Vanessa Fielding, founder and Artistic Director of The Complex, Dublin, introduces her new version of Tennessee Williams' classic play The Rose Tattoo, in a transformative new translation by Fielding and Catherine Joyce that resets this theatrical classic into a modern Irish Traveller context.
This project came about as a result of a workshop in 2019. I had been attracted to the play because the central character's husband is a long-haul truck driver of bananas, mirroring the original use of our own warehouse at The Complex. The family are Italian, based in New Orleans in 1950 but disenfranchised from main-stream society with language and consequent difficulties with traditional education and as a result, isolated in its own closed community with its own cultural parameters. Of course, the play was made famous to everyone in Ireland in 1957 when its stage direction, calling for the exposure of a condom on stage, caused the Catholic Church to close the Dublin Theatre Festival and incarcerate its director.
I workshopped the play with a few Irish actors to see why the narrative felt uncomfortable in 2019 and I began to think of some of the issues facing the leading character and to translate them into my own contemporary experience. The cultural boundaries represented in the original play are not literally in my immediate environment, although as I progress its investigation, there are deeper resonances around all of our personal choices in the context of our respective conditionings.
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Listen: The Rose Tattoo Vanessa Fielding and Catherine Joyce talk to RTÉ Arena
The issue that principally influenced me was the effect of the main character’s loss of her husband to a gang shooting for smuggling drugs under the bananas, that leads to her isolation and an identity crisis. She starts drinking, becomes paranoid, locks up her daughter, rejects her daughter’s schooling, questions the values of country people and eventually renounces her faith, losing her reason with it. Her life has become intolerable until a chance encounter takes place with a stranger who comes onto the site.
This man forces her to question her values as he propositions her, violating the conventions of her community. The play ends with a triumphant moment of empowerment and a symbol of freedom as she grasps her right to choose to determine her own future.
The 1st read-through of
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🌹The Rose Tattoo🌹
Do not miss this fresh and poignant translation of Tennessee Williams' classic and iconic play by Vanessa Fielding and Catherine Joyce.
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I read an enlightening article by Rosaleen McDonagh in the Irish Times about the rise of Traveller Feminism and once I applied that context to the play, it came alive. I spoke to some Traveller activists, including Rosaleen who was embarking on her new play for the Abbey Theatre at the time, and with her help, connected with Catherine Joyce who brought me to halting sites, where I met some Traveller women who raised many points of view on the status of women in the Travelling community. Some believed in emancipation, others liked the protection of the traditional values. It was and still is a sensitive subject but one that deserves a voice. I was impressed by what was always at the forefront of discussions, to seek the right way forward for the young women of the community. Catherine and I embarked on a nine-month process of retranslating the play from Italian to Traveller dialect and resetting the place names to give it plausibility. The organisation that she leads, the Blanchardstown Traveller Development Group played an advisory role and we also embarked on a week-long project to stream performances and talks for Traveller Pride week at The Complex in 2021 to see how we worked together.
Tom Mulligan, owner of the Cobblestone Bar, brought the famous Uilleann piper Paddy Keenan to meet me, himself a Traveller, and he agreed to write music and to play live in the show. John Connors has kindly given me casting assistance and I have seen every available actor from a Traveller background from which two were cast in principle parts. Connections were made with other Traveller projects in Tallaght, Finglas and the Irish Traveller Movement to support the production with audience development and help to co-ordinate a pre-show forum for Traveller women activists.
The Tennessee Williams Estate has given us an unprecedented opportunity to create a production of this play that is authentic and uniquely Irish, overcoming the strict parameters that usually apply to permissions for resetting the play. The development of the script was supported by funding from Dublin City Council Arts Office.
Now we just need an audience to come and experience it.
The Rose Tattoo runs at The Complex, Dublin from May 9th – 20th - find out more here.
