Contemporary Irish Documentary Theatre

Mary Raftery, Colin Murphy, Jimmy Murphy, Martin Lynch, Domingos Nunez, Grace Dyas, Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos, Shaun Richards, Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos, Shaun Richards

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350094550
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre Playwriting

Contemporary Irish Documentary Theatre is the first anthology of Irish documentary drama. It features five challenging plays by Irish writers, and one by an international author, interrogating and commenting on crucial events of Irish history and of the diaspora, with introductory essays by established academics. Together these plays represent the most innovative development in contemporary Irish theatre and illuminate the social and political realities of contemporary Ireland. The first two plays, of 2010 and 2013, deal with scandals of clerical and institutional abuse, and use as source material the Ryan Report of 2009, and the documents from the 2008 Irish Bank Guarantee. The next two, of 2014 and 2013, concern interpretations of the most iconic moment of Irish history: the Easter Rising. The first of these is based on published statements of participants in the event and the second on the lived experiences of those in the contemporary Republic whose founding ideals have not been realized. The last two plays, of 2015 and 2016, widen the view to the history of the Irish in the diaspora: one retelling the history of emigration to England based on published research material; and the other tracing Roger Casement's experiences in the Amazon and his subsequent participation in the Easter Rising using extracts from his diaries and other writings. The plays included and discussed are: No Escape by Mary Raftery
Guaranteed by Colin Murphy
Of This Brave Time by Jimmy Murphy
History by Grace Dyas
My English Tongue, My Irish Heart by Martin Lynch
The Two Deaths of Roger Casement by Domingos Nunez

My English Tongue, My Irish Heart was first performed at Roddy McCorley’s Social Club in Belfast on 1 May 2015, after which it toured to the following venues: Spectrum Centre, Belfast; Waterfront Hall Studio, Belfast; Balor Arts Centre, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal; The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim; Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Co. Mayo; St John’s Theatre, Listowel, Co. Kerry; Irish World Heritage Centre, Manchester; London Irish Centre, Camden Town, London. The play was produced by Green Shoot Productions, Belfast. The production and tour were funded by a grant award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/L014904/1). Additional funding was provided by the University of Manchester, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council. All of the tour performances featured the following cast and crew:

Gary O’Donnell	Cillian O’Dee
Susan Hetherington	Kerri Quinn
Ellen O’Neill and Others	Margaret McAuliffe
Michael Fagg and Others	Ross Anderson-Doherty
James Dawson Burn and Others	Keith Singleton

Director Martin Lynch

Set Designers Martin Lynch and Niall Rea

Lighting and Costume Designer Niall Rea

Musical Director Garth McConaghie

Choreographer Sarah Johnston

Production Manager James Kennedy

Stage Manager Elaine Barnes

Technical Stage Manager Russell Alderdice

Project Manager Ruth Gonsalves Moore

The play is set in various locations in Ireland and Britain. The action continually shifts back and forth between different historical eras, from the fourth century to the twenty-first.

The play is based on The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725–2001 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) by Liam Harte.

Life on the Stockport Road

I too am a tortured survivor of Irish emigration to England. Every day I feel the terrible mental and emotional scars deep inside me. A young boy of eighteen forced out of Belfast in 1969 by dire economic circumstances. I hope you are all crying by now.

As you might imagine, I’m only joking. Yes, I did spend four months in early 1969 in Manchester with two mates from York Street in Belfast, but it wasn’t emigration as we know it. It was a big adventure. A bit of craic. We left good jobs in Belfast – Jennings as a heating engineer, Kelly as a plumber and myself as a cloth cutter. All young apprentice tradesmen – or boys, to be more accurate. But we did experience some of the standard experiences that all immigrants go through on arriving in a strange, foreign country.

Firstly, we were shocked to quickly realize that our speech wasn’t being recognized by the people in this strange city. Within a week we found ourselves trying to pronounce words differently in order to do the most basic of things like buying a newspaper and a sausage roll at lunchtime or telling the bus conductor where you were going. And worst of all, when you asked a nice Mancunian girl if you could leave her home she answered by telling you that she worked in a hospital, having completely misunderstood what you had said. Grrrr.

Then you find yourself living in a very large city and not knowing one single street from another, so straight away you’re back to the accent problem again because you had to constantly ask people where such-and-such was and they looked at you as though you were speaking Swahili.

Another significant problem soon emerged. Our local bar on the Stockport Road was inhabited almost entirely by people from the Republic of Ireland and they completely ignored us. No welcome whatsoever. We found our names mysteriously wiped off the blackboard listing those who wanted to play a game of darts. We didn’t know whether it was because we were strangers or because we were from Belfast. On top of that, next door to us lived a large West Indian family – our first time ever seeing, hearing and talking to black people.

When Liam Harte from the University of Manchester first rang me to tell me the gist of his idea, I lay in bed that night going over the detail of those four months in Manchester all those years ago. As it turns out, those months in 1969 were my first days of research for the writing of a play about Irish emigration forty-six years later.

I hope you enjoy.

Martin Lynch

Prelude

The actors enter as traditional Irish navvies, marching in formation with long-tailed shovels and picks over their shoulders and singing a medley of songs, starting with McAlpine’s Fusiliers. With choreographed movements throughout, they march and stride around the room, with, at times, individual actors singing individual lines from the songs.

All Cast As down the glen came McAlpine’s men

With their shovels slung behind them

’Twas in the pub they drank the sub

And up in the spike you’ll find them.

Actor 1 They sweated blood.

Actor 2 And they washed down mud.

Actor 3 With pints and quarts of beer.

All Cast And now we’re on the road again

With McAlpine’s Fusiliers.

Immediately, a cast member jumps up on a platform and with cap in hand starts to sing The Mountains of Mourne, the verses of which alternate with McAlpine’s Fusiliers, sung by the other actors.

Actor 1 Oh Mary, this London’s a wonderful sight

With people here working by day and by night

They don’t sow potatoes, nor barley, nor wheat

But there’s gangs of them digging for gold in the street.

I stripped to the skin with Darky Flynn

Way down upon the Isle of Grain

With Horseface Toole then I knew the rule

No money if you stop for rain.

McAlpine’s God was a well-filled hod

Your shoulders cut to bits and seared

If you pride your life don’t join by Christ

With McAlpine’s Fusiliers.

At least when I asked them that’s what I was told

So I just took a hand at this digging for gold

But for all that I found there I might as well be

Where the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.

Immediately after this, the full cast breaks into a choreographed movement around the room as they sing Nothing But the Same Old Story.

All Cast I was just about nineteen

When I landed on their shore

With my eyes big as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• List of Contributors and Playwrights
• Introduction Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos and Shaun Richards
• Introduction to No Escape Emilie Pine
• No Escape Mary Raftery
• Introduction to Guaranteed! Patrick Lonergan
• Guaranteed! Colin Murphy
• Introduction to History John Bissett
• History Grace Dyas
• Introduction to Of This Brave Time Fearghal McGarry
• Of This Brave Time Jimmy Murphy
• Introduction to My English Tongue, My Irish Heart Liam Harte
• My English Tongue, My Irish Heart Martin Lynch
• Introduction to The Two Deaths of Roger Casement Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos
• The Two Deaths of Roger Casement Domingos Nunez
• Imprint