Twenty years after his death, Belfast and Dublin are coming together to revisit the work of visionary playwright Stewart Parker, writes Jane Coyle
'A PRODUCTION MUST have a purpose that goes beyond pure entertainment" is the expressed view of Lyric Theatre executive director Michael Diskin. There could be few more apt purposes for reviving the work of a writer, whose finger was so firmly on the social and political pulse of Belfast during some of its darkest days, than to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement.
Stewart Parker's was a voice that spoke out fearlessly, eloquently, intelligently and encouragingly on behalf of his own people, the Protestants of the North. When silenced by cancer, at the tragically premature age of 47, it left a gap in the theatrical chorus that has never been filled.
Twenty years after his death, Belfast and Dublin are coming together to produce and host The Parker Project, an ambitious co-production between the Lyric Theatre and Rough Magic, which revisits Parker's work through the prism of his first and last plays, Spokesongand Pentecost. They will be directed by his niece Lynne Parker, artistic director of Rough Magic, and performed in repertoire during Belfast's Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, with a double bill on consecutive Saturdays. They will then transfer to The Empty Space in Dublin for a three-week run.
Lynne Parker says that while the 20th anniversary of his death provides a naturally emotional impetus for the project, what would have been more significant to Parker is the new spirit of possibility emerging in the North.
"What was important to him was that there are cycles in the history of Northern Ireland", she says. "His plays were written at dark periods during the Troubles, yet they promised some kind of optimism, which might have seemed preposterous at the time. Now it looks like the improbable might be possible."
Diskin identifies the pleasingly neat symmetry, forged by the dovetailing of the two plays, and notes the uncannily current resonance they continue to carry.
"Lynne was keen to do Pentecostagain and it is, of course, a monumental and hugely relevant play," he says. "In contrast, Spokesongis quirky and unusual, set in a little bike shop in the 1970s and going back to Victorian times. You've only to take a few steps up North Street to see wee businesses like this trying desperately to make a living. With its focus on environmental issues, it sounds incredibly fresh and in touch."
Parker has gathered together an ensemble cast of Northern actors - Kathy Kiera Clarke, Richard Clements, Dan Gordon, Gemma Mae Halligan, Will Irvine, Eleanor Methven, Marty Rea and Ali White. Some are extremely familiar with Parker's work, others are coming to it for the first time.
Methven plays Lily, the ghost of Protestantism in Pentecost, which is set in 1974. Parker tells us that Lily is the same age as the century, yet her age changes as the story unfolds. Methven knows the play inside out, having played the role of Marion in a number of stagings of Parker's previous Rough Magic production.
"I love this play", she says. "I'm delighted that it's being done brought back to Belfast. But time passes. When Lynne told me she was going to do it again, I was very certain that I would not be playing Marion!"
In that same production, Lily was played by Carol Moore, Methven's closest friend and co-founder of Belfast's Charabanc Theatre Company.
"Lynne pointed out that the role has already been played definitively - by my best mate", she says, archly. "I am already imagining a certain Ms Moore, sitting in the audience and watching my every move with an eagle eye."
CLARKE, HOWEVER, IS making her debut in a Parker play - well, two Parker plays to be precise, playing Marion in Pentecostand Daisy in Spokesong.Of the eight actors, only she, Richard Clements and Marty Rea appear in both.
"It has been more challenging that I thought it would be, rehearsing the two plays simultaneously", she says. "You are creating two characters at the same time, but it's fascinating to see the similarities and contrasts coming out in them.
"Both are from Belfast; both are part of the same intelligent, sassy woman, who knows her own mind. Yet they are very different people, with different internal lives.
"From doing the first and last plays, it's amazing the way that lines and characters intersect and echo and resound. I will say a line as Daisy, then realise that it's almost exactly the same line that Marion says. He just writes fantastic parts for women.
"I would love to have met him, but we all feel that he is very present with us in the rehearsal room. I regularly have arguments with him, going home in the taxi, about him making me do these two huge roles!"
"The thing about Stewart was that he was a massive humanitarian. The plays are full of humour, humanity - and steel," observes Methven.
"Nobody who was born and raised in the North and lived here through those times will fail to identify with the feelings and situations he presents. Yet he has the gift of taking them onto a different level. He brings the local and personal into the international and universal.
"He was a tremendous loss to Irish theatre and one can't help wondering what he would have written about the current situation, had he still be alive. It is interesting that our national theatre in Dublin has not done more to commemorate him."
Clarke grew up in the eye of the Troubles in West Belfast in the 1980s. She says that the plays will speak loud and strong to generations of her family.
"Audiences will bring their own memories with them," she says. "I can't wait for my parents to come and see them. They will feel just the way they felt at the time. But my nephews and nieces are coming too, and they will be affected by them in different ways. I think it's really important that young people see these plays and connect with them."
As the two exchange banter and bounce ideas off each other, one gets a real sense of their off-stage friendship feeding instinctively into the relationship they share in the play.
"I wondered how I would feel about playing opposite someone else in a role I know so well," says Methven. "Even now in rehearsal, when Lynne says 'Marion!' my head goes up."
"I never saw Eleanor play Marion, which I'm glad about - if you know what I mean!" says Clarke. "My performance has not been influenced by anyone else. But it is fascinating now watching her work and spotting the wee subtle things about yourself that shift and move in response."
"I am only ever on stage with Marion," Methven explains. "The link between the two women is very close and, as Kathy and I are friends, the lines come easily. It's noticeable how bits of the character start to rub off on you. Although you feel sympathy for her, Lily is a deeply unhappy, embittered woman, not a nice person. Taking her home and living with her has not exactly been a barrel of laughs. I've already called Kathy a Fenian bitch a couple of times!"
"I just tell her to stick to the script!" laughs Clarke.
MEANWHILE, DISKIN, a former manager of the Town Hall Theatre in Galway, who holds a doctorate in political science - his thesis was on Ulster Unionism - is experiencing something of a sugar rush from working among the streets and entries and cobbled courtyards, where so many pivotal events occurred through the centuries and subsequently found their way into Parker's plays.
"It is thrilling to be doing these plays in this magnificent building," he says. "It was originally the Assembly Room, where Henry Joy McCracken (the subject of Parker's Northern Star) was tried and where Belfast's citizens used to gather, before the City Hall was built, to debate the current issues of the day.
"It stands at the junction of three major streets, which would have been barricaded during successive coups d'etat that took place in Belfast. Outside the little parlour house in Pentecost, an uprising is in full flow and the populace is taking to the barricades during the Ulster Workers' Council Strike. The venue gives a sharp historical continuity to these plays, which get right under the skin of the city.
"Although the plays are located in small domestic settings, their themes are huge and far-reaching, so it is significant that we are presenting them against the bigness of the building and the bigness of Belfast itself."
• The Parker Project runs at the Old Northern Bank in Waring Street, Belfast untilMay 17 and at The Empty Space in Dublin from May 24 to June 15.
