If you were born in Ireland circa 1958 then Paul Mercier is attempting to tell your story in his new play We Ourselves which is being presented at Dublin s Vicar St. from May 15th-20th. The production will then embark on a nationwide tour.
But first off, Mercier stresses that the we, ourselves doesn t mean the play is a political treatise! or has anything to do with Sinn Fein. He s just giving that phrase a new meaning at the start of the new century. And why not?
Starring Passion Machine stalwarts such as Liam Carney, Gail Fitzpatrick and David Gorry, plus relative newcomers Gabrielle Breathnach, Conor Byrne, Gerry McCann and Pia McInerney the play, according to the Passion Machine press release, purports to give a view of Ireland over the last quarter century as seen through the eyes of seven Irish nationals. Their separate stories combine to give a wry perspective on we ourselves as a people.
At least Paul hopes they combine. When I spoke to him he was frantically winding his way from each of the seven rehearsal spaces where each of the seven actors was slaving away, Passion Machine style, to get their part right for opening night.
The rehearsals are very demanding, he explains. Because of the logistics of it, the dynamics, the fact that it is seven different people telling their stories. If the actors were inter-acting with each other it would be a different energy, but we haven t gone live with it yet, so I m still not sure how well it will work when it all comes together. The only way for people to judge is, I guess, to come along and see the play! But the point of cohesion, where their stories all come together, is not something I am willing to divulge in advance!
The seed of the play, Paul also explains, was his need to tell the tale of a sense of belonging to a particular generation. As in people, like himself, who were actually born in 1958 and, as such were part of some watershed moments in Irish history since that time. But how and why did he choose the particular perspectives of these seven people?
That s a question I keep asking myself and I have to say, I don t know, Paul explains. It was obviously subliminal because these seven people if the play works will reflect a sense of consciousness that is common to anyone who was born around that period. Not so much in a Carl Jung collective consciousness sense, but that there is a consciousness of a kind people of my age now, share.
As in people around forty, Paul? And feeling some form of new millennium tension?
I suppose so, yeah! I want to tap into that energy. Like collective emotion recollected but not so much in tranquillity as heightened, embellished, altered, making us all ask the question where is truth in all this? That s what the play is about. But these people do share those links and we drop into their lives at a particular point, to check out the validity or otherwise of those links.
What, in Paul Mercier s view, are the watershed moments shared by his generation?
Well, close-to-home, for us, is the fight fought by the independent sector to establish its own voice in theatre, Mercier suggests.
And look at music! Back in the 70s this generation was watching Dana on the Eurovision Song Contest, as if that was the only real outlet for Irish music. Now, there s no fucking talking to us at all, in terms of music. We rule the roost! That, in itself, is a phenomenal change for this generation to have witnessed and taken part in. Even initiated. Let s not forget that people like Bono and the rest of U2 are hitting forty this year. And the same sweeping changes apply to sport. I wrote an article for Hot Press once, where I said that my dad s only hope of ever seeing anything close to Ireland hitting the World Cup was watching England win in 1966! But now the whole world is open to us in that arena, too.
This cultural change-over is not, Paul Mercier also believes, fully appreciated by for example, those young people nowadays who say a person is old at thirty. A decade from now those same people will have to face similar questions in their own lives. As such, he jokes maybe seeing this play will also prepare them for that trauma!