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| Kate Gilmore and Clare Maguire |
It’s that time of the year again and Dublin is buzzing with theatre festival fever. Rehearsal rooms are working overtime as the clock ticks down to the fringe festival opening date of September 10th. Nothing strange there. Getting to sit and chat with two theatre makers having their first Dublin Fringe experience is not such a strange thing either. Until you realise that one picked up the Best Supporting Actress Award at the 2014 Irish Times Theatre Awards, while the other is an experienced director, actor and teacher at the Gaiety School of Acting. In fairness, Kate Gilmore is not one to take the regular route and for this fringe festival is writing and performing, with direction and in development with Clare Maguire,The Wickedness of Oz.
Gilmore’s play is about a day in the life of Debbie “who’s twenty-one, she’s a travel agent and she’s from Finglas…and this is the day when everything comes to a head.” Her day doesn’t start so well with an argument with her boyfriend, and then she keeps going back to the texts she’s sending him. At twenty-one “it’s the time you start thinking about having to branch out: I have to travel, I have to do all those things I’m supposed to do at twenty-one. For her it’s a very different decision because she lives at home with her parents, her sister has moved to London to work for a newspaper, and her brother has died. So it’s just her with her parents, who she feels quite responsible for, and her boyfriend seems to be starting to turn his life in one direction and she is stuck where she is. It’s about that kind of claustrophobia of being young and wanting things, then being scared of them and then being lazy to go after things that you do want. And then someone telling you that you can’t really, and do you accept that or do you defy it?”
“And the reason why Oz is in the title,” Maguire adds, answering my next question before I asked it, “is because of her boyfriend. It becomes apparent that his visa has come through for Australia.” Of course, Australia has been the destination of many. During the Tiger it was the year away, afterwards it was out of necessity, or as Maguire puts it, quoting a line from the play, ‘a whole generation disappearing in silence’, and that “there has been other people via social media saying that they are away, on Bondi beach and things like that, so there is an element of this generation going to other places and her [Debbie] not being able to do that.” Maguire even heard mother’s on Joe Duffy, upset that their children had gone to Oz, reminding us that there is a generation emigrating, like other generations before, be it forced, or through choice. The Wickedness of Oz was first written two years ago, containing both the personal and universal in its ideas. Gilmore mentions a cousin who “moved to Australia for a year and we kind of all knew when she was going that she probably wouldn’t come back. And it’s two years later and she hasn’t.” Like many, she found a partner, which makes the idea of returning less likely than before. Then there are those, Gilmore adds, “going abroad to travel Asia, South East Asia, and Thailand for three months, or going to India. And its like, ‘wow, people are doing such good things with their life and I’m staying here carving away a career’.”
The career that Gilmore is carving hasn’t been too bad. I first met Gilmore when compiling a profile on The Cup Theatre Company. At the time, Gilmore’s Stella Full of Storms was playing in Theatre Upstairs, before thatshe performed in, and co wrote, A Picture of Us (A Sort of Musical) and taking the role in the one woman show Petals, a play that, like herself, was nominated in the Irish Times Theatre Award of that year. And she still hasn’t stood still, performing in the musical The Train and recently seen on the Peacock stage in Town Is Dead, while also appearing in RTE’s soap Fair City.
Which brings us back to Oz, with a touch of the surreal due to Debbie’s obsession with 1960s musicals. It is through the songs that Debbie can confront aspects of her life. “Because her mother is still in the thick of grief and she is watching films over and over again, so in her head Debbie keeps playing these songs and comparing herself to these people.” This means more music for Gilmore, helped in this instance by Denis Clohessy who is able to bring great balance to sound in theatre, and enhancing the moment. Both Gilmore and Maguire want the songs to be part of the story, rather than simply add ons to make up time, something a number of musicals could take note of.
“There is the surrealism of her having that parallel world, which we are hoping to put into the staging,” Maguire tells me. Gilmore and Maguire have a love of old movies and TV, so it is a chance to give a few nods to the Garlands and the Balls. To help bring it all together, a movement director is being brought in, something that is done more and more to bring an authenticity without the use of choreography (something the original Les Miserables did; there isn’t a mention of choreographer in the credits of that musical). There is a lighter side to their new show as well, despite the initial impression this article might have given. But all good drama has lighter moments, as a look at any Alan Bennett or Neil Simon will prove. While it is a reworking of the script, Gilmore feels it is really a separate show. “Even though the character has remained pretty much the same, the ideas are all still there: the title is the same, the poster design (by Ste Murray). It all feels like the potential was there two years ago, it was a flavour of what this is now and it has been developed into a complete story.” “It feels richer,” Maguire says.
They are working with Show In A Bag, an artistic development initiative of Tiger Dublin Fringe, Fishamble: The New Play Company and the Irish Theatre Institute, who together have been very successful in launching many excellent works in the last few years, such as the brilliant Dublin Old School, Beowulf - The Blockbuster, Charolais and Small Plastic Wars. It is an impressive alumni, and, for them, working with Show in a Bag is both exciting and daunting, and a real honour. There is also a matter of the injection of faith, something that is needed a lot in theatre today.
It is, as Gilmore puts it, a very nonlinear career that they both are involved in. “One day you can be working for Lynne Parker, the next you’re down the dole office,” which puts it all into context. Gilmore, however, is not one to rest and since graduating has had a busy and successful time, both as performer and writer. She even found time to get to Electric Picnic this year for a pop-up theatre piece under the direction of Theatre Upstair’s Karl Shiel's, proving that keeping momentum going is where it's really at.
The Wickedness Of Oz play in Bewley’s Cafe Theatre @Powerscourt during the Dublin fringe festival.
Preview Sept 12th/Runs Sept 13th - 23rd.