Everything Changes

 I have always believed that the theatre should illuminate something and attempt to affect the views and feelings of those who see it and are involved with it. Alien Nation was written in 2002 and was partly a response to the fact that someone told me I should stop writing plays which were critical about Irish society. These days this criticism would be laughable. It was first performed in the Cuirt International Festival by Galway Youth Theatre.

Alien Nation is a 40 minute youth theatre play about racism and sadly is even more pertinent today than it was then. As someone fairly new to Ireland at the time, I noticed that a lot of the racism seemed more veiled than the UK but was most definitely present, and it wasn’t always veiled. Whîlst I was writing the play a Chinese restaurant was attacked and the owner murðered in Limerick. A Czech friend of mine was run down in the country and the Gardai refused to press charges even though they suspected the driver who had done it. A woman protested against a play about refugees in the Galway Arts Festival.

It might be hard to remember but this was the early period of MTV videos, though, as yet, young people did not have mobile phones (an extraordinary thought). I wanted to write something which had the music video feel and devised lots of rhythm work and choreography with the group who originally did it with cross rhythms and interesting movement work. Juxtaposed with that were high octane short scenes where you could be very specific with the young actors as to what might be going on within the scenes. Many people asked whether it was devised, which I took as a great compliment, because they said it sounded so real.

Over the years the play has been used in schools and youth theatres and was published by Youth Theatre Ireland.

One thing the play says very clearly is that when people feel threatened they reach back towards an ideal time that never was as a kind of security blanket. As we get older there is a danger of doing this more, as the ‘what-is- behind’ assumes a greater importance as there is less of ‘what-is-ahead’. If we truly examine those past times they are often not as we remember them; we tend to brush over the cruelties and injustices we dismissed as normal, which were part of everyday life. This looking back to a rosier past is the most potent weapon of Fascism because it appears to be a truth, but it really isn’t. This and of course being as divisive as they can, stirring up hate and suspicion is all par for the course for those forces who yearn for chaos so they can bring a right-wing agenda back to the fore. In these recent times, with Trump,Putin, Johnson, Salvini, Bolsonaro, all the lesser beings who support these people for their own self-serving ends  and those who feel their world is falling apart who need these dictators to make everything ok (even when they won’t) we need to always be cautious. These leaders oil the prejudice which only builds confusion and hatred. 

As they sing in the end of the play “Everything changes and nothing stays the same.”

I am delighted that Griese Youth Theatre has chosen to do this play for Culture Night and especially that they are then having a discussion about the subject afterwards. 

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Writing and Teaching

As I approach the end of the first draft of my next teaching book I am filled with a number of emotions. The first is overwhelming gratitude that I have been given the opportunity to share my teaching experience once more. Whenever I think ruefully of yearned-for opportunities I may have not been offered over my life, I think of the many many people who are never offered these kind of opportunities. I remember once when, as a very young actor I was working in a pretty woeful tv series and really hating it and surrounded by extras who wanted to be in my shoes.

One thing sharing your teaching experiences allows is for you to pass your work on with your own particular emphasis. Ultimately for me, theatre is less about product and more about how you get there. I have said many times that people do their best, truly magical work in workshop. This for me is a tremendously liberating experience. Whenever someone speaks or writes to me that Teaching Voice has been really helpful in their work, I feel very content, because that is what life is; it is movement and sharing.

In discussion lately with someone writing a martial arts book, we came to the problem of trying to describe in text, something that is experiential and concerned movement and the fear of cheapening or mechanizing learning which should flow. Chekhov Technique, which makes up a large part of the new book, cannot be learned from books alone. The book can be an important inspiration, a window, a spur to finding out by experience and hands-on learning. What I mean is that I can describe an element or an exercise, but it is only by trying it out that I really find out.

Another aspect of the book I have enjoyed in this drafting is looking back at some productions I have done, particularly those with young people. I have been thinking especially about a production of Macbeth I did in the late 90s for the Galway Arts Festival and Galway Youth Theatre and remembered when Macbeth fled up a ladder high above the banquet when he saw the ghost of Banquo whilst the guests looked on aghast from below; or another moment when Lady Macbeth was stamped on by the witches as she made her vow of evil.

Another challenge is for me to keep the exercises and process clear for people with less experience and not over-simplify. I hope I have achieved that.

As Regina Crowley generously said in her review of Teaching Voice:

“The nature of the actor’s creative and expressive process is complex because the raw materials the human being who performs. Hafler is well aware of this and combines very effectively the teachings of Michael Chekhov with work on voice to awaken aspects of the performer.”

I am running a Voice/Chekhov/Shakespeare weekend here in Galway , June 21-23rd where we’ll be appropriately looking at A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is filling up but if you are interested email chekhovtrainperformireland@gmail.com  or check out the website www.chekhovtrainingandperformanceireland.com

Adapting with Chekhov

In 2003 I directed a production of  Kafka’s The Trial in an adaptation by Steven Berkoff for the Cuirt Festival of Literature with Galway Youth Theatre. It was a success. We revived it, took it on tour to England and got an incredible review in the Irish Times by the late Eileen Battersby.

Berkoff’s stark version is intensely theatrical, a full throated ensemble version of the text and the young actors threw themselves into the performance with enthusiasm and precision. Berkoff demands an ensemble be onstage throughout and be focussed, disciplined and inventive. In that we were extremely successful.  However, looking back, the adaptation itself has a hard unbending edge to it from the very beginning and affected where we went with it.

I remember reading the novel before I did the production and really missing the kind of mysterious depth I feel is in it, a kind of overwhelming onset of thick darkness as if the unfortunate Joseph K is drowning and cannot escape. There is the feeling of a labyrinth in it, different from the empty doorframes Berkoff used in his adaptation and we used for ours. In the novel K is a much more likeable chap than the uptight guy created by Berkoff. I never saw his own production so maybe I am misjudging it. But for me that harshness in the adaptation meant that the production was hard to evolve. It was hard to make a journey. Indeed, the way it seems in the adaptation it seems like it is K’s nightmare which does not give the other characters anywhere to go. As we were working from that adaptation, I got the actors and designer to embody that view, which was theatrically effective, but also lost something.

Maybe you always lose something when you adapt. I have been interested in adaptation for a long time, having, in another period of my life, written a lot of plays and made a number of adaptations for theatre companies in Ireland and the UK. Right now I am writing a book about Shakespeare and part of it is about editing and transposing; how it can be successful and how it can be a disaster.

I was teaching Ensemble and Devising at NUI Galway for many years and over my final years with Ensemble, more and more of my Chekhov training was coming into my approach; imagination, qualities of movement, atmosphere, gesture and composition were incorporated as other things were let go. Composition and Form are particularly important as there is such a danger in adaptation and devised work that a piece can lose its thread and become shapeless.

I have always been a big believer that the Chekhov Technique is not only for regular plays but for a much wider body of work, and more people are using the work in that way. So in the weekend of May 17^th -19^th for Chekhov Training and Performance Ireland  I want to look at episodes in this novel, The Trial, and explore them through the Michael Chekhov technique, to see if we can find something different, something deeper. One thing I have found with the Technique is that I always discover something new with anything we look at in these courses.

If you wish to attend, email chekhovtrainperformireland@gmail.com to place a deposit and book your place. The weekend is being held at NUI Galway, runs from May 17-19 (The 17^th is only a short evening session). The cost is €90 for the weekend.

 

 

The Importance of Having Youth Theatre

The other day, I decided to take down some pictures from my study. Among them was a large framed ‘thank you’ picture of a production of SPRING AWAKENING, the second show I had done with Galway Youth Theatre, an incredible organisation started by an indomitable committed woman called Rebecca Bartlett in the early 90s. I put the pictures up on Facebook as a memory and was soon contacted by several of the people involved in it.  It made me think about the power and value of youth theatre, and the shortsightedness of governments who considers such activities at best as worthy, rather than vital, to a young persons ðevelopment. Usually of course, the power of art in all its forms on young people is merely dismissed as an amusement rather than something which seriously impacts on the quality of life.

In the time I was working at GYT and the organisation was reasonably well funded, under the stewardship of Niamh Dillon and then Andrew Flynn, a whole host of people eventually went on to work as actors, technicians, writers, designers, and film makers. The youth theatre did productions, devised pieces [when this was less common], encouraged new writing, voice classes, theatre history and had a production course .

I have compiled a list of people I remembered had participated who went on to artistic careers. It is most certainly not exhaustive and I apologise to those I have left out, or those I am not aware of because they came after I had stopped teaching there. Perhaps we could start adding others in order to build something more comprehensive?

But Youth Theatre cannot be deemed a success simply by those who go on to achieve things in the theatre or other art forms. It also and in many ways more importantly, affects those it touches who do not go on to make a career path in the arts in some way.

One night I was coming back from an evening rehearsal and I stopped at my local garage. The woman in her late thirties behind the counter asked me what I actually did for a living that I was coming back late so often. When I told her I was working at the youth theatre, her face lit up and she started telling me about a project she had got involved with in the very early days of GYT when she was 15. Though she had not pursued anything in the field of theatre, she nonetheless had a wonderful experience at what is a very special and yet often quite tricky time of  life. I have numerous stories, as I am sure all facilitators do, of how being in a youth theatre got a young person through some challenging situation, how it helped them blossom and develop. I always remember one young woman of about 15/16 running up to me after we had done a piece of work saying how her life was transformed by being in the process of theatre . She was buoyant and joyous, as if she had been released from  a cage. It is truly amazing to see this expression of joy in someone and very satisfying to feel that in some way you have helped them have that experience.

Theatre is such a wonderful process for young people to experience. It infuriates me it is not better funded particularly in these times when people are complaining about the waywardness of young people. It explores feelings and has a wonderful embodiment of team spirit that exists almost nowhere else.

Here is my list. As I say if you are not on it then ADD yourself.

Sean O’Toole and Cuan Muylaert in Spring Awakening

Sonia Brodie. administrator
Tommy Tiernan comedian
Hilary Kavanagh actor/admin
Judith Higgins theatre teacher/facilitator
Philip Sweeney actor/writer
Lisa Dwan actress
Simone Kirby actress
Gary MacSweeney artist,
Midie Corcaran actor,
Noeline Kavanagh artistic director
Jonathan Gunning actor/clown
Tara Bhreathnach actress
Mary Doyle designer
Peter Jordan production
Andrea Kelly actor
Sailleog O’Halloran. Costume designer
Michael O’Halloran production manager, technician, theatre tutor
Jay Ryan Childrens Theatre Maker
Sheila McCormick actor/academic
Daniel Guinnane actor/ musician
James Riordan. Actor/theatre Maker
Mia Mullarkey. Film Maker
Eddie Mullarkey theatre and Film maker
Judith Wolf production/admin
Fiona o’Shaughnessy actor
Sinead Hackett theatre facilitator
Sean o’Meallaigh actor/ film maker
Sinead Kelly actor
Dara Devaney actor
Sarah O’Toole actor/director/ teacher
Martina Carey actor/production
Lucia Evans singer/teacher
Claire Louise Bennett writer
John Cullen Actor
Aoife Heery drama teacher
Andy Kellegher actor
Conor Geogheghan actor
Eoin Geogheghan actor
Sile Ni Conghaile actor/presenter
Roisin Stack producer/ administrator
Charlene Craig actor
Donnla Hughes actor
Emer o’Toole columnist/writer
Caolinn Hughes poet
Catherine Denning actor/theatre maker
Mairead Folan director/actor
Beau Holland Actor
Oisin McGreal TV producer
Niamh McGrath actor
Kate Howard. Production
Katherine Graham. Lighting Design
Ionia Ni Chroinin. Actor
Louise O’Meara. Actor.
Grainne Moore. Actor.
Stevie Boyd Circus Artist
Glas Blue Hanley Circus/Youth Worker/technician

A vast number of others went on to do further degrees or training in arts related subjects work or work in youth related areas etc.