The Irish Times – Saturday, April 10, 2010
It has been harrowing to rehearse, and will be hard to watch, but the Abbey’s ‘documentary theatre’ piece based on the Ryan report is a cultural response to a national trauma, writes KATE HOLMQUIST
“Please note that the content of No Escape is disturbing. Over 16s only. Parental guidance necessary.”
THE WORDS ABOVE are how the Abbey Theatre warns its audience about the first piece of “documentary theatre” it has ever staged. The mental health advisory is one usually associated with cinema, TV and the internet.
No Escape isn’t a play in the traditional sense. It is an orchestrated reading by actors of the Ryan report, the investigation by Mr Justice Sean Ryan into abuse in Catholic-run industrial schools and institutions. The script was compiled and edited by journalist and TV director Mary Raftery, whose task it was to distil 2,700 pages of the Ryan report into a little more than 50 pages. Her goal was “to give a visceral sense of how the system broke children”.
The script is so harrowing that psychological counselling has been offered to the actors and the Abbey Theatre’s front-of-house staff have been given helpline numbers and advised on how to handle distressed audience members. It will be an intense 90-minute production, with no intermission. “It’s not going to be a fun night out at the theatre,” says Raftery.
When the Ryan report into abuse in the Artane, Letterfrack and Goldenbridge industrial schools was published in May 2009 – nearly a year ago – Abbey literary director Aideen Howard and artistic director Fiach Mac Conghail wanted to respond and ensure that the Abbey was “involved in the national conversation”, as Mac Conghail puts it.
He and Howard thought of bringing in a playwright, but that would have taken too long from commission to production of a script. The way to put the Ryan report on stage relatively quickly, they decided, was to emulate the process of the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, London, which pioneered documentary theatre with its read-aloud verbatim account of the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday and its testimonies of survivors of Guantánamo. No playwright could possibly do better than the words of the people who had experienced the events.
The Abbey was less concerned with the issue of who, in these depressing times, would buy tickets for an unsettling evening of theatre concerning events that started in 1930, a very long ago time ago in the context of today’s Twitterati. Howard and Mac Conghail believed that, as custodians of the theatre’s traditions, they needed to take the report a step further and give it the sort of understanding and meaning that only the theatre can achieve.
Mac Conghail says: “You can ask: is this box office? I don’t care. We have a responsibility to present this work. It’s going to be tough for people, and not a night of entertainment.”
As playwright Sean O’Casey wrote in The Plough and the Stars , premiered at the Abbey in 1923 and to be staged there once again later this year: “The time is rotten ripe for revolution.”
The value of presenting the Ryan report on the stage, says Howard , is that it will be “a communal experience” and an opportunity to “bear witness”, compared to the solitary reading of a report in the newspaper or on the internet.
Howard and Mac Conghail have a strong stable of 20 playwrights currently commissioned, but instead they approached dogged working journalist Mary Raftery, who for 12 years has followed the story of institutional abuse and without whom the Ryan report may never have happened.
“She’s quite an extraordinary, unique person,” says Mac Conghail.
As the maker of the ground-breaking TV documentary, States of Fear , and the author of the book, Suffer the Little Children , Raftery grasped the challenge. She was already aware that, without some cultural statement, the Ryan report would “disappear in a puff of smoke” and be forgotten.
After a month’s preparation, she wrote the bulk of the script at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan, in an intensive two weeks, followed by a further month of editing. While at Annaghmakerrig, she found herself apologising to resident artists during communal meals for being “increasingly morose” as she waded through the report. She hadn’t expected to be so emotionally affected by her close reading, even though more than anyone she knew the material: “It was an extraordinary revelation.”
She praises Mr Justice Ryan: “I didn’t realise just how good the report was, the complexity of it, the way Ryan reflected not just the voices of the abused but also the voices of the people who worked in the system – the abusers – reaching a level of truth that was not available before. He conveyed a real sense of how complex the world of the institutions was. It was not a simple world. It was grossly and grotesquely abusive.” The reading was agony, but worthwhile in the end, like jumping into the freezing sea on a warm day. “You just have to do it,” Raftery says.
The cast have had a similar experience, plunging into No Escape with a mere three-week rehearsal period. Lorcan Cranitch, who will speak the words of Mr Justice Ryan, explains that the actors won’t be developing characters as they do in traditional theatre.
“I’M A MOUTHPIECE for the Ryan report and I’ll be making no attempt at becoming judicial,” he says. “The main challenge for us in presenting a factual document is what slant do you put on it, if you put a slant on it at all. It’s a fascinating place to be . . . The project is provocative, and I’m attracted to theatre that is provocative. There was also the opportunity to work with Róisín McBrinn, a very exciting director, and to be part of something that is ingrained in our psyche as a nation.”
Researching his part before rehearsals, Cranitch began reading the Ryan report in depth. “Very quickly I had to stop. I thought, I’m going to get in deeper than I need to be . . . I don’t think people realise exactly how horrific the report is.”
The account of a two-and-a-half-year-old being beaten stopped him in his tracks. For the actors, “it has taken its toll”, Cranitch adds, though he himself hasn’t availed of the counselling offered.
Choosing the most powerful pieces of testimony, while also linking them together in a way that told a story, was a challenge, says Raftery. “The audience will not be bored; they will be energised,” she says. “It’s a play in the sense that States of Fear was a documentary. I have taken that TV experience and translated in on to the stage.”
Who will want to see this work of theatre? Raftery sees her audience as the sort of people who used to read Magill magazine, where writers such as herself pulled together all the strands of an issue and produced what she calls “the definitive word”. She also expects that there will be people in their 50s, many of whom are among the 1,700 people who volunteered evidence to the Ryan report (300 were eventually chosen and quoted by Ryan). She thinks the play is also relevant to the children and friends of those who survived the industrial schools. As for the relatively privileged younger generation, she hopes that many will buy tickets out of a need to understand the trauma Irish society is still recovering from.
“From 1930, 170,000 people went through the institutional system, in which all kinds of abuse was endemic,” she says. “That’s numbing – it’s the equivalent of crimes against humanity during the second World War.”
Raftery explains her own resilience in the face of such horrific material, saying that she herself had a “middle-class, privileged childhood with no trauma of any kind” in the “intensive eccentricity” of Dublin 4, attending the Pembroke School, formerly known as “Miss Meredith’s”. She thinks that her protected childhood gave her strength.
“I have often thought I could never do what a counsellor does. I’d have difficulty absorbing pain at that level,” she says. “But I was driven to express the injustice of what happened to other people . . . As a journalist, you follow the story. If you are lucky enough to come across a story that will make a difference, you have a duty to follow it to the ends of the earth.”
“Raftery is so self-effacing,” concludes Lorcan Cranitch, “but in lots of ways she’s the heroine of the piece.”
No Escape previews on Tue, April 13, opens on Wed, April 14, and runs until Sat, April 24. For more, see abbeytheatre.ie
REPLY TO OPEN LETTER(above)TO ABBEY DIRECTOR
======================================
Dear Mr. Fiach Mac Conghail,
Dear Fiona.
I note your reply of just few minutes ago and I thank you for it.
The situation doesn’t change in regards to the specific points AND general broad lines of my message, and it is of course very unfortunate. Ms Raftery spoke on RTE Drivetime a while ago, expressing that, as Ryan represent Crimes and Abuse UN-EQUALED in the world still as we speak, with the floodgates opening on the Catholic Church, these plays are much more than to “at least face them square in the eye, and try to learn from it”.
It is about finding a place, a space, an ATTITUDE which will ADMIT to the Victims the nature of these horrors, and once we begin to show and express sorrow by SAYING HOW SORRY WE ARE, tackle the issues of the State and the Catholic Church cover-up, the Law, Compensation and ultimately, Healing. And this needs to come from the public at large, many of whom disabled.
Thank you for your response and good luck with bringing the changes about.
Regards.
Raymond Lambert
—————————————
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2010 5:11 PM
Subject: RE: Forthcoming play at the Peacock / Dublin “NO ESCAPE”
Dear Raymond,
Thank you for your letter and your interest in the Abbey Theatre. This is an important issue and it is shameful that the Abbey Theatre has no access to the Peacock Theatre for some of our audience.
Arising out of this, I have taken the following actions:
1. We have made contact with the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport to make our case known to them and to start the process of sorting out the accessibility issue to the Peacock Theatre
2. We have retained an architect to design, cost and work out a schedule to implement the changes necessary in the building to make the Peacock Theatre accessible
3. I will write to Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, Mary Hanafin T.D. to seek an immediate meeting with her regarding this important issue. Paddy Doyle has agreed to join me once the meeting has been arranged.
4. On Tuesday 20 April 2010, there will be a performance of NO ESCAPE in the Liberty Hall Centre which is a fully accessible space. The performance will take place at 8pm, for further information please contact the Abbey Theatre box office at (01) 8787222 or visit http://www.abbeytheatre.ie
Thank you again for writing to me and for your interest in the Abbey Theatre.
Yours sincerely,
Fiach Mac Conghail
Director
Christy, I suppose you had the same problem with all the media coverage of the Ryan Report, because the media summarised it and highlighted aspects. If the whole thing has to be reproduced in full every time it’s mentioned, that will certainly put an end to any further reference to it – and to the issues raised. Is that what you want?
Ann C
HI PADDY
SOMEBODY SHOULD TELL MARY RAFTERY THAT YOU CAN NOT GET 2,700 IN TO 50 IF YOU DO
2,650 PAGES OF SURVIVORS SUFFERING ARE LOST
CHRISTY
HI PORTIA
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GAGGING ORDER IN IRISH OR EUROPEAN LAW, IF SO ALL OF THE POLITICIANS WOULD BE SIGNING THEM INSTEAD OF JUST LYING, SO GO FOR IT WE ALL SHOULD AS THE INDUSTRIAL CHILD BROTHELS OF IRELAND WHERE THE IRISH EQUIVALENT FINAL SOLUTION FOR THE CHRISTIAN BROTHERS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH STATE THAT IS IRELAND.
Christy
It appears it is easier to gain entrance to an Industrial School than it is for people in wheelchairs to gain entrance to the National Theatre!
Hi Martin,
We are now in a group of two are there any more out there? Ireland and Europe signed up to the United Nations Convention on Freedom of Expression, and a fundamental principle of that is that no signatory can gag you.
Sometimes in life you have to get off the fence and stand up and be counted, I have been doing both all my life but this is a whole lot different this is about me! Are there any more me’s out there that want to join us?
Christy
Yes, martin1956_1959@yahoo.com
Do you have an email address Martin?
I have a “so-called gagginng order, having been through the Redress process. However, I am more than willing to risk all to tell a story in the full knowledge that if I did, the powers that be in Ireland would not dare prosecute me for “Breach of Confidentiality” as they know full well that I woulld take it straight to the Courts in Strasbourgh.
The fact is, not only was the Redress Process flawed, but it let the State off the hook for their part in helping the religoius obtain Detention Orders against innocent children such as myself. Detained at Drogheda on 13 March 1959 age 2 years and 11 months old.
I have the necessary paperwork to show any court that my Grandmother asked for help in my care and was deceived by the Nuns who, after my being with them for 5 weeks or so allowed me to be taken to Mullingar District Court to obtain said Detention Order.
Judges are also implicated. They knew full well that such as I, and thousands of other children could not possibly defend ourselves against illegal accusations thus ensuring a conviction. I served 9 years in Drogheda and Artane.
To put it into perspective, one would only serve 9 years in a UK jail for Murder.
Solicitors/Barristers too are guilty of collusion with both the State and the Religious in the Redress process. They made millions from that process.
I have asked, in his time in power, Bertie Ahearn to “Expunge my Conviction” – I have e-mails saying he would get back to me – he never did, nor do I believe he ever intended to.
SO, WHO WANTS TO HEAR MY STORY? – Documentary Evidence available.
Contact: 0044 01274 549334 – UK
or write to:
Martin John Petty-O’Callaghan
153 Haworth Road
BRADFORD
BD9 6NH
England
HI PADDY
CAN YOU TELL ALL SURVIVORS THAT THE GAGGING ORDER IS NOT LEGAL IN LAW, IRISH OR EUROPEAN, AND THE IRISH CHURCH/STATE KNOWS IT
Christy
DISABLED PERSONS / WHEELCHAIRS = ACCESS DENIED.
OPEN LETTER TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE ABBEY THEATRE – DUBLIN – IRELAND
SUBJECT: FORTHCOMING PLAY “NO ESCAPE” AT THE PEACOCK THEATRE.
(Please do not separate the Peacock from the Abbey or argue that they are “different businesses”…etc)
Dear Mr. McConghail
HEAR HEAR HEAR !!! Well done and thank you the Abbey and Mary Raftery.
This play can be the first brick in a Monument to Victims of Abuse / Institutional AND Otherwise, if:
1/ it is free of charge and open to everybody.
2/ it is made compulsory-viewing.
3/ a permanent “record – in memoriam” dvd be made available to every human being in Ireland, shown in schools, libraries and sacred healing sanctuaries, for the next 50 years.
4/ the Abbey takes the roof OFF so that every citizen can get in, with and without a wheelchair.
NOTE: when counselling has been made available to all the actors and staff involved, would they consider putting in a good word for the Survivors themselves……!
It is an absolute disgrace that wheelchair-easy access is not in place in our National Theatre. Flaunting legislation with total impunity and disregard for the public. That no effort is even “seen to be made” to rectify the situation. Any builder / architect / engineer could find a way to break through/add/change the lay-out even if it means losing seats or bar space ! That Politicians ignore this. Ombudsman?? We don’t need to be reminded that less than a year ago, when the Ryan Report was released, the very persons whose words are the fabric of the text, 2500 pages of it, the Survivors themselves, WERE DENIED ACCESS to the room. IN FRONT OF THE EYES OF THE WORLD’S NEWS CREWS and their cameras. Is it time we alert CNN, Sky…etc, to take up position in front of the Abbey? Is this part of the Abbey’s plan, to have the finger pointed at it to highlight the hypocrisy of the initial noble intentions it had in commissioning the play ?
About the play:
It seems like the Victims should have had their say, and BE THE ACTORS themselves. I hope they will still get some benefit from it. As for the Irish People: I hope that enough will go, allow themselves to be crushed, pulped and moved until they start FEELING AGAIN. Then, maybe then, they’ll wake up and start feeling for the Survivors, showing them Empathy and Compassion – vocally and visibly – and CONDEMNING UNEQUIVOCALLY, UNCONDITIONALLY THESES CRIMES.
Mr. McConghail. I would like to believe that, as the Director of the Irish Flagship for live theatre and Expression, the Pulse and Conscience of the Nation, you do NOT wish to be a part of such an event which will go to consolidate the world view, that the Irish People are in such a state of denial, morally bankrupt and spiritually DEAD.
Am I wrong ?
Respectfully (but very loudly)
Raymond
“It has been harrowing to rehearse.”
Then, perhaps the victims ought to be the actors.
think what it was like in reality for the abused innocent children, who had no therapy.
A better idea might be to have the victims TELL their stories with their own voices, so that the PEOPLE COULD FEEL THE ENERGY OF THE PAIN.
Sadly the gagging order has denied both the victims and the public from hearing the brutal truth.
The real truth is once again hidden by the law.
This is the most electric theatre to be seen in Europe in our time. Nothing on European stages comes close to it. It is a credit to the Abbey Theatre and Mary Raferty. I am on the European mainland and will not be able to see this historical theatre, but those who can see it will be a part of a changing Ireland. I envy you who can be part of this sea change. Maybe it is to much to hope that the Irish prime minister and his cabinet will attend. Every person in Ireland should leave their houses for the Abbey to be a wittness to this change.
A great idea, and about time someone had the guts to at least try to impart some of the more disgusting aspects of just what went on all those years ago. As a former victim myself I commend Mary Raftery for her guts in not being afraid of the church and its lying henchmen. If you need backup in defence of what you are doing, well, I’m your man. God Bless you.
It’s paradoxical, even bizarre, that the Abbey/Peacock Theatre in the guise of dear Fiach Mac Conghail should stage No Escape … a play about the exclusion of certain children from society … and stage the play in a theatre, which our dear Fiach has been acknowledging for years, actually excludes certain people with disabilities.
To quote Fiach :
“” I fully accept that the Peacock is inaccessible to patrons who require wheelchair and disability access. I deeply regret this and I am looking at finding a temporary solution so that our audience can have full access to performances. “”
Your guess is as good as mine as to which year in the last 5 that quote comes from.
Fiach does have a solution though :
“” I also have to seriously review the future of the Peacock as a functioning theatre. “”
That’s Fiach’s Solution to Fiach’s Problem:
Because the Peacock Theatre excludes certain people with disabilities from seeing plays it’s better that nobody sees any plays there !!!
I’m going. This should be performed in Peters Square when Herr Ratzinger is waving like a malevolent muppet from his balcony.