Far away, so close

Whether or not you protested last weekend against the visit of President Bush to this country, there is one major difference between a weekend of protests and a play that is a polemic against war – the play sticks around longer. And even though Caryl Churchill didn’t write her play Far Away as a protest against the American war against Iraq, it is specifically the kind of play which Jimmy Fay, director with the Bedrock Theatre Company, set out to stage about eight months ago. Not surprisingly then, he’s pretty astounded at how resonant Churchill’s play, penned in 2000, is in relation to such issues as the recent revelations about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

“There are three people in the play but there is also a central scene where there are a lot of prisoners on stage and that scene is set in a hat factory,” he explains. “So these hats are being paraded on the bodies of prisoners who have been beaten and battered and in chains. So we have twenty people doing this, stripped down, which is abstract in a way but no one could look at that and not think of the pictures that came out of the Americans torturing Iraqi prisoners. They’re saying, now, it was not American policy but I believe it was. The same is probably happening in Cuba. So, obviously, we didn’t set out to do this play because of all that but, eight months ago, when I decided to do another play, I did want it to be anti-Bush, anti-war, political on some way.”
Jimmy agrees that some of those images of Iraq prisoners being tortured – “particularly the one of the guy in what looked like a Ku Klux Klan outfit” – looked strangely surreal, almost like a Francis Bacon painting.
“And that’s what I like about this play,” he says. “Because Caryl doesn’t set this play in any particular time and it is quite impressionistic. It says more about the whole subject of war in the broadest sense. But anyone who comes to see this play in the Project – and if they’re going to come they probably will be anti-Bush as well - is going to have in their mind all those images they’ve seen on TV and in the papers and react accordingly.”
The focus of Far Away is a woman named Joan and it’s her story that is told, against the backdrop of ‘a world filled with fear, where the difference between right and wrong has become clouded and no one knows who or even what can be trusted anymore. In that context, what does Fay hope the play will say to theatregoers, or even make them do?
“We’d hope it would galvanise them in some sense, provoke them,” he responds. “But the theme spreads further than Far Away just being anti-war. The first scene tells of how a daughter sees her uncle bundle people into a lorry and beat them up and it brings to mind the treatment of immigrants. But the aunt is in denial and she manipulates the girl, trying to make her deny what she’s seen.
“But this all takes place in a nice, normal little house and even that has echoes of Ireland now, in terms of that vote a few weeks ago which, to me, was racist. It’s like eighty per cent of people saying ‘we want Ireland to stay white and middle class.’ Echoes of all that come across in the play, too. So we would hope that these issues will engage people, start a debate. Among and within people. That’s really the best we can do. Don’t you think most theatre should be like that? Going out on demonstrations is one thing but making people question themselves, deep within, is another and that’s what I hope this play will do.”
Directed by Jimmy Fay, Far Away stars Jane Brennan, Laura Murphy (pictured) and Barry Ward. And live music on the night will be played by Vincent Doherty and Ivan Birtwhistle.

Far Away is currently running at the Project. 01 881 9613/4