Feature: INSIDE THE GPO at Solas Nua

Too many poets and not enough guns...

DC is a city steeped in national myth, so perhaps it is most fitting that now, in the midst of our own battle for self-determination and statehood, Solas Nua brings us Fishamble's production of Inside the GPO, an intimate look at Ireland's 1916 Easter Rising.

To give a very broad and brief background, the Easter Rising began on the Monday following Easter Sunday in April 1916. Though initially meant to be a series of rebellions and uprisings throughout Ireland, due to miscommunications, interceptions, and arrests, the actual Rising was centered mainly in the capital, Dublin. The GPO, or General Post Office, was occupied, along with several other buildings, by the rebels on the first day and became their headquarters. It was outside the GPO that Pádraig Pearse delivered the public Proclamation of an Irish Republic. The building was held for five days before ultimately falling to the British. Though not popular at the time, the Rising, and the British response to it, paved the way for the Irish War for Independence, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and the Irish Civil War.

Commissioned as part of The Decade of Centenaries Programme, which commemorates the one hundred year anniversaries of these and other key moments in the Irish fight for independence, Inside the GPO is inarguably at the epicenter of the national myth that has grown to surround this time period and to loom particularly large for Irish America. But as with every myth, one must peel back the layers to really get to the good stuff - the nuance, the controversies, the personal triumphs and tragedies.

Written by investigative journalist and playwright, Colin Murphy, Inside the GPO seeks to, as Murphy puts it, "complicate the narrative". "With every play set in the past, it is about exploring an important moment in the past, but it is as much about the present as it is the past," says Fishamble's Artistic Director, Jim Culleton. "It was really our chance to look at what happened a hundred years ago, the birth of our nation, what the rebels who gained our independence for us, what their ideals were, what the Proclamation said, and to think and reflect a hundred years later on how much that had changed.

"Theatre is a really great art form to be able to grapple with differing opinions and differing views and to hold them all together in that art form in a way that audiences can engage with. Everyone can express their wildly differing opinions, as the people running the Rising did, and that can all be explored and teased out with a live audience in a way that allows us to engage with the arguments without necessarily coming down on anyone's side."

"Historians and artists are really doing the same thing. We're storytellers. Where the historian might be saying 'what happened', the artist might be saying 'here's a way it might've happened and a face to go with it'," notes Solas Nua's Artistic Director, Rex Daugherty. "Artists are unpacking the same story, just in a different way.

"There's so much nostalgia in Irish America, often for a country that never was, and the romanticization of these events...has become detached in a lot of ways. Its one of the reasons Solas Nua exists today to do contemporary work. We're trying to debunk a lot of those myths and provide context for Irish identity now."

Here be ghosts...

Both Solas Nua and Fishamble have a history of site-specific and immersive work, something that they plan to continue with future productions. "It does speak to both Jim and I being excited about giving people non-traditional theatrical experiences, of putting work in new and surprising places," says Daugherty. "Its so exciting to see new audiences either discover a new place or learn to see a place they know in a new light and with new understanding. You forever change that space."

For Inside the GPO, Fishamble was approached by An Post, in an unprecedented opportunity, to create an immersive theatre piece that would play in the footprint, and shadow, of the original setting. "The fact that we were in the GPO, staging a play about what had happened a hundred years ago, was really, really special," Culleton recalls. "The audience is inside looking at the rebels, discussing and arguing and negotiating what they would do...in retrospect, of course, we know what happened, but the characters didn't know what was going to happen, day-to-day, and so the audience got to see up close and personal what the leaders of the Rising were going through...You got a real visceral sense of what it was like to be inside that building, at that time a hundred years ago in a way that you just wouldn't in a theatre."

He adds, "We had a lot of people saying 'I will never walk in here to buy a stamp again and look at it in the same light,' so you feel you're changing their relationship with the city around them in a way, which is very exciting."

Staging a production in this historic location, which is still a working bank, was not without its challenges. "It was a working bank until 6 pm. We came in and had to turn it into a theatre. We had 43 people working on it, all our chairs hidden in a disused shop around the corner. We came in, did the show twice each night, and we had to be gone by midnight. It was a bit like Cinderella," remembers Culleton.

And unlike in a traditional theatre space, the audience could also hear the modern streetmosphere just outside the building, lending a prescient note to the play. "You get a little sense of life now in the world outside and we're in this sort of suspended moment a hundred years previously."

For American audiences, and for anyone who missed the original production, this digitally remastered broadcast is as close as they will likely get to this experience. "The digital space really is the only space we can get access, short of a plane ticket and a time traveling machine to go back to 2016 to see this," notes Daugherty. "So it is particularly exciting that, even as a digital event, this is still capturing that once-in-a-century feeling of 'this is your shot to see this'."

Fishamble has plans to continue its involvement in The Decade of Centenaries Programme. They are currently working with Murphy on another play exploring the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which gave the 26 counties of what is now the Republic of Ireland their independence. That production will also be staged in its historical surroundings, this time at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. Also in the works is a collaboration with writer Belinda McKeon inspired by the Cumann na mBan (Women's Council) split over the Treaty.

A new, outdoor, collaboration between Solas Nua and playwright Deirdre Kinehan is in the works for this summer and the company is looking forward to exploring how Irish creatives have invented new mediums and turned others on their head over the past century. "These great playwrights and artists from Ireland being on the cusp of what was new, what was the Solas Nua of the time and the Fishamble of new Irish writing of the time; that's something we'll be leaning into as we wrap up the Decade of Centenaries here," promises Daugherty.

Solas Nua's presentation of Fishambles' Inside the GPO is streaming April 1 - 5, 2021. For more information and to book, visit https://www.solasnua.org/events/inside-gpo. A captioned video will also be available.

Cast

Karen Ardiff, Orla Fitzgerald, Louis Deslis, Martha Dunlea, Carolyn Donnelly, Tom Duffy, Desmond Eastwood, Liz FitzGibbon, Gavin Fullam, Manus Halligan, Ali Hardiman, Aidan Kelly, Ronan Leahy, Daniel McDermott, Michael Glenn Murphy, ​Meg O'Brien, Gavan O'Connor Duffy, and Don Wycherley

Creative Team

Writer Colin Murphy

Director Jim Culleton

Dramaturg Gavin Kostick

Scenic & Costume Design Niamh Lunny

Lighting Design Mark Galione

Sound Design Carl Kennedy

Stage Manager Tara Doolan

Assistant Stage Manager Caoimhe Whelan

Movement Director Bryan Burroughs

Hair and Makeup Val Sherlock

Graphic Design by Publicis Dublin

Production Managed by Mark Galione and Eoin Kilkenny

Front of House Manager ​Ronan Carey

Line Producer Aisling O'Brien

Associate Producer Pauric Dempsey and Colin Murphy

Produced by Eva Scanlan

Filmed and edited by White Thorn Films

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