Stage

IN HIS interview elsewhere in this issue Michael D. Higgins points out that there is little to be gained from indulging in discussions about a Dublin/the rest of Ireland divide. However it would be fatuous to deny that while Dublin slept coiled inside smug self assurance in terms of its pivotal role in relation to the arts, regional areas such as Galway gradually became more vibrant centres of cultural life, in many ways. Anyone who spend even a weekend at the recent Galway Arts Festival must have felt that reality first hand.

Wexford is another, previously neglected regional area that has recently come to assert its space in the cultural sphere, as a result of the television transmission of Billy Roche's Wexford Trilogy and his new play at Dublin's Peacock Theatre, The Cavalcaders in which he also plays a leading role as an actor. Roche certainly sees the irony in the fact that his talent was originally recognised by a London theatre establishment rather than the doyens of the Dublin scene.

"Obviously a language that was exotic in London was taken for granted by some people here" he says. "But things have shifted in Dublin over the past five years in relation to who's running the show, so people have begun to look outside the pale. And even the theatre audiences themselves have changed.

"In fact these realities seem to be so new that they often seen unsure of what's going on in these plays, not certain whether to laugh or cry. It's as though they don't talk to one another as working class people do. We can even feel that on stage, a predominantly middle class audience is always a beat or two behind everything that's going on in the play!"

Billy Roche also believes that Wexford audiences in particular benefit to a great degree in a social sense from seeing the rhythm of their own language and lives presented on stage and on screen.

"I haven't been down there since they started showing the Trilogy but I hear that the whole town is buzzing and people are feeling great on being reminded that they do have their own specific culture and identity that is now being recognised abroad" he says.

Part of Ireland's culture which Billy Roche has become more and more interested in exploring through his work is the energy of sexuality, particularly oppressed sexuality. This, he suggests is partly the Catholic guilt-ridden force that casts a deepening shadow over successive plays in The Wexford Trilogy and which dominates The Cavalcaders.

"Most of my work is about exploring the dynamic between men and women, and men and men, to a lesser degree," he says. "But in the new play I'm really down there rummaging around the darkness of the libido! I don't know if men in other cultures share the guilt many of us Irish men, and women feel, but it also is what makes sex extra exciting, this element of eating forbidden fruit.

"Through indulging we are defying the priests, nuns, parents and society pressures that conspire to oppress us in that way, sexually. And this subject is, again, something I'll definitely be exploring in my next play."

Also recommended: Mentioned in the last issue of Hot Press and highly recommended are the two one-act plays by Jennifer Johnson which are now being staged as part of the Project Lunchtimes at Bewley's, Grafton Street. Both O Ananias, Azarias and Miseal and Twinkletoes focus on continuing tensions in Northern Ireland in a manner that is undeniably moving because it deals with the issues on a microcosmic level. If you're left cold by the endless news reports and repeated headlines, then allow this theatrical journey to take you behind the scenes to examine the myriad ways in which "the troubles" have effected family life in the North. For a fiver you also get a free lunch.