Photo: Patrick Redmond
FISHAMBLE: The New Play Company has a mentoring faculty known as ‘Show in a Bag’ for playwrights. Many a happy hour on stage for audiences and productions has come through this portal to Limerick.
The latest is scheduled for Saturday 16, 8pm in Lime Tree Theatre. ‘The Humours of Bandon’ is trailing four-star reviews. Playwright and sole performer Margaret McAuliffe looks back on a score of years of heeltaps and high kicks in feiseanna to bring us a coming of age story that won at Dublin Fringe Festival last year. She was further nominated as Best Performer.
McAuliffe worked with Fishamble’s literary advisor, had rehearsal and production support. She also got director and dramaturg Stefanie Preissner to make ‘The Humours of Bandon’ a terrific piece.
Had McAuliffe first hand experience at feis?
She laughs. “It’s coming out through my pores, it spilled out of me like an exorcism. When it came to writing this play, I felt 18 years experience flowing out through my fingertips.”
Whilst there is dancing in ‘The Humours’, McAuliffe is clear that “this is not a dance show. The themes universally felt are falling out of love with something that previously was your passion…. You know, that very niche skill that really identified with you and was you, like ‘I am a piano player’, ‘I do gymnastics’.”
“I wanted to tap into the pain of falling out of that love and getting used to the idea that you no longer do it… living life and getting to work every day.
“Yet we were used to taking it so seriously at the time. [The passion] was escape from home life, from school. It was something in life for you and you alone”.
She plays various roles such as the best friend, a dance rival and three recurring characters. These are the protaganist who is 16 year-old Annie, her steel rod of a teacher and the obliging mother “who is a fantastic support and ferries her about.”
Mom is not really appreciated “yet by the end she is definitely able to instil some wisdom that is gratefully received”.
There are plenty of laughs and music in such Bandon humours, between the jigs and the reels and sternly structured life on the Irish dance circuit so known to thousands.
Visit again at www.limetreetheatre.ie
