The Drama Desk and OBIE Award-winning Mint Theater Company re-introduced Teresa Deevy to the world in the summer of 2010 with the production of her brilliant play Wife To James Whelan. Mint's Deevy Project continues with Temporal Powers, opening August 29th and continuing through September 25th at the Mint's home in the heart of the theater district, 311 West 43rd Street.
Jonathan Bank directs a cast that features
Rosie Benton,
Paul Carlin, Roberston Carricart,
Bairbre Dowling, Con Horgan,
Eli James,
Aidan Redmond,
Wrenn Schmidt, and
Fiana Toibin. Temporal Powers will have set design by
Vicki R. Davis, costume design by
Andrea Varga, lighting design by
Jeff Nellis, and sound design by
Jane Shaw.
Temporal Powers tells the moving story of a great love straining under the weight of conflicting passions. Desperate and destitute, Michael and Min Powers take refuge for the night in a crumbling ruin. Buried within the walls could be the answer to their prayers-money for a fresh start-if only they could agree to use it. What follows is a fierce moral struggle that no one can win.
Teresa Deevy's explosive drama won First Prize in the new play competition held by
The Abbey Theatre in 1932. The judges called the play "strikingly original and of fine literary quality." It was produced to great acclaim that year: "Amongst the best that
The Abbey Theatre has ever staged," The Guardian reported; "one of the most thoughtful works seen for sometime at the Abbey," said The Irish Times. The Irish Independent added: "In Temporal Powers Miss
Teresa Deevy has written an original and thought-provoking play. Her characters are drawn from Irish life, they speak in a rich and natural idiom, the incidents might have happened in any Irish Village. Miss Deevy knows her people, that is obvious, but the angle from which she regards them is unusual. It is not distortion, but rather that sublime quality in the artist, originality."
The critics were unanimous in their enthusiastic praise for Temporal Powers and confidently expected that it would be seen regularly in the years to come. "There seems little doubt that Temporal Powers will figure often in the Abbey repertory," predicted The Stage. Instead, Temporal Powers was revived once, in 1937, and then vanished. It was rescued from the ash heap 50 years later when the text was finally published by the Irish Literary Journal (circulation 500). But remained unseen until now.
Teresa Deevy was born in 1894, the youngest of thirteen children. Intent on a teaching career, Teresa enrolled in the University College, Dublin in 1913. After about a year she began to feel ill; her ears rang and she suffered frequent bouts of vertigo. She was diagnosed with Meniere's disease, an incurable condition caused by fluid imbalance in the inner ear. Within a few years, Deevy had completely lost her hearing. Teresa went to London to learn lip reading and there she discovered theatre. She studied the plays in advance and sat in the front row night after night, entranced by what she saw. Teresa had found her calling. Oblivious to all obstacles, she decided to become a playwright. Fifteen years later at the age of 36, after numerous rejections, the Abbey Theater produced Deevy's play Reapers. While the play was not a success, Andrew E. Malone (Dublin Magazine, 1930), one of Ireland's leading critics predicted: "The new dramatist from whom most may be expected in the future is Miss T. Deevy." Deevy went on to have five more plays produced at the Abbey over the next six years. In 1936 her play Katie Roche was hailed a masterpiece and selected for publication in an anthology of Famous Plays of the year. A London production followed in ‘38, Macmillan published three of her plays in one volume in '39.
Teresa Deevy had become "the most important dramatist writing for the Irish theatre since 1930." (
Lennox Robinson, Dublin Magazine, 1940). Then the tide turned. Wife To
James Whelan was rejected by the Abbey's new management, breaking Teresa's heart and ending her career as an Abbey playwright. Undaunted, Deevy turned her attention to writing for the radio where she enjoyed some success, but by the time of her death, in 1963, she had been virtually forgotten.
Last year, audiences and critics were unanimous in their embrace of this long lost playwright:
"Mint Theater is certainly making an elegant case that the Abbey Theater in Dublin missed an opportunity almost 70 years ago when it declined to produce Wife to
James Whelan." New York Times
"The Mint so believes in Deevy that it's already scheduled another of her plays for next year. After seeing Wife to
James Whelan, that doesn't sound quixotic anymore." New York Post
"One of the best things I've seen in a very long time." Irish Examiner
The Deevy Project will continue for another year with a production of Deevy's most successful play, Katie Roche, beginning in August 2012.
Mint Theater Company, "that truffle hound of half-buried treasures from the past" (Village Voice), has a celebrated reputation for re-discovering worthy but neglected gems and has brought new vitality to timeless but timely plays since 1992. The Mint was awarded an OBIE for "combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition." Mint was awarded a special Drama Desk Award for "unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit."
Performances for Temporal Powers will be Tuesday through Thursday at 7 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM. Tickets are $55. All performances will take place on the Third Floor of 311 West 43rd Street. Tickets are available by calling the Mint box office at 212/315-0231 or go to
www.minttheater.org
And, a new inexpensive way to discover Mint productions - CHEAP TIX: Everyone appreciates a bargain, especially these days.
Mint Theater Company is now offering a limited number of seats for every performance at half-price ($27.50).
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