Two spirits with silver faces and blue masks, dressed in leaves, peer out through the curtains of Waterford's Garter Lane Theatre, five minutes before they're due on stage. "I have a pain in my stomach," whispers one spirit, 16-year-old Katie Ni Mhurchu from Coachford Players in Cork.
They are here to perform in W.B. Yeats's At The Hawk's Well, in the closing heat of the AIB's One Act Festival of Amateur Drama. Over the past month, 3,700 people have participated in the festival heats in locations country-wide; from Haulbowline to Doonbeg, and from Balbriggan to Manorhamiliton. Only 11 groups will qualify for the finals, which will be held in the Watergate Theatre in Kilkenny from Thursday to Saturday next week.
This is the second major festival in the amateur drama calendar: the other is the three-act festival, which has its finals in Athlone each May, and which was won this year by Enniscorthy Theatre Group's performance of The Cripple of Inishmann. In The Arts Plan 1995-1997, the section on amateur drama describes the movement as "one of the most widespread and enthusiastically supported activities in the arts area in Ireland. Each year about 800 groups provide activities for some 16,000 members, resulting in nearly 3,000 performances which are watched by over 400,000 people."
Coachford Players are now on stage, and scrambling to get ready backstage are the other two drama groups in competition tonight; Phoenix Players from Tubbercurry in Co Sligo, and Balally Players from Dublin.
There is no place for modesty in this crowded dressing room, and there are certainly no stars on the door. Women with cat whiskers painted on their faces scamper round in underwear. One man is having a large cardboard dildo contraption strapped on around his stomach. A woman in a toga brushes her teeth. They fire their lines off to each other like cruise missiles. One missile fails to find its target, as someone drops a cue. "Come on, focus," snaps Geoffrey O'Keefe, Balally's director.
It's a Saturday night and Okalahoma! is on elsewhere in Waterford. The audience out front is very sparse. Take away the players' various entourages, and there's probably no more than a score of local punters. For the three drama groups, however, the most important thing about the audience is the fact that their adjudicator, Pat Burke of St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra is present.
Dressed formally in black tie, Burke sits at a specially set-up lamp-lit table in the back row, scribbling notes into a big red notebook. He has been here for the past two nights, and will announce the overall placements for the nine groups tonight, when it will become clear who has qualified or not to go forward to the finals in Kilkenny.
Phoenix Players are now on stage with David Campton's Can You Hear the Music? Up in the kitchen-cum-green room of the theatre, Coachford Players are sitting round the big table, tucking into trays of sandwiches and Viscount biscuits and doing a post-mortem of their show.
Unusually, Coachford has a number of school-going members. Their backstage manager, John Hogan, is just 15. "I used to go and watch all the shows as a kid. Anyway, Coachford is so small, about 250 people, so I knew everyone before I joined." he says. Later, Katie Ni Mhurchu, who first joined aged 12, says, "being in the group has given me lots of confidence."
She loves going on the five-venue festival circuit. "It's different to performing at Coachford. On the circuit, the audience can talk about the play afterwards - but they can't talk about you. They don't know who you are," she explains.
Coachford has been rehearsing twice a week since September. Apart from their festival involvement, Coachford puts on a three-act play in the local GAA hall each autumn for three nights, which gets full houses of 350 people - children and adults - each night. "In a small community, everyone turns out from the hinterland," says director Anthony Greene.
The last performance of the evening is Aristophanes's Women in the Assembly, with Balally Players. The set consists of two curved benches, one classical pillar, and one seven-foot pink penis. The show involves a lot of energetic simulated copulation, and strap-on erections (made from tin-foil cylinders) under togas rather reminiscent of masts being lifted on the decks of a ship.
The long grey-haired crone, Gusistrate, is afflicted with a Greek chorus of loud farting sounds which accompanies most of her actions. Blepyrus, unable to locate his wife for marital activities, finds relief instead by squatting at the edge of the stage and grunting. Several pebbles are then released from under the nether regions of his toga and roll pertly, like rabbit-turd pellets across the stage. The audience hoots like a barn-full of owls throughout.
WHEN the show is over, Pat Burke walks out on stage with his briefcase, rather like Charlie McCreevy on Budget Day. He is overshadowed by the large penis at his shoulder. "I hope my adjudication is, ahem, up to it," he jokes. Once again, the audience falls about.
Points are allocated in three categories: presentation, direction, and performance. Burke gives his adjudication group by group. Details count. "I wondered about the socks on Cuchulainn," he says, speaking of Coachford's Hawk's Well show.
He has something positive to say about each show and each acting performance: the harder-hitting and more in-depth analysis takes place privately with each group later. Burke describes Women in the Assembly as "a brave show to undertake - even in 1999". One of the actresses is described as "a sexy woman to watch - and nothing wrong with that!" By the end of the evening, when the results are added up, both Coachford and Balally are through to the Kilkenny finals.
Afterwards, when the audience has departed, the Phoenix and Balally Players sit around and relax over a few beers and the remainder of the sandwiches. The Coachford group are already on the road back to Cork. Balally are pleased with the reaction their show got tonight. "It didn't go down at all well in Manorhamilton," they muse.
Dave Walsh, Balally's treasurer, thinks the amateur drama scene has increased hugely in recent years. "Look at the festival venues," he points out. "We get to play in proper theatres like this now, whereas it used to be mainly glorified sheds." There is general agreement that the one-act festival is where you'll see a more ambitious programme of plays, whereas the three-act plays tend to be the safer, traditional choices.
"You find plenty of top-quality actors in amateur drama," states Lisa Conlon. "It's the outlet for all those people who never made it professionally. Every drama group has one."
"But the people joining are always the same," offers Claire Reilly. "They have to have jobs that allows the time commitment. You'll never find nurses in amateur drama, but you'll find lots of teachers and civil servants."
Like the other drama groups, Balally make trips to the professional theatre on a regular basis. Some years ago, they put on Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a few weeks before it went up at the Abbey. "Several people from the Abbey production came out to see us," remembers Walsh. "They gave us lots of good feedback - and they sent us tickets for their show. So they came to our show and we went to theirs!"
The other nine groups who will be going to Kilkenny are: Olivian Players, Dublin; Moat Club Naas, Daft Theatre Project, Hawlbowline; Whitethorn Players, Ballyhaunis; Granary Players, Limerick; St Patrick's D.S., Dalkey; City Limits, Dublin; Taney Players, Dundrum; and Ennis Players.
