Marc Mac Lochlainn of Branar Téatar do Pháistí talks about their critically-acclaimed festive production for ages 5 and up, Twas the Night Before Christmas, currently on tour to venues around Ireland till 21st December.
Everyone is familiar with the Christmas poem Twas the night before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore. Indeed, I would wager that most people could recite the first few lines –
Twas the Night before Christmas
When all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a mouse
The poem for me is magical, not only because of the vivid story of that Christmas Eve encounter that it portrays, but also for the way in which the opening few lines encapsulate the stillness and the anticipation of what is to come.
Even today for most children the build-up to Christmas morning is what they get excited about. The magic, the rituals, the presents of course. Have they been good? What should they ask Santa for? How much stuff is too much? When is the best time to send the Santa letter?
The memories I have of my own childhood Christmases have blurred together but what shines out when I remember back more than any gift is the pre-Christmas anticipation and excitement.
We first began working on our stage version of Twas the night before Christmas / Oíche roimh an Nollag in 2012. Our goal at the beginning was to create a Christmas show that would be different to the panto-style shows that were available to families and schools at that time of year. With our creative team of performers and designers, we began to explore how we might do that in mid-July - it was a bizarre situation to be thinking about these wintery themes in the height of summer! We had the pleasure of inviting Alex Byrne of NIE, a UK-based theatre company who I admired, to work with us that summer. We investigated how we would stage the poem and what frame we would use to share the story. Eventually, we decided upon the idea that the essence of this Clement Clarke Moore poem is the sense of anticipation and wonder that children and people feel on Christmas Eve. Through many workshops and rehearsal periods, we began creating a town in which we could set our story, and gradually the town of Baile Breac became a reality.
Baile Breac is like any other fictional rural town – jam-packed with great characters. We realised we needed to construct a way in which we could get to meet all those characters. In every community there is one person who gets to meet every resident, and that is the postman. For us, the postman was our way to introduce the town and also to keep the story moving. Christmas time for him is a really busy time with cards, Santa letters, and parcels to be delivered. Played by Miquel Barceló, our postman is a larger-than-life character and he loves his job.
To add to the already palpable excitement that Christmas brings by itself, we decided to set our show in 1948, the year the town of Baile Breac got electricity for Christmas for the first time. The rural electrification scheme ran from 1945-1965 – in this age of 4G hyper-connectivity it’s hard to comprehend what life was like without it. I can only imagine what it must have been like for the children of that period, indeed for everyone. I am sure it was magical to see the world around them in a new light with electricity - like seeing things for the first time.
But there was a certain amount of suspicion surrounding 'the electricity'. To address that there were people employed to hold demonstration events in town halls for all the locals to see how electricity would make their lives easier. In our show we have Mrs Carson (Helen Gregg) the local teacher and chair of the Town committee as a local early adopter. She takes its upon herself to enhance Christmas in the town in 1948 by ordering streetlights from Dublin.
There is a tension between the old values of Christmas and the new modern values within a storyline of Mrs Carson and Mrs. Molloy (Grace Kiely) who for years has delivered candles to every household to be placed in the windows for Christmas. Both these women have the best interests of the town at heart, but have differing views about how the community’s Christmas spirit can be enhanced.
In our tale, there are many standout characters but one character above all invited the most oohs and aahs and indeed debate, that is the life size dog puppet magically manipulated by Ionia Ní Chróinín... or is that dog actually real?
As with all of our productions, we enjoy using live music to enhance the storytelling. We are also committed to ensuring that children and families have the best possible experience. We are honoured to have had great artists work on Twas the night before Christmas from its inception to the current tour, with a wonderfully talented cast bringing the world of Baile Breac to life playing multiple roles - as well as playing instruments and singing the music composed and performed by Michael Chang. The beautiful vocal harmonies and seasonal tunes are a true celebration of that Christmassy feeling.
We’ve found that Twas the night before Christmas is a show that can be enjoyed by the entire family, a humorous and wholesome Christmas story for everyone, and we’re delighted to be bringing it on tour to audiences across Ireland this December.
Twas the Night Before Christmas is on tour nationwide until December 21 - find out more here.
