In 2017, acclaimed theatre director Wayne Jordan left Dublin and directing behind and moved to Prague. Now he writes for Culture about Leaving, a new work he has created and stars in for THISISPOPBABY's Where We Live festival, and 'a journey I am still very much in the middle of'.
Leaving is a performance collage – a notebook of my time in Prague.
In 2017, after nearly twenty years of living and loving and drinking and working in Dublin, I found a handle to haul myself out of the overloaded, underfunded existence I had created around myself in Ireland. And that handle was a course in a puppet school just off Charles Bridge in the heart of touristic old town Prague. I didn’t go there to study puppetry, per se. In a way, I joined a fabulous kind of conceptual cult – I studied object theatre and devising. We would spend hours and days researching with water, paper, clay wood, bread, potatoes, old toys, fresh flowers, broken tools and abandoned furniture.
We sat and listened and lay together and smelt and touched, tasted, put our faces against the surface of things. After years of delving into and interpreting human psychology in the drama theatre at The Abbey and The Gate, objects finally taught me how to be with people.
Travelling to college in my late 30s was a journey further than Vaclav Havel airport. It was a journey away from expertise, from certainty, from security and from home.
Luckily, along with the challenges. I found a lot of strength and curiosity and kindness. And a lot of love – from others, for others, for myself.
Prague is many things to many people. But it is a magical city. A city of magic and alchemy, of astronomy and transformations, ghosts and demons and spells. And I was drawn to this dark resonance. I became excited by the possibilities of esoteric composition – the casting of spells.
I began to make work to mark out and map transitions and events that impacted on my sense of self that I felt were not reflected or acknowledged in the waking world - phases of growing up, grief for those I lost who had not died, letting go of the versions of myself I hadn’t become – that kind of thing. I started to make ceremonies. These ceremonies were spaces for audiences to come to be together with their own issues, their own associations and concerns - to move somewhere together – to move actually and imaginatively.
One translation of the Czech word for Prague (praha) comes from the Czech word práh – meaning threshold.
We cross thresholds together.
When THISISPOPBABY asked me to be part of their Where We Live festival, I knew I wanted to make a work about leaving – about the moment of walking away. Originally, I thought I might write a play but as my life progressed and travelled deeper into my new work I realised it would be more honest and more appropriate to try and translate my own experience into performance – to offer myself and my journey – a journey I am still very much in the middle of – to offer this to a Dublin audience to reflect on and to be with.
The show is about home. Leaving home. Reimagining home. Remembering home, Re-evaluating home.
Leaving is a collage of performances, diary entries, letters, songs, researches, videos, Facebook posts, phone messages, emails, memories of drunken conversations, photo albums, ideas, choreography and classwork from my time living in Prague. The cast includes family members, old friends, the young actor who played Dorothy in the production of Wizard of Oz that I made to pay for my second year of school, a musician I worked with recently on a project, three buckets of potatoes and various materials I brought in 4 suitcases from Prague
This old material is reprocessed, repurposed, repaired and presented in a new and distilled way through rehearsals in Dublin with a host of new collaborators, including composer and singer Alma Kelliher and video artist Eavan Aiken.
It’s an exciting time. I have known the popbabies for many years. We collaborated together on some major projects that remain some of my best memories of working in the theatre in Dublin. I am so proud that they have been willing to support me in this first attempt at presenting this new work in Ireland.
I am still very much in the middle of things. Forever becoming – fingers crossed.
theatre at The Abbey and The Gate, objects finally taught me how to be with people.'
The show is about home. Leaving home. Reimagining home. Remembering home, Re-evaluating home. Casting a spell, making a wish, clicking your heels three times and opening your eyes.
It’s a space to come and be together and think about where we live, how we live and who we might want to be.
‘Make Voyages. Attempt Them. There’s nothing else"
Tennessee Williams, Camino Real
Wayne Jordan performs Leaving on 15 March at 6.00pm & 9.00pm at Wesley House, Leeson Park Dublin 4, as part of Where We Live Festival 2020 - find out more here.
