As part of the re-imagining Ireland series at the National Concert Hall, one of the nation’s – And the world’s – pre-eminent Beckett Actors returns to the Irish stage.
“Look, we’re both going to die. I just met you today, and you’re going to die alone.”
Lisa Dwan, thankfully, has not gone the full Bond villain on us. Rather, we’re deep in conversation about one of Ireland’s greatest playwrights – and, without a doubt, the greatest influence on Lisa’s life and career.
“Samuel Beckett provides that beautiful poetic prism to sit with these universal thoughts,” she says. “I’ve performed in France without translating; I didn’t want subtitles in Hong Kong. If I connect with the words wholeheartedly, I can create a human sound that’s accessible in any language.”
You wouldn’t doubt it for a minute. The Athlone-born actress is a genuine star. A burgeoning ballet career aborted due to knee injuries, she embarked on a remarkable thespian journey that included a role in Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog. She was also – apparently! – the first person to introduce the onesie to Britain. But it was reading the extraordinary Beckett piece, Not I, that changed everything.
“There was an intimidation factor,” she admits. “And I could have kept that gremlin going, but I had to just sit down and read the script. And soon, I was hearing the nuns and the streets of Athlone; the parochial asides and the Christian piety; the sarcasm, the wit, the doubt, the fear and the mania.
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“It was a soundscape of Ireland,” she says, “but also of my internal being.”
Not I – a monologue performed at the speed of thought, with only a pair of lips elevated above the stage visible to the audience – is an utterly unique work. But, as Lisa points out, Beckett is a unique writer. That, she says, was clear from the first time she encountered his work.
“I was about 12 years of age, sitting at home. I saw Jack MacGowran’s face on the TV – I didn’t know who he was – with Sean Phillip’s voice piercing into his head, and he looked terrified. I didn’t understand any of it, but I was arrested, utterly compelled, and shaken to my core, though I didn’t know why. That was Eh Joe.”
Not I lay in wait for her.
“Years later,” she recalls, “I was in Dublin, working with Stephen Brennan, and he was telling me
about this play, how a mouth appears to float around the theatre and across the stage. He said, ‘Once you see this play, you’ll never forget it’. I was sent the script – and written on the page was a transcript of how my mind works. Only when I’d read it and heard that musicality, and felt the propulsion of that inherent rhythm, could I marry it with the mental image I had on Baggot St. Bridge.”
The play comes with a fearsome reputation – more than one of Lisa’s predecessors succumbed to madness, trying to play the part. There was also a prejudice that doing Beckett was commercial suicide.
“Beckett doesn’t sell,” she says with a rueful smile. “That’s all I heard from the start. You’re so used to being told ‘no’, about everything, from the very moment you have the bold notion that you want a career on stage. But after all the ‘no’s, and comments like ‘That doesn’t sound like the Royal Court Theatre’, they eventually put it on – and it sold out.”
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Rejection would be water off a duck’s back for Lisa now. “My outlook on life has shifted massively through doing Beckett,” she reveals. But it doesn’t happen. Instead, capacity crowds have become the norm everywhere from Hong Kong to New York. Lisa is now widely regarded as one of the world’s finset Beckett actors. She appears at the National Concert Hall later this month as part of the Imagining Home series, doing Not I and Footfalls.
“I’m extraordinarily grateful to the NCH, and Fintan O’Toole, for singling me out. To get a pat on the back from your own means more to me than being on Charlie Rose or anything like that. That’s a weird thing about coming home: you don’t realise it was something you always craved until you get it. I left a depressed person who wasn’t taken seriously. It’s good to get the opportunity to grow into the person people didn’t think you capable of being – but it’s even nicer to get the Céad Míle Fáilte.”
For Lisa, who is soon to be Artist in Residence at NYU – she will assume the same role at Princeton next year – it’s another landmark occasion in a glittering career.
“I pinch myself. I’m that little girl from Athlone who was told ‘no’.”
Imagining Home: Into Europe takes place at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on March 30.
