BRIGIT SAINT BRIGIT THEATRE CO.
Thunder & Turf
Once Upon a Time in Ireland
An Evening of One Acts by J.M. Synge & M.J. Molloy
Directed by Cathy MW Kurz
March 19 - 29
Home is the road; home is the sea. Three stories, cut from the bolt of simple cloth, woven with mythic thread:
In the Shadow of the Glen by J.M. Synge
The Paddy Pedlar by M.J. Molloy
Riders to the Sea by J.M. Synge
The deep evening vigil: A man lying covered in a sheet, a woman alone, a late-night traveller.
Tenants, a thief, and a tinker: Wayward intrigue, survival for a pedlar's pack.
Coming home: Premonitions, rituals of the sea.
THE ACTS
IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN
by John Millington Synge
"For what good is a bit of a farm with cows on it, and sheep on the back hills, when you do be sitting looking out from a door the like of that door, and seeing nothing but the mists rolling down the bog, and the mists again, and they rolling up the bog, and hearing nothing but the wind crying out in the bits of broken trees were left from the great storm, and the streams roaring with the rain." — Nora
SYNOPSIS
A tramp seeking shelter in a wild storm happens upon an isolated farmhouse where he finds a young woman tending to the body of her elderly husband. After accepting a warm drink and some quiet conversation, he discovers a startling truth after she runs off to fetch another nearby farmer. Upon her return with the young man (bent on winning her recently-widowed hand in marriage) secrets are revealed, changing the future course of events for all involved.
THE PADDY PEDLAR
by Michael Joseph Molloy
Lights Up. Ooshala Clancy lines fully dressed on his back on the floor, with one leg across one of the stools, from which he had fallen in a drunken slumber. He is a well built man of fifty with the alert eye and the quick speech of the man who has contrived to live for many years by his wits and by roguery. But there is nothing low, or mean looking about him. On the contrary there is the curious air of the gentleman; and it appears in his seriousness, in his impressive gestures and walk and carriage, in his clear speech. All this seems to proceed not from an affectation, but from some kind of inner conviction.
SYNOPSIS
Set in the 1840's, as the famine is beginning, a self-proclaimed gentleman pits his considerable wits against all in an effort to keep whiskey in his jar, a scrap of food on the table, and occasionally, to help those worse off than himself. When he meets a Pedlar (first smelling a mark to be exploited) he soon discovers the Pedlar's pack holds far more than he bargained for-- and finds himself in a new corner: One he can't talk his way out of.
RIDERS TO THE SEA
by John Millington Synge
(raising her head and speaking as if she did not see the people around her) “They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me.... I'll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one on the other. I'll have no call now to be going down and getting Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won't care what way the sea is when the other women will be keening.” — Maurya
SYNOPSIS
In 1897, J. M. Synge was encouraged by William Butler Yeats to visit the Aran Islands. While on the island of Inishmaan for five years, he captured the poetry of the language singular to this locale as well as collecting stories (including the identification of a drowned man by the stitching of his clothing and the account of a man's ghost being seen riding a horse) recounted in his book, The Aran Islands. Riders to the Sea was inspired by these real-life accounts.
