by Rose Rushe
Photo: Ken Coleman
MORE excitement from Irish Times Theatre Award nominee Marie Boylan, whose company Wildebeest is behind a performance project shaping up on the Isle. She is working with director Joan Sheehy, playwright Mike Finn and general factotum Monica Spencer to plant a theatrical ‘Field of Dreams’ with stories true and tall from King’s Island Women’s Group.
‘Field of Dreams’ will work in half a dozen parts to be performed as part of Bealtaine at Townhall, St Mary’s Church RC, Athlunkard this Saturday 23 at 2.30pm and at 5pm; again at The GAFF (Hub at 36 Cecil Street) on Sunday 24 at 7pm. Book on 085-1827981.
“We are part of Bealtaine festival to celebrate older people in our communities, keeping that kind of nostalgic feeling. These stories are set in the Limerick and the Island of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s,” Boylan tells Arts page. “Modern society such as Elvis is seeping into the old world.”
She has a winning way with site specific works, as with Sheehy and indeed, Mike Finn that imbues drama with depth, resonance, fun and that vital element of surprise
“Field of Dreams’ is about seven different stories, working with Limerick Youth Theatre and with Monica and myself on stage.
“It’s a developmental project but we hope it will go further as the writing is so rich”. She invokes Finn’s seminal play on Limerick in the emerging 20th century, ‘Pigtown’, its tone and content and lyricism and feels that ‘Field of Dreams’ is of the same ilk.
We hear fragments of life working in Cleeve’s as a young one and smuggling toffee out under clothes, or the secretary in Clune’s required to wear spectacles; listen into the kids who want to be nuns when they grow up.
Funding for this new work is mostly from JP McManus Trust for such things and we are promised a musical element, along with Joan Sheehy’s perfectionist touch as director, she who borrows from the surreal.
Booking was steady as of May 14 so move now if interested.
