By Katarina Maria Grande

The Festival

An orange hightop shoe on the left paired with a green one on the right foot, John Gleeson's head of white hair finishes the human embodiment of the Irish flag. As jolly as can be, the co-organizer welcomes the Acting Irish Theatre Festival audience before the Gaelic Park Players' performance of Getting Buried, a darkly comedic piece about a family's inheritance. The 14th annual festival, attracting troupes around the United States and Canada, was held in Milwaukee in May.

Canadian, American and Irish accents fill the audience; people of all ages, experience, and backgrounds eagerly anticipate the evening's play. The diverse group becomes "homologous," says Jim Reid of Dublin's Holding Court Theatre, when the common thread of a love of Irish theater erupts. The auditorium warmly welcomes the cast and laughs boisterously when Barney Farrelly enters playing a ridiculous old Irish, walker-equipped man wearing bright pink socks and goggles. 

The festival continues as vibrantly as it began. Celebrating each day's performances with an evening at the pubs, the actors and audience have an instant camaraderie. Whether the three-person Faith Healer cast or the 13-member cast of festival winner At the Black Pig's Dyke, the groups gel marvelously. 

Before the week takes off, Milwaukee Irish-American Ald. Mark Murphy welcomes the actors at a City Hall ceremony. Murphy describes Milwaukee's rich Irish tradition stemming from the city's immigrant heritage. He comments on Milwaukee's participation in the Ulster Project, an organization that brings Catholic and Protestant teens from Northern Ireland to U.S. cities for a conference of peace. 

Murphy notes that Milwaukee is seeing the baby boomer generation move back to the city—one reason being the arts, such as the Acting Irish Festival. Wherever the baby boomers are living, a handful has quite an affinity for Irish theater. 

After visiting the Irish Cultural and Heritage Center of Milwaukee for a photo gallery dedication to native Milwaukeean actors Pat O'Brien and Spencer Tracy—starring in classics like Knute Rockne All American and Judgment at Nuremberg, respectively, the festival attendees pile into a minibus to go back downtown. An opportune time for travelers to become grumpy, this group does just the opposite. Actors from the Holding Court Theatre jump on the bus, singing; the Toronto Irish Players enthusiastically discuss the outlandish scene that had just taken place—the Center's caretaker playing the theme to "The Phantom of the Opera" on the building's massive pipe organ. 

One would guess the cozy group pressed against the bus windows was best friends—but it's simply how the Irish-minded operate. They may love depressing plays about death, adultery, and suicide, but the festival attendees are as happy as can be. 

The Producer

Peter Scribner could write a theater textbook. The producer, hailing from Rochester, New York, lives by his homemade adage, "The actor is an advocate for the character; the director, an advocate for the playwright. The producer is an advocate for the audience." 

A self-employed attorney, Scribner has been advocating for audiences via his producer role since 1994. A tall fellow with a commanding presence, he seems like the type to get things done. While meeting Milwaukee Ald. Mark Murphy, Scribner presented Murphy with a framed picture of downtown Rochester signed by the city's mayor—"the other 6'4" Irish mayor." 

He strives to take care of the money, advertising, publicity, audition turnout and any other detail he can look after to allow director Jean Ryon and cast to concentrate on what's occurring on stage. "The producer is responsible for everything that goes on off stage," Scribner said. 

Scribner has a checklist for the director, who he is responsible for choosing. "A director has to have two leadership capabilities. One is to get the project done; the other is to keep the group together." Luckily, he found just the woman for the part., saying, "…Ryon is a marvelous director; she's able to accomplish both those things very well." 

The Rochester Irish Players troupe chose to perform Brian Friel's Faith Healer, a monologue-based play that bombed years ago before a Broadway revival with Ralph Fiennes. Scribner, while searching for a play to produce, said the reviews for the piece were "absolutely stunning"—the play itself a "stunning theatrical experience." Scribner said, "Based on that, I thought we had enough hubris to stage a community theater production of a show that was on Broadway last year—why not?" 

Without Broadway's resources, but with a great amount of spirit, the troupe put on a successful performance that won actor David Kyle the festival award for best actor in the 2007 festival. 

"I take great pleasure at sitting in the back of a hall, seeing this great production taking place—a production I had almost nothing to do with—seeing all the audience take this in…and knowing I was able to put the pieces together for this to take place," Scribner said. 

Scribner's minimal contact with the actors is deliberate. He describes a general producer rule: "You have to give the director complete autonomy to create the production…it's far better to let things fall as they may because if the producer or anyone else starts interfering with the director's operation, everything goes to hell." 

This producer will be starring in a special organizational role next year—Rochester is the next city to host the acting festival. Scribner has already booked the hotel and theater for 2008. The organizational feat will certainly compete for time from his real-world attorney job, but Scribner is dedicated to the festival. 

"The Irish community is such a wonderful, nice, friendly community wherever you go. And that's why we all do this. It's a lot of work making a production and taking it on the road; flying to another city, staging it up. There's a lot of expense involved—a lot of trouble. This is the only festival of its kind in North America…and I certainly am looking forward to welcoming all these folks to Rochester next year. How's that for a closing line?" 

The Director

The script of Dermot Bolger's Walking the Road is in English. The actors deliver their lines in English—but not in the superficial, what-you-say-is-what-you-get American English. The Irish, in true Joyce fashion, speak with subtleties. The complexity of a situation may be delivered in few words, but laced with different levels of meaning—it's this form of communication that makes Irish theater so brilliant, says director Ray Yeates. 

Yeates himself is soft spoken yet intense; refined yet passionate. His imagination, he says, isn't in English—it's in the ancient language of Ireland. A native Irish speaker, Yeates founded an Irish language theater production company and TV company in the 80s. To those who think Irish is a dead language, Yeates says, "When I was a kid, that remark would've bothered me. But I speak Irish on a daily basis—sure it's not spoken by everyone; but there are lots of languages like that." 

With an Irish mind and a play in English, Yeates uses his gut in addition to his ears to listen to his actors. The nonverbal communication that constitutes 90% of human language embodies the emotion necessary in a play. A director, says Yeates, is much like a therapist—you need to be able to feel the emotion of those around you. 

"I'm very contagious—and that can be a problem for me—if someone's angry, I get very affected by that. But it's very good in my work," he says. To channel this feeling, to get the audience wrapped in dialogue to the point of transmitting emotion from the actors, is "exhausting but also terribly exciting…it's like at a rock concert where everyone is feeling the same thing at the same time." 

The actors responsible for this phenomenon in Walking the Road, Colin O'Donoghue and Kelly Hickey, stumbled into acting by chance. O'Donoghue read a part as a favor for a friend; Hickey tried acting in school and enjoyed it. With movie star good looks and an already impressively long list of credits, the seasoned actors embrace the challenge—but not without a bit of stage fright. 

"I get terrified before I go on," O'Donoghue laughs. His costar, Hickey, gets stage fright, "all the time." "But I think that's why we do it. It's that thrill we get before a show, during rehearsal, during a show. It's that rush of adrenaline that makes it worthwhile," she says. Directors aren't immune either—"the terror," Yeates says, "keeps getting worse…but the joy increases." 

The young actors are pleased with the recent political cooperation in Northern Ireland. "I think a lot of the complications were complications that were there for the sake of being complicated…but I didn't grow up in that time; so it's easy for me to say that," O'Donoghue says. The current events resonate with subthemes in Bolger's plays, Yeates says. In The Townlands of Brazil, a piece of Bolger's trilogy set in Ballymun, there's talk of characters being killed by the I.R.A. Anti-I.R.A threads appear in Bolger's plays without being overtly political. 

This living Irish history contributes to Ireland's knack for storytelling. A country with roots of poverty and oppression, Ireland has a rich oral tradition. "…often contained in the stories were messages of liberation…it became terribly important as it was a cultural thing that didn't need any equipment; you didn't need a theater, you didn't need pen and paper—you could just tell a story," Yeates says. 

Yeates' production of Walking the Road officially premiered in Ballymun later in May. His fondness for Bolger plays stems from a love of the writer's work and a friendship that developed with the playwright. Plus, Yeates loves working with new plays. Is Walking the Road his dream play to direct? "This is my dream play; it's always my dream play…if what you're doing now isn't the most exciting thing you're doing, it's a very strange place to be." 

The Newbie

As the artistic director and founding member of Cincinnati's Irish American Theater Company, Maureen Kennedy sees Irish theater as not only entertainment, but a way of educating people about Irish history. She had never been to the Acting Irish Festival before, and she was learning new tricks from fellow actors and directors each day. "That's my mission: I like to entertain, but I also like to get the story out so people know, and try to change things…and it has to be done a person at a time or an audience at a time." 

Kennedy's great-grandfather immigrated to Buffalo, N.Y., during the Great Famine. He began by scooping grain at a mill, eventually owning a grain mill himself. A great many others followed Kennedy's ancestor from Co. Clare that the street everyone settled on became known as "Clare Alley." 

Like so many descendants of Irish immigrants, the island's rocky history resonates with Kennedy even today. Eyes overflowing with "happy tears," Kennedy struggles to find words to describe the feeling of visiting Ireland every year. "When I go to Ireland," she pauses, "I get such a thrill." The people are "so inclusive, loving…so full of fun," Kennedy says. 

Kennedy's passion for her ancestral Ireland is obvious in her desire to educate people about the past. "They might know there was a famine, but they just think the Irish liked potatoes." The famine, she says, was "absolutely" genocide on England's part. "There are proclamations I've read about in the history books—they tried to wipe out our country." 

A valuable way of teaching people about past mistakes is through theater. The plays needn't be dry historical renditions; even the vibrant musical genre can teach a great deal. 

She spoke of a musical put on by her company called The Irish and How They Got That Way. It involves descriptions of the famine and other major portions of Irish history. "A lot of Irish-Americans didn't know the whole story of the Famine. They didn't know the food was being shipped over to England," Kennedy adds. 

The novel festival experience was, for Kennedy, an enlightening experience. Discovering new resources for play and music archives, as well as seeing how other companies operate, convinced Kennedy to return to future festivals. She says she will gladly bring her theater company to perform in next year's festival if invited. One of many festival attendees to express awe at the level of expertise brought by adjudicator Ray Yeates, Kennedy asked, "Do you know what it's like to be a director and to sit there and to listen to one of the most famous directors in our lifetime critique another show; another actor's work? That is a priceless thing." 

A new festival attendee with a desire to spread Irish history, Kennedy embraced each of the week's events with bright eyes, open ears, and a mental notepad. 

The Troupe

Finishing lunch outside on a sunny day, the Irish Players of Rochester gather around a stone table joking and laughing. The actors, director, and technical managers are present; the group of six excited and anxious for their night performance of Faith Healer. 

As a community theater group, the actors all have professional jobs; sign language interpreter Judy Molner, retired Episcopalian minister Ken Bordner, and talent agent David Kyle work to pay the bills—but come 5 p.m., it's rehearsal time. 

Often an acting troupe will spend so much time together before, during, and after rehearsals that it's easy to become sick of each other. Not the case for Faith Healer, a play comprised entirely of monologues. Thus, the festival provides the group a chance to finally enjoy one another's company. 

"In Rochester, we didn't really hang out much…it's a long play, when rehearsal was done, we'd go home. But since we've been here, we've had time to be social," Molner says. 

The monologue-based play is a change for actors used to sharing the stage with others. "It's weird to be in a show where, as characters, we interact extensively in the minds of the audience members of the play; but directly we never encounter one another…[as my character, I] never see these people or hear what they have to say and their views are not my view of the world. It's been weird to be together backstage but then very segregated once we're out there. It's just a very odd way of doing a show," Kyle says. 

The day prior to the performance hosted another Brian Friel play, Lovers: Winners and Losers, by the Irish Theatre of Florida troupe. Adjudicator Ray Yeates, well-versed in Friel, knew every aspect of Lovers. Even so, director Jean Ryon isn't worried about the critiques. "I just don't think about that. Of course I'm going to learn things from him that I probably didn't know," she points out. "I'm just trying to focus on us all doing the best job that shows off the talents of these incredible people that I have with me both on stage and off stage, and that's all that's really within our control. But that's what we came here for—to show off these people."—"And to tell a story," Molner interjects. 

And why do the Irish make the best storytellers? Kyle says it is about the delicate ability to tell a story based on rather gloomy content. 

"You don't leave the show feeling completely beaten to hell. They're heavy shows and emotionally they take a toll, yet there's something about them, there's a richness—as the adjudicator said last night, the fact that the three most 'hugest-est' pieces; sex, love, and death, are at the heart of almost every single Irish play…it's BOOM, these people are dead. They're young, they're in love and they're dead. …You engage with it so directly." 

The troupe's stage manager, Jillian Christensen, loves the language of Irish theater. "There's no other series of writers that encompasses a moment so completely. There's a spot at the end of the show…you will get a complete, nearly photographic picture of the moment. And when you finally get that moment, it is so powerful." 

The evening arrives and the Irish Players of Rochester are prepared for the performance. The set is simple, but caters nicely to the one-man show. Bordner, as Frank, stands partially in the lone spotlight and speaks; the audience is captivated. 

When intermission approaches, audience mutterings fill the air. "Intense," "Heavy," "Depressing," "Fantastic." The powerful monologues certainly evoke an emotional response—one coming from adjudicator Yeates, who, at the end of the performance, points to Kyle and says, "Your performance was worth me getting on the plane and coming over here." Kyle later will home the best male actor award for his portrayal of Teddy. 

Isolated from one another on stage, the troupe dynamic shines through when the cast got to sit together, enjoy each other's company—and talk about some not-so-gloomy things. 
 
 

Writer Katarina Maria Grande can be reached at kmgrande@wisc.edu