THERE probably isn’t any other play quite as relevant to the changing political landscape in Ireland right now as A Night In November by Marie Jones. It’s currently running in Eamon Doran’s, on the site of the former Rock Garden, and focuses on the experience of a young Northern Protestant, who finds he must completely re-evaluate his life and attitudes after attending a qualifying match between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in Belfast’s Windsor Park and then following the Irish teak to New York.

The author stresses from the outset that the play is not so much about football as it is about bigotry. “Particularly the kind of hatred Protestants in the North feel towards everybody from the Republic,” she says. “And I am speaking from my own experience as a Protestant brought up in Belfast. That’s why I understood the level of hatred, bigotry and sectarianism that would have been evident at that match and other matches like it.

“The character in my play is sent on a journey of reassessment after witnessing the abject hatred shown by his own people, which makes him look at how, for example, in his own job in the dole office, he would mistreat Catholics, do all he could to cut their benefits, get them into trouble by claiming they are working and so on. Unfortunately that is par for the course in the North. But I’ve managed to rise above all that and I hope my play helps other people to do the same thing.”

Morally inferior

So how deeply rooted in the Protestant psyche is this abject hatred of all Catholics, particularly those from the Republic?

“Very deeply,” says Marie. “As a kid, that’s how I grew up, having it bred into me from as soon as you could hear, that you must hate all Catholics, and that’s compounded by the marches, flags, all the paraphernalia of the Orange Tradition. But what I did – but not until I was at least in my 30s – and what the character in the play does is to look again at where these seeds of malevolence came from, when they were originally set in the Protestant psyche and how he can uproot them and escape from all that madness.”

Is part of this madness a dominant, if rarely articulated tendency among Protestants to believe that Catholics also are morally and intellectually inferior – which apparently was an argument put forward in the 1950s in response to the question of why there weren’t more Catholic teachers in Northern schools?

“Yes, that would be a general belief, also part of what’s bred into Protestants,” Marie recalls. “But that kind of response is just an excuse used to keep Catholics out of positions of power. By propagating that kind of nonsense, Protestants in power don’t have to admit they are in the wrong to exclude Catholics. They can go for the easy option of ‘oh, sure these people are spiritually, morally, intellectually inferior to us, they don’t deserve top jobs’. And the main reason Catholics were kept out of power, of course, was because there was this fear of Home rule, Dublin rule. And that still is a core fear among Unionists.”

Particularly unionists like Ian Paisley Snr. and Jnr., neither of whom – as is the case with the majority of Protestant politicians in the North – can even admit that there were any wrongs perpetrated on Catholics. This, as far as Marie Jones is concerned, is a key stumbling block in relation to the future of Northern Ireland.

“Politicians like the Paisleys can’t acknowledge the wrong that was done to Catholics and until they do, we can’t really move forward,” she says. “But more and more ordinary Protestants can admit that. This is why you have the emergence of new parties like the Progressive Unionist Party, who are willing to recognise, and admit to, the wrongs done to Catholics in the past in Northern Ireland, and the wrongs still being done. David Ervine, for example, is a really positive force along these lines, because he’s actually saying ‘we will have to sit down and talk to Sinn Fein’, which the Unionists would never accept. But that is the way forward.”

DECISIVE TIME

Marie Jones believes that playwrights such as herself, as well as poets, singers, movie makers and everyone working in the cultural sphere, have an important part to play in this process. With direct access to the general public, Marie suggests that artists may have even more power to effect change at street level, than politicians can.

“I definitely believe that,” she says, excitedly. “And our theatre company, Dubblejoint, is dedicated to creating popular, controversial theatre that tackles themes such as this. And I really believe there wouldn’t be any point to my being a writer if I didn’t address issues such as this. That’s what all artists should be doing at such a decisive time in Ireland’s history. We’re all together in this and anything anyone can do along these lines will surely help.

“I certainly hope A Night In November helps clarify things for people in the South. But more than that I hope it helps up here in the North, because bigotry and sectarianism are crippling this part of the country.”

Did Marie invite Ian Paisley to A Night In November? Would she now send out an invitation for him to attend the Dublin production of the play?

“I did invite him to the show when it was produced up here but we were told he wasn’t available,” she says. “And I definitely would like to his this occasion to invite him to the Dublin production. But it remains to be seen if he will bother to attend.”