Writing the music of mortality

Waterford playwright Jim Nolan’s new work, set in a nursing home, explores growing old and facing death, but despite that, its author claims, it is ‘celebratory and uplifting’

WATERFORD seems very far away on the morning I travel from Dublin to meet playwright Jim Nolan; 180 kilometres seems an even greater distance when you only have 50 minutes for a chat. But Nolan's new play, Brighton, is in its last few days of rehearsal and the local press is waiting for a photograph for the weekend supplement's front page. "That is what will sell our tickets," Nolan says.

Waterford-born and bred, and based in the city for his 25-year theatre career, Nolan understands the importance of the local; both the local audience that will fill the seats when Brightonopens at the Garter Lane Theatre and the sense of local identity that has fed his work. He fumbles around for a line from The Salvage Shop, the 1998 play that remains his best-known work, to express the dual privilege and responsibility he feels this local identity has thrust upon him.

He is unable to recall it from memory and too modest to read it aloud, so he flips through a copy of the play (his mother’s copy; he does not own a copy himself) and slides it across the table to me bashfully, half-standing, half-sitting so that he can point to the appropriate lines. It reads: “that his voice belongs to those who have none, that when he sings he sings for those who cannot speak.”

“That’s the only way that I can deal with the narcissism of being a writer,” he says. “To tell the stories that belong to the . . .” he completes the sentence with a gesture meaning “the rest of the world”.

Nolan is a slightly nervous interviewee. Like many writers, he is preoccupied with being properly understood. He grasps for words, breaks off into elliptical silences, invites me to finish his sentences, and apologises for poor expressions and the occasional swear word – “you’ll take that out, won’t you?”

“If only I could write it down,” he says several times. “Are you getting what I mean?” However, Nolan is far more coherent than he thinks he is, and he is open and generous in his answers, and endearingly worried that he is mis-directing me with his anecdotal answers; as if there might be some other story I am interested in writing about other than his own.

Indeed, for the first half-hour of our brief meeting Nolan extols the generosity of those who have enabled and supported his work over the years: the Garter Lane Theatre, who commissioned Brighton; the Arts Council, who "have never marginalised theatre in Waterford" and who have contributed significantly to the emergent life of his new play; the actor John Rogan, whose paralysis after an unfortunate accident inspired Brighton; and Kevin O'Shea, stalwart of the amateur drama tradition, whose "extraordinary generosity of investment" in the play is just one of the stories of local munificence that Nolan directs me towards.

Determined to give pioneers such as O’Shea their due, Nolan says “I deeply resent the condescension with which people regard amateur drama. They do what they have to do without the privilege of the time or funding professional artists have, and they keep the theatre alive in places where there is little or no professional theatre. John B Keane and Tom Murphy came out of amateur drama. It is still an extraordinary, vital part of [theatre culture], surviving, thriving out of incredible sacrifice.”

Indeed Red Kettle, the theatre company Nolan founded with Ben Hennessy in Waterford in 1985 and which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, came out of the amateur tradition too. "And much of the work that we did professionally couldn't have been done without the contributions of people active in amateur drama," says Nolan, who worked full-time with the company for 15 years. "I remember we did The Cruciblein 1995 and we couldn't afford to pay the entire cast of 21 so we had a mixture of amateurs and professionals involved, and in many cases you wouldn't have known [the difference]. You had professionals like Anna Manahan giving the benefit of their experience and expertise to those aspiring, and it made for [great work], even the critics agreed."

In a straitened funding climate, the generosity of unpaid interns and volunteers from the amateur drama tradition will continue to prop up professional regional theatre, Nolan says, mentioning by name those voluntarily involved in helping to bring Brightonto life, as audience and advocates: "we owe our existence to them."

The interview is more than two-thirds over and we have still not talked about Brighton, a play about "the music of our own mortality" as Nolan puts it. It's a play about growing old and facing death, he says, "but more important to me is that it is celebratory and uplifting of life. I suppose it is the nature of the perversity of art that to [create something uplifting] I had to set it in a nursing home."

In typical self-effacing manner, Nolan relates the play's genesis by deflecting the attention away from himself towards the stories that inspired its creation: his maternal grandmother and an aunt in London, both called Alice, who faced their deaths with "courage and grace"; his mother, Kitty, who found "new independence in extremis" when her husband died. Then there is the aforementioned John Rogan, who traded amateur success in Ireland for a professional career on the stage in London, which came to a premature end when he was left paralysed after an accident.

“But it is not John’s story,” Nolan says, careful not to breach the privacies of their distant friendship. “Yes I wrote it for him, and I had hoped that he would come back to be in it.” (Rogan was unable to take on the role, but travelled back for the play’s opening last Saturday night.) “I was enthralled by his courage, but it is not his story” – it seems vitally important that he reiterates that point.

“I wanted to reflect something greater in . . .” he falters towards a conclusion. “Do you understand what I am trying to say? It is about discharging that . . . for the audience, so that I can, so that we can, look in clear sight at our own future, our own [imminent mortality]. That’s what I see as my job as a writer. To stay alive to the function of recording that struggle. Do you get me? Do you know what I mean?”

Brightonby Jim Nolan runs until May 15 at the Garter Lane Theatre, Waterford