Director Caroline Byrne writes about her new production of Teresa Deevy’s 1937 play Katie Roche, often cited as an early feminist classic, currently playing at The Abbey Theatre.
To me, this play is about Katie’s attempt to be a great and respected woman; to transcend the mire, the patriarchy, the boredom, and the destiny she has as a ‘stained’ woman.
It’s a desire to fulfill her potential and to be accepted as an influential and expressive being. Regrettably, she is not allowed to do that and is taken away for trying to test her strength against a man.
It is also a play about survival. In Katie, we see a spirited woman who adapts and changes with every obstacle, even when she is plucked from her environment at the end of the play. She is an extraordinary Irish character, really complex and really alive - capricious, spirited, dangerous, sensitive and full of gumption. She is full of art, of originality, of ambition and of daring.
In a way Teresa Deevy’s life is sewn up with the expression of and the fate of this character, Katie Roche. We don’t often see these types of female characters on the Irish stage and for that reason alone Irish audiences deserve to see Teresa Deevy’s work be brought back to centre stage.
The timelessness of the themes, the debt Irish theatre owes to Deevy’s originality and the unknown brilliance of this play made me commit to staging a new, fresh and invigorated production for 2017.
Katie Roche runs at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, until September 23 - details here.
