A Theatrical Travelogue

Start with the Aer Lingus flight; cramped, long, a tail twister. First we flew from Buffalo to Chicago, the opposite direction from where we were going. After a two hour wait at O’Hara, we took off again. Flying back east over where we just came from, we hightailed it over Greenland and the long drawn out Atlantic. Finally, flattened by jet lag, we landed in Dublin. Grabbing our luggage through a flotilla of groping hands, we loaded it on to a blue bus. It took us to our first lodging in this ten day working vacation: Bewley’s hotel in Ballsbridge. When the bus dropped us off at the side of the hotel, my suspicions were confirmed.

Bewley’s of Ballsbridge is a big, castlelike toad of a hotel; a huge squat on the road. Walking around the corner, looking for the entrance, I was not prepared for the deliberately slow paced routine of the staff at the front desk. No one offered to help us with our luggage. I pulled a cart out of the lobby, dragged it down the steps, and back around to the side of the hotel. Piling our stuff into a pyramid, we bumped our way around the corner and up the steps again. After settling in we had second thoughts. Recouping what remained of our energy, we headed downtown for sight seeing and food sampling.

Dublin streets are a site specific introduction to purgatory. The Temple Bar district is pricey, loud, and the traffic blows you away. The only way to figure out where to look when you cross the street is to look down. White arrows painted on the street tell you to look to the right or look to the left. The stop light says green and red simultaneously Traffic pauses only on demand, stiffening into a motorized grumble, ready to pounce. If you look both ways– as Americans are prone to do in a terrorized world - you get wiped out. Unless you double check your options, hedge your bets and cross the street like you own the place, you’re a goner. After patting a diminutive statue of James Joyce on the head for good luck, I crossed the street; as chock full of cockiness as the hat on Joyce’s head.

Is this the Dublin where Leopold Bloom made his one day journey into the night in Joyce’s Ulysses? Although Molly Bloom’s yes yes yes can be heard in the disco bars, or in the darkened bedrooms of  one night stand hotels, the tourist hype, the loud motor music and the traffic roaring in the unfiltered exhaust fumes, can take your breath away. If you hang in there long enough the quiet pleasures of this fine old city, with its historical treasures and deep sense of pride, can set you back up on your feet and leave a glorious smile on your face. In the dance and play of daily activity you finally learn to nest.

Trinity College

My companion, Daystar (Rosalie Jones), the artistic director of Daystar: Contemporary Dance-Drama of Indian America, is the keynote speaker for the 23^rd annual American Indian Workshop: Ritual and Performance, at the School of Drama, Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College. I am the factotum for all seasons; her technical advisor. 

We take the 45 bus to Trinity College to meet with Steve Wilmer, the organizer of the conference.  Steve is a slightly distracted theatre professor: courteous, warm and friendly; ecumenical in his behavior. He has carefully worked out the details of the conference with the help of his immensely hospitable staff. We now feel like we are in good hands. Steve takes us on a tour of the campus. It is spring, the trees bud and the quadrangle is brilliant with green. Birds flutter and swoop around him. Students gather on the edge of the green, their faces lifted into the sun, flashing fugitive glances of sex at one another. A good sign. 

The Samuel Beckett theatre centre is housed in a Japanese style pagoda on concrete stilts with a wood façade. Beckett’s deeply lined face covers the walls of the exhibition space next to the theatre. Stark black and white photographs of the playwright: Beckett in repose, walking the streets of Dublin with characteristic isolation, or directing a rehearsal of one of his plays. Conference scholars drink coffee in animated discussion. They greet Rosalie with warmth and curiosity. Except for a few notable exceptions, No one has the faintest idea what her keynote speech, “Inventing Native Modern Dance: A Tough Trip Through Paradise”, will be about. Part of the fun will be the surprise.  

Steve takes us to the faculty club for lunch. We pass through the impressive student dining room; a cacophonous carillon of clanging silverware. Tall windows imbued with light, walls of deep-grained polished wood, and portraits of  academics, religious leaders and institutional benefactors peer down at you; including Elizabeth the First, who chartered Trinity College in 1592. Her red hair bristles through the sheen of the portrait; her eyes set firmly in command. John Ashcroft might consider using the painting as a template for his portrait to hang in Washington, D.C. Our Attorney General  eternally on the look out for demons and civil rights practitioners.  

In the faculty cafeteria the food is fresh, well cooked and appetizing. The smoked mackerel delicious, the choice of helpings commodious. After lunch professors and guests wander into a side room and sit around on stuffed couches talking with accents from around the world. A relaxed congeniality all too often rare in the circles of high tech American universities and colleges; where on line  “buddies” chit chat in the lugubrious short hand of the computer. A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou besides me, deleted.     

We head back to the Samuel Beckett theatre; a large black box on risers, disheveled like its name sake. The tech booth at the back of theatre is a tangle of wires, coffee cups, wrappers, CD’s and cassettes. We meet Ray Duffy, the tech director, and Mag, the hard working stage manager. We discuss where to hang the seven foot high photo-copies of  Rosalie’s ancestors.  The central figures in Daystar’s solo performance of selections from “No Home But The Heart”; a mixed media composition of family and tribal history. It will be on the boards the day after the keynote address. Mag assures us that it will all be done in time. So we head out the door for some Irish spiritual uplift.

The Book of Kells

We are now housed smack in the middle of Trinity College, in the oldest stone house on the campus, overlooking the quadrangle - compliments of Elizabeth the First. Next door is the library housing the Book of Kells. An exhibit of manuscripts titled “Darkness into Light”, the Kells are “lavishly decorated copies  in Latin” of the four gospels. Ingeniously inked with brilliant and colorful calligraphy on white brushed leather by ninth century monks, the Kells are an unforgettable experience.  A window into time the manuscripts are imbued with a profound sense of mystery, dedication and serenity. An experience not to be passed by without losing a sense of where you are, and the importance of continuity in Irish history.

“Inventing Native Modern Dance: A Tough Trip Through Paradise”

Wearing a bright red wool dress with elk’s teeth sewn in for good measure, Daystar delivers her keynote address. Floating above her are the likenesses of her ancestors: her great grandmother, grandmother, and mother; a reminder of where she is coming from. Born on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana, Pembina Chippewa on her mother’s side, Welsh on her father’s side, she opens the conference with a “vivid recollection of being camped out with my parents and grandparents” in Glacier National Park in Montana.. Sudden shifts of weather establish a metaphor for the unpredictable changes in contemporary Native American performing arts history. Her work being a representative ground breaker.

It could be a bright sunny day, green grass, a sparkling mountain stream, birds singing. Then you notice a few soft white flakes drifting down ever so quietly – at that moment an alarm goes off ! Everyone shifts into double time – sleeping mats are rolled up, the tent comes down, pots and pans are thrown into the trunk, and the car is on the road, bumping down the mountain, just as fast as you can go. It could be September, or May, or June or August. It doesn’t matter – a storm can boil up at any time. You don’t want to take the chance of taking a “tough trip through Paradise.”

The choreographer highlights the complex adjustments of working with talented young native peoples in a variety of tribal environments; the politics of doing theatre related to, but not dependent on, acceptable traditional formats; and the pioneering efforts of Indian performing artists “to develop a contemporary dance and theatre genre” that reflects the “aspirations of 20th century native North American peoples”.

Daystar does what native people often do in public: honor those who came before, those who are working at their art now, and those who will follow. Her speech is dedicated to Lloyd Kiva New, the textile artist who founded the Institute of American Indian and Alaskan Arts in Santa Fe. New recently passed away. Also noted were Stewart Udall, the former Secretary of the Interior, and his wife, Lee, both of whom were instrumental in establishing funding for  the Institute, as well as helping performing artists like Daystar start her life work. She goes on to describe the performers, playwrights, composers, directors, and producers who are the foundation of today’s accomplishments in the United States: Louis Ballard (Cherokee-Quapaw), composer; Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa), founder of the Native American Theatre Ensemble, Bruce King (Oneida), and Gerald Bruce Miller (Skokomish}, playwrights; Buffy St. Marie (Cree), singer, Charlie Hill (Oneida), comedian; Jane Lind (Aleut), actor, and many others; including people who used their skills and talents to teach. An essential link to cultural expression and diversity. Her speech opens the conference in more ways than one.

Mexotica

That night Chris Danowski performs “Mexotica”. Danowski is part story teller, part stand up comic; willy nilly in his delivery, funny and fast paced. A big guy with a perpetual look of astonishment, he delivers a classic American tale of stepping into unfamiliar, exotic territory at a loss for bearings - but not words. Taking a bamboozled journey across Southern Mexico from Oaxaca into Chiapas territory,  Danowski is in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caulfield; with an aggressive comedy club edge to his delivery. A perpetual zest that sometimes gets the best of him. There wasn’t a pregnant pause in sight. Still, all in all, I found Danowski’s street savvy refreshing, intelligent and vulnerable. His joy in discovering fresh experiences lifted the tale above the predictable.

Irish Dancing

Since the vogue of Irish dancing arrived internationally with the work of Michael Flately, we were looking to go to the heart of it. We checked out the Arlington Hotel across the river Liffey. The Arlington is a big bar with a dance floor and a lively band that plays everything from Irish jigs to Appalachian fiddle and rock and roll. Noisy, full of smoke, with crescendos of laughter, hoots, and hollers cracking the ceiling, it probably holds 200+ people. We found a spot in front of the dance floor, where young people continually offered us yet another round of beer.  Dublin’s family bars are essentially community halls.

The dancing was terrific. I expected adult dancers. Instead we saw girls from the Irish School of Dance, ages ranging from about 8 to 15 years old. They were riveting in their dancing and their resplendent green regalia and well trained, high stepping enthusiasm. I don’t buy the observation that the pinning down of the hands in Irish dancing is restrictive. Hands firmly planted on the sides of the young dancers were more like lightning rods. Their focus sharpened in a storm of Irish pride, bouncing curls, and a wow-look-at-me Elysium. I am happy to report that there was no repression whatsoever.

Lovers at Versailles

Lovers at Versailles is the ninth play that Bernard Farrell has premiered at the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland. Years ago the actors at the Abbey were paid with whiskey. Today the proceeds from programs at the Abbey go to the ushers. Well, if this is the National Theatre of Ireland, and I had no reason to believe it was not, I dispensed with my Associated Media Press Network pass. Instead I bought a ticket and a program to ease into my seat and support my conscience. 

A neon sign over the stage announced “Serendipity”. A disco behind a scrim flashed with garish lights. Shadowy dancers gyrated to motor music, keeping each other at arm’s length. Is this the theatre that Maude Gonne, the Fay brothers, Lady Gregory and W. B.Yeats visualized at St. Teresa’s Temperance Hall? The home of playwrights John Mylington Synge, Sean O’Casey, Brendon Behan, Brian Friel and Tom Murphy? Or is it yet another sitcom posing as a stage play?

First impressions can fool you. Think Frank Sinatra singing “Strangers In The Night” and you get an idea of where Farrell is coming from. Farrell has a reputation as an incisive chronicler of suburban life in Ireland. Lovers at Versailles unties a knot of make believe rope-a-dope inside a middle class family skipping out of traditional anchors. A comically fractious family out of touch with the past and dissolving into lost horizons. The American Dream turned upside down in an Ireland without its leprechauns. The leprechauns reside in the blasted mind of the father of the family  (Vincent McCabe); a kind, generous soul stricken with Alzeimers. Stephen putters in his grocery store behind a scrim counting the cans on the shelves  to keep himself together. One of his daughters Isobel (Renee Weldon) labels him a “jingle bell”. So much for filial devotion. The other daughter Anna (Tina Kellegher) quietly slips into the unsatisfying role of a spinster, keeping one eye peeled on her father. Don’t count on Mom (Barbara Brennan) for inspiration. She bustles through the living room on her way to the gym throwing sneering glances at her daughters and their boyfriends, Tony (Keith McErlean) and David (Sean Rocks). Tony is addicted to football and half baked ideas of quick success without an honest feeling in his bones. David is a nice sort of sweet natured guy on his way out the door.    

When the father dies, family rifts come to a head. Tony, now the husband of Isobel, repeatedly offers Mom his “sincere condolences”– a running joke that trips all over itself. When it is discovered that the old man had a lover the bells in the family jingle jangle and the sad ironies of callous one liners drop to the floor. It is only in the last minutes of the play that the link between the generations takes hold. The old man reappears behind the scrim, his memory memorialized. A warm smile and a quick light of recognition between father and his unmarried daughter, Anna, and the deus ex machina kicks everything into place. Anna is inspired to drop her self imposed chains, and walk out the door to follow David, risking everything for love. What’s past is present. What’s continuous linked; possibly even redemptive.

Well, if that isn’t a hint of a leprechaun, I don’t know what is. If only the father’s point of view was there from the beginning. A splash of lopsided, satirical and magical wisdom permeating the deadly conformity of the household bric-a-brac. It might have lifted the play above the wasteland. The life of the human spirit in a waste of sham.

No Home But The Heart

A voice over in the dark tells us that a young Indian woman in the early 1840’s has been thrown out of a boat by her sister on the Missouri river and left to shift for herself on the prairie. She emerges on a video projection dancing with a bird that flutters and lands on her arm and leads her out of her dilemma. A elderly medicine woman steps out of the projection live on stage. It is the young girl many years later. She dances a ritual of remembering in the center of the four rocks she left behind as a marker,

No Home But The Heart is an assembly of memories; a dance-drama that cuts across time and moves in many directions at once; a multi-media tale merging family and tribal history from the 1840’s to the present on the great plains of Canada and the United States. It fuses dance, drama, masks, mime, transformational time shifts and swift costume changes. Sharply defined by humor, poignant narration, and satirical commentary, it ends with a traditional healing “jingle dress” dance; a choreographed prayer of humility and gratitude that links it all together. The solo, edited version works. The audience embraces it. There is a standing ovation. A celebration follows with a final banquet at a Thai restaurant tucked away from the traffic on a corner of the Temple Bar district, all to its own. 

The Flight Back Home That Didn’t Get Off The Ground

Imagine flying with locked brakes and no place to land. A far worse dilemma than being stalled on the tarmac with frozen brakes. After waiting two hours, we are told to disembark. We step on to a bus and it takes us to another air plane that also gets stuck on the tarmac. We sit hunched in our seats dislocated, our fingers crossed, bored silly. Aer Lingus puts us up overnight at the Burlington, a luxury hotel. Every one loves a bargain. We Americans are notorious bargain hunters. So we talk the Aer Lingus rep into letting us stay an extra three days. We rent a car and take off for the countryside south of Dublin.

The Irish country side is everything its cracked up to be. In the mist of the morning horses outside our window graze. Rocks in the quietly unfolding stream, and stones planted on the balustrade, are a perfect place to meditate. I am up in the air when the fog lifts and I find myself staring down at the green like I was looking at the color for the first time. In the distance a streaming waterfall with a long shining gray wispy beard of delicately cascading water splashes over the rocks. Sitting on a rock in the back of my head a little smart ass clown whispers: enjoy it, buddy, enjoy it while it lasts. 

We arrive back at the air terminal and Aer Lingus rewards our patience with a first class ticket. Finally we sit down instantly comfortable on plush soft wide seats that pull back like a yawn. And everything fall into place like clock work: fresh delicious food, a choice of wines and drink, and a television screen that lifts out of an arm rest like a magic wand. I fall asleep drifting over Greenland. And my last thought until I wake up is enjoy it buddy, enjoy it while it lasts.

©2002 Ned Bobkoff

Ned Bobkoff is a playwright, director and teacher.
He has worked with performers in a variety of community
and cultural settings throughout the United States and overseas

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