The irish connection

Abstract

Thomas Kilroy Connection in theatre is made between actor and audience. Indeed, there are exemplary occasions in the theatre where you have the coming together of text, acting and audience in an experience that seems to transcend any one of the elements involved. It can only happen with great writing and great acting, of course. But my point is that in the degree of its response, the audience is testifying to the depth to which the work has penetrated its communal consciousness. In this way, audience presence or audience involvement is an essential ingredient of the theatrical experience itself. In this way, theatre, in sublime fashion, is seen in the very act of fulfilling its public function. I will mention a few such occasions which I’ve experienced myself but you will have your own lists. In Ireland, Donal McCann in Faith Healer at the Abbey Theatre, Siobhan McKenna in Bailegangaire at the Taibhdhearc in Galway. I would add three productions from outside Ireland from the fifties and sixties, Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer at the Royal Court in London, Uta Hagen in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in New York and Jean-Louis Barrault in La Tentation de Saint Antoine at the Odeon in Paris. All of these performances had a profound connection to the local culture. They tapped into some particular, native, shared experience, opening an unhealed wound, as it were, stirring a brew that had been dormant, bringing to the surface something familiar but unacknowledged….