WORDS KATHERINE MURPHY
You can feel it in the air. The Directors Debut Festival in Trinity’s own Drama Department has a particular kind of nervous energy attached to it. Student directors, student actors and a student team mount six fully professional pieces of work across three weeks. If you think it sounds nerve-racking, you’re right. It’s an introduction to the life and work of working theatre in Dublin, but according to the directors it’s a baptism of fire.
This year the TCD Drama Department introduces Aaron Devine with The Lesson, Oonagh O’Donovan with pool (no water), Doireann Coady with Phaedra’s Love, Orla Keenan with Animal Farm, Patrick Sturgess with The New Tenant, and Laura Bowler with On Rafferty’s Hill. But there’s no easy route in; each year there is stiff competition within the entire department.
“People were getting the news one by one,” said O’Donovan, “Others had found out they hadn’t gotten it. It was filtering in and out, so it turned into a process of elimination.” Coady and Devine then discussed “the massive group of people who could be here” and the difficulty in obtaining the “validation of the department”. With a quiet Northern lilt Devine pondered on this topic longer. “Some people didn’t get the marks they should have gotten,” he continued, “Sometimes I feel like a bit of a fraud.”
Fraud or not, there’s an air of anxiety that pervades the room. But having been in Trinity for three years, had they learnt anything from working on shows previously? O’Donovan’s answer came swift and hard, saying “It taught me how to not treat people. I know on my first day in first year I was strolling into see someone’s play, and it was a brilliant play, but she [the director] was an absolute bitch.” Coady became vocal again, as she explained “the pressure and the difficulty in being the ‘mentor person’. They’re almost like little interns. You’re trying to guide them on how to run a room, you’re always trying to be sound to them. But at the same time you’re trying to be a hundred different things to a hundred different people.”
O’Donovan picked up on this thread, adding “a director does everything. I never realised that, running every meeting”. Bowler responded quickly, recounting an experience where her team physically sat her down and told her to “stop doing their job. I had been sourcing materials, taking measurements. They told me to fucking leave them alone.”
Our line of questioning drew back to the start: the tough job of choosing a play text. Sturgess described his approach in simplistic terms, saying “I just picked something that I kind-of enjoyed and hoped it worked out. I chose it because it’s small and easily doable. But I discovered more about it throughout the process. I really like it now.” Similarly Devine stated that he had “a fairly insular concept from the beginning”. However, Keenan and Bowler described their texts as “labours of love”. And although there is love, they were quick to admit their shortsightedness. Bowler went so far as to say his choice was pretty stupid: “My play is 56 pages long and naturally runs to an hour and forty minutes. So it will run over, but sure, that’s great craic.” Keenan’s concern is less length and more size; with a cast of ten she worried that “it’s hard to focus on one actor as well, to give direction to one at a time while others stand idle.” Coady’s approach seemed a little simpler again. “I just picked a play I had read,” she stated, “But obviously, you need to read the play again because you’ve forgotten everything that happens in it. I mean, it’s just blowjobs and rape and people being dismembered. It’s madness.” O’Donovan also challenged herself with a play in which “there were no stage directions, no characters, just words on a page”.
But to allow these words to come to life the casting process had to begin. Devine’s view on casting was wonderfully open. “I like it,” he said, “It’s interesting and it’s good seeing different people respond to what you give them.” This comment spurned on Bowler who spoke of her intense dislike of the process. “I think it’s awful. I never take notes and then they all leave and I never know who’s who. After posting it online I saw sixty people back to back in five hours, [I was] crying because there were still more to come”. Adding to this Coady intervened in this argument, saying “looking at people through that lens is extremely tiring. And you’re also on display, and they are judging you.”
But then for the big questions: After competing in a class atmosphere, after choosing a text, after casting, are their shows ready to go up.
O’Donovan firmly believed that she was “ready for the show to happen. I’m ready to let go of it, and let it be.” Sturgess voiced the ever-looming concern that “maybe they took on too much…” but Devine claimed that they all “have a lot of plates spinning”. Keenan came across as a little divided, saying “in one sense I feel like I need more time, but I also kind of just want to let it go. I have no idea what’s going to happen with it.”
Devine finished by speaking of opening night. “As soon as the show goes up I’ll be like…[exhales]” and this simple action calmed the group a little. As stressed and as strung out as each of them were, you could sense the anticipation; the fact that a four year degree had built to this point. The pressure had certainly revealed points of friction, but nobody was cracking. And like Coady said, at the end of the day “it’s a fucking play. It’s only a fucking play.”
