Theatre director Veronica Coburn talks about the contemporary female heart, breaking out from old ways, and cowboys hats, all to be witnessed in Deirdre Kinahan's new play The Visit, which premieres at Draíocht Blanchardstown this October as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
Who doesn’t dream of wearing a splendid hand stitched pair of cowboy boots? Or a purple embroidered shirt with a yee-haw fringe? All topped off with a perfectly wind weathered cowboy hat? Deirdre Kinahan’s The Visit is a play about dreams. The dreams we have when we are younger about who we might become. The pain of unfulfilled dreams. And the small events that lead us to think that maybe it’s not too late to change.
I love Deirdre Kinahan’s writing. She has spent her career charting the contemporary female heart. Not in a romantic sense but in a must keep beating to stay alive sense. Must keep striving to achieve what I want and need to achieve despite the constraints of Ireland’s primary marriage of church and state sense. Ireland 2021 is a new country, but the effects of the indentured evolution of our society will take decades to erode.
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Watch: Deirdre Kinahan introduces The Visit
The Visit’s Rose is Kinahan’s latest adventurer setting out across the rocky plains. Brave, warm, passionate Rose. Brought beautifully to life by the wonderful Mary O’Driscoll. The Visit opens with Rose standing alone on the stage of a local hall. She is wearing the aforementioned boots and hat and is accompanied by several cacti. She is nervous. About the show that will happen this evening. And she is in a state. Because of the stranger who came knocking at her door that afternoon. To hand her a set of keys. A simple act that turned her world upside down. A knock on a door. A hand. A set of keys. And now Rose can no longer avoid the woman she never thought she would become.
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Watch: Yes by Deirdre Kinahan, created for Draiocht's Home Theatre Ireland project
Rose started life in Draíocht’s ground breaking project, Home Theatre Ireland, which saw 30 leading playwrights and theatre makers spend time with 30 'hosts’, a host was someone who lived in Dublin 15, before writing a bespoke twenty-minute play inspired by the host to be performed in the host’s home to an invited audience of family and friends.
I acted as Artistic Director of Home Theatre and it was one of the absolute highlights of my career to date. Rich, deeply moving, resonant, exciting work. Deirdre Kinahan’s host was Maureen Penrose, a remarkable woman, a pillar of her community with a heart as big as a prairie. Maureen didn’t want the play that Deirdre wrote to be about her. She wanted it to be about opportunity. New possibilities. Maureen has spent her life fighting for the right to opportunity and possibility in her community. Maureen had also spent three years working with me on Hallelujah! Draíocht’s Community Clown Choir when I was Artist in Residence there from 2012 – 2015. So, these two ideas came together in Yes, a play about a woman called Rose who joined a clown choir because she had decided she would change her life by saying yes to everything that came along.
I love it when something makes me laugh. I feel alive when something makes me feel. And I think now, more than ever, we need to laugh and feel alive.
The Visit has all that was good about Yes and more. It is full of humanity. Inspired by the beautiful humanity of Maureen Penrose. Shaped by Deirdre Kinahan’s relentless desire to investigate the human condition. It is full of hope. Fuelled by Maureen’s unstoppable optimism. The dream of who we might yet become. The hope that it is not yet too late to change. It is full of the harshness of life because Deirdre Kinahan’s writing is deceptive. It has a lightness that belies its grit. And it is funny. Because Maureen Penrose is funny. And Deirdre Kinahan is funny. And Mary O’Driscoll, guess what, she’s funny too.
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Watch: Mary O'Driscoll introduces The Visit
That’s the other reason I love Deirdre Kinahan’s writing. Not just the coexistence of laughter and tears but how closely they cosy up. Between her words, in the delicate and nuanced observation of her characters, in the turn of a phrase, you’ll find them nestling side by side, purring, content, waiting to pounce. I love it when something makes me laugh. I feel alive when something makes me feel. And I think now, more than ever, we need to laugh and feel alive. After the last year and a half, we need collective release. And what better way than in roars of laughter. And the silent fall of tears.
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Draíocht Blanchardstown’s The Visit stages its world premiere at Dublin Theatre Festival 2021 from 13 – 16 October - find out more here. Pic: Ste Murray
