THE map of Ireland hanging on the wall in Druid Theatre's administrative offices tells some of the story. The small Connemara village of Leenane has been neatly boxed off in green ink. All eyes appear to move to that place. In association with the Royal Court Theatre in London, the Druid is currently presenting Martin McDonagh's extraordinary trio of plays. The Leenane Trilogy, in repertory style building up to the first of four ambitious Trilogy Days which begin on June 20th and continue for the next three, Saturdays.
Druid artistic director Garry Hynes is probably far more excited by the project than she seems. But then Hynes, an intense, dedicated professional with more than 20 years experience of the theatre, including stints with the Royal Court of which she remains an associate director, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and of course, most controversially, the Abbey, is not an individual given to demonstrative displays. Wary, even defensive when facing questions about herself she is neither a novelist nor poet, so her work though coming from within can not be classified as autobiographical. Therefore she feels her personal life is not part of her work.
She has written two plays. On being reminded of this achievement, she dismisses it with a characteristically exasperated, "that was so long ago; it's no longer relevant. But she did write them, The Pursuits Of Pleasure is about Oscar Wilde, while island Protected By A Bridge Of, Glass, set in the 16th century, and dealing with the colonisation of Ireland, centres, she says, on an imagine conflict between Elizabeth I and Granuaile.
The idea of theatre director as superstar neither appeals to her, nor convinces her. I couldn't do my work without the people around me. It really is a team effort "When the names of two international superstar directors are mentioned, she quickly points out that they don't tend to do new work, Marina Carr, Vincent Woods, Martin McDonagh have all emerged under Hynse's direction. While at the Abbey she commissioned Billy Roche's The Cavalcaders but as yet has only directed one Roche play, Poor Beast In The Rain at the Druid.
It is obvious she is tolerating the ordeal of being interviewed solely out of belief in the Triology. When the Druid Theatre Company Royal Court Theatre co production premiere of McDonagh A Beauty Queen in Leenane opened at the Town Hall Theatre in Galway on February 1st, 1996, the possibility of performing the three plays on a single day was already clear to Hynes.
When I refer to a similar one day's continuous theatre project, the RSC's Plantagenets, an ambitious adaptation of Shakespeare's history cycle, drawing on Henry VI parts 1, 2 and 3 and Richard III, producing nine hours of theatre in one day, she smiles at the memory of what was a marvellous theatrical feat. Hynes was working with the RSC at the time. There is a small footnote to Plantagenets, playing the part of Henry VI was the now double Oscar nominee, Ralph Fines, who was then just another young actor. Quick as a flash Hynes retorts, Ralph Fiennes was never just another young he was always special."
She has a reputation for approaching casting with a determination undercut by an unpredictable ability to change her mind. Hynes also possesses an instinctive feel for new talent. It was she who had discovered the young Martin McDonagh a year earlier. "I remember reading a manuscript, it was A Skull In Connemara and it was clear before I reached the end of the first page that here was an extraordinary writer of dialogue. Hynes immediately turned to The Beauty Queen Of Leenane. She knew then she had found a gifted new writer. Now she is even more convinced.
Within a month of its premiere, the production had transferred to the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. By late 1996, McDonagh was not, only famous, he was established. The Cripple Of Irishmaan had opened at London's National Theatre. I think Martin's voice is unique; he's a young Londoner of Irish parents and he is writing plays set in the west of Ireland. This is the world of his imagination, it is a world, he is creating entirely out of his imagination, stimulated by Ireland. It is a modern sensibility." It is also very black, extremely funny and undeniably violent. A surreal variation of Pinter meets a present day J.M. Synge complete with suicides, matricides, ears cut off dogs, melting holy statues and fights to the death over crushed crisps.
Father Welsh, the bewildered priest in The Lonesome West remarks to Girleen the poitin seller who is madly in love with him, "Maybe I am, high horse so. Maybe that's why I don't fit in to this town. Although I'd have to have killed half my fecking relatives to fit in to this town. Jeez! I thought Leenane was a nice place when first I turned up here, but no. Turns out it's the murder capital of fecking Europe. Did you know Coleman had killed his dad on purpose?" Beneath the violence is an underlying vulnerability. Even at their most extreme moments, McDonagh's characters are aware of their loneliness, their powerlessness, their strangeness. The intensely physical style of these plays is ideally suited to Hynes whose work has always been marked by a daring physicality.
HYNES'S commitment to Irish drama has long been recognised yet, as she points out himself, "that wasn't always so. We did Ionesco and Edward Albee." She did, Ionesco and Edward Albee." She says, it took a while to glow up and look at Irish writing". The diversity is such that it is quite feasible for an Irish director to focus on Irish drama without appearing artistically limited. Friel, Murphy, McGuinness, Sebastian Barry, Roche, J.B. Keane - it is, very diverse and exciting. Look at Marina Carr, McDonagh, Woods...
Her life in the theatre began at University College Galway where she studied English and history. I got my exams through shutting myself off from everything and studying for the last few weeks. I'd say my attendance record for lectures might not have been that wonderful. I became involved with Dram Soc almost as soon as I arrived at college." While there she directed her first play, Friel's The Loves Of Cats Maguire with Marie Mullen, then 19 and soon to become a Druid regular, in the lead role. Hynes was never personally drawn to acting. Of her college days, she, says: "Were I to go back now, I would like to study history more closely. Hynes does speak with, the careful deliberation of many academics. At school, she had thought she would be a teacher.
Her interest in history, particularly her awareness of social history has shaped her approach to theatre. "I was very lucky. I was born in 1953 at a time in Ireland when everything was suddenly possible. I went to university." So did her father. "Going to university was there if we wanted it. It was no big deal. "
The only girl and the eldest in a family of four children, Garry Hynes was born in Ballaghdereen, Co Roscommon, her mother's home. Her father, a native of Athenry, Co Galway, was the headmaster in the Vocational School in Ballaghadereen. The family moved to Monaghan town when she was five and she attended the St Louis Convent there. In 1965, her father was appointed chief executive officer with the Co Galway VEC. The family then moved to Galway, where she completed her secondary education at the Dominican Convent.
Hynes does not romanticism either herself of her life. Childhood revisited is forthcoming. If you wish to speak to Garry Hynes, discuss theatre - theatre is her job.
Yet she describes the great warmth, unconditional love and security of her child hood with some emotion, visibly relaxing. The there was always, great talk about everything. Not politics, just everything." The family, spoke Irish: "I didn't speak English until I went to school. As a child she read. Theatre was not central to her: "I saw my first play in Monaghan when I was a teenager. ,But a love of theatre not only developed in Hynes but also in her brother Jerome who is nowmanaging director of the Wexford opera festival.
Hynes is direct logical, non-art and exasperated, by the inaccurate versions of her and her life which have become part of arts lore in Ireland. In demeanour, she could be a doctor, a social worker, a teacher. She is about five foot tall and has the face of a worrier, her smiles are infrequent and she looks older than she is. Yet when she does smile, the formidable Hynes acquires the face of a cocky kid.
For all her discipline and control, she seems to be an extremely emotional person. Hardly surprising, considering the raw emotional depths her work explores, typified by productions such as her outstanding version of Tom Murphy's A Whistle In The Dark, which was later transferred to the Royal Court, the memorable Abbey production of Eugene McCabe's King Of The Castle, her haunting, sorrowful interpretation of Ford's Jacoban tragedy Tis A Pity She's A Whore; and possibly still the best production yet of McGuinness's Factory Girls. Audiences left her, Abbey production of Tom Murphy's Famine virtually gutted by the experience.
She appears a curious, unpredictable mixture of pragmatist and emotional witness and it is the balance of emotions, realism and imagination which she carries into her work Although appearing to personify the idea of the cold hearted artist relentlessly, in pursuit of perfection she has a controlled empathy for performers even those she may have driven to tears.
Hynes must have seen many aspiring actors fail. Is it a savage life. No. It is not. But it is tough and demanding. The magic of theatre and the reality of life meet at a place very close to where she stands.
IN 1975, she founded Druid Theatre Company with two other UCG graduates actors Mick Lally, and Marie Mullen, its first production was The Playboy Of The Western World.
With in five, years Druid triumphed with two productions at the Edinburgh Festival fringe in 1980, two years before Druid made its formal debut at the Dublin Theatre Festival with The Playboy. In 1983 Druid formed an association with Ia wright Tom Murphy. Productions of Conversations On A Homecoming and Bailegangaire - both new works for Druid were transferred to the West End's Domar, Warehouse, as was the company's production of The Playboy Of The Western Wood and ensured that Druid would become internationally recognised almost as quickly, as it broke through from provincial, to national levels. It was Hynes who virtually rediscovered M.J. Molloy's The Wood Of The Whispering.
When she was appointed artistic director of the Abbey Theatre in 1990, Hynes soon discovered that she was to become the victim of her Druid success. Less than a year in the job, which she was first offered in 1986, she was to find herself in the familiar Irish position of being more feted abroad than at home. Her controversial production of novelist John McGahern's debut play, The Power Of Darkness, pleased British critics. Home audiences were less pleased. The production led to an inquest of sorts appearing in this paper in which observers were asked to comment. Give the woman a year at least before we start forming a jury," playwright Hugh Leonard replied when asked at the time for his opinion.
Earlier, her Abbey debut production - O Casey's The Plough And The Stats in May 1991 challenged any, notions of picture frame realism some critics brought to it. The difference between having the artistic freedom to take daring chances with an independent, professional theatre company in Galway contrasted with the restrictions of being in charge of a national institution, complete with the burden of fulfilling the role of a national theatre, whatever that is. While at the Abbey, Hynes had wonderful moments, not least of which was the ambitious production of Eugene O'Neill's demanding The Iceman Cometh. "I saw that as an event", she says. "it was great to do that." In general terms, however, she does not wish to discuss her term at the Abbey.
"I was there for three years, I'm 44. Three years is a very small part of my life. Looking for neither sympathy nor revenge, she is impressively, even disappointingly, non committal about her stay in the firing line.
When she left the Abbey, Hynes spent a year travelling, reading, "taking time off". While the accumulation of objects does not mean much to her she denies being particularly unmaterialistic. I like the good things, good food, books, music, travel. I wouldn't say I was particularly unmaterialistic." She now lives in Dublin and commutes to Galway.
THE technical crew is busy with the final touches while the actors are up on stage, patiently responding to commands. Fragments of scenes are examined with clinical precision, each, gesture, the simplest movement, the position of a character, the extent of the swing of a closing door. Hynes directs with the minimum of words no long speeches. A question is put as economically and as efficiently as a lawyer cross examining a witness. In a break from a technical session, she comes out to the foyer. In the street outside the theatre, actors David Ganly and David Wilmot are already playing football as they do during most breaks. They are joined by Martin McDonagh who has sat in on all the rehearsals. The Town Ball Theatre seats 400, four times as many as does the Druid's Chapel Lane home.
Back in the theatre, she watches the players while also examining the world they inhabit on the stage. If she were more of a showperson, indeed if she were a showperson at all, and, she is clearly not, the quiet, careful, determined Hynes would be waving her arms and welcoming, the nation to Galway for these plays, such is her obvious belief in them. Theatre is the art of creating moments, evoking emotions. Hynes does not offer easy definitions. "We are", she says, "in the business of making images. Of making images, exploring the emotions and taking risks.
