in a bank not a theatre. Playwriting is about sharing voice and story
with an audience. An audience does not come to see how ‘perfect’ a Sam Shepard
play (for instance) is – they come to soak up the ambience, revel in tone,
story, place and voice. I have some plays that are small and quiet, others that
are big and explosive. Sarah Kane’s Cleansed is a dark,
harrowing piece and is connected to her previous works, part of her repertoire,
her voice. It can’t be singled out as ‘template’ of perfect structure etc.
Drama is very close to poetry. The writer knows when it’s ready. That is the
point of the piece – to come to it when the writer says you can come to it.
Female writers must form 50% of any future subsidised
theatre programmes in Ireland. The artistic policy of all subsided
theatre must be inclusive. The addition of something like the UK’s National
Theatre Studio (where I have previously been on attachment and also trained as
a director) to aid development of troublesome or unfinished scripts would also
really help writer-administration relations at the Abbey, I think.
While this 1916 programme thing is working itself out,
I’d like to suggest this: that we somehow attract the interest of a theatre in
London, or elsewhere, to stage a season of plays by Irish women (even readings)
– possibly even as part of an alternative 1916 commemoration. This is because,
so far, the national theatre of many Irish women has been the Royal Court, The
Bush, the Southwark Playhouse and the Finborough. It would also be really great
to give a nod to all those Irish female dramatists who went before us, many of
whom are featured in Charlotte Headrick’s brilliant anthology - and some of
whom died with their plays still unproduced.
Link to the review of Irish Women Dramatists, edited
by Charlotte Headrick and Eileen Kearney, the Times Literary Supplement, June
2015:
The picture included here is from Katie Roche, by Teresa Deevy.
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