I'M INTERESTED in doing work that pushes the boundaries of illusion and art and how we perceive theatre. I love stretching those boundaries. These are the words of Olwen Fouere (42), who has been in the business of taking on daring and experimental roles in Irish theatre for over 20 years, from playing the part of a man undergo ding a sex change in Aidan Matthews' The Diamond Body in the early Eighties to her memorable rendition of Oscar Wilde's "brutal and spoilt" Salome first performed at the Gate in 1988, in a brilliant, stylised production directed by Stephen Berkoff (whom Fouere considers "a genius").
At the moment she is speaking about "the exploration of reality and illusion" in Luigi Pirandello's play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, which Shaw dubbed "the most original play ever written", and which opens tomorrow night in a new version by Tom Kilroy at the Abbey Theatre, directed by John Crowley. Fouere plays Madame Pace, "a tiny cameo part she is a madame of sorts she's foreign, a woman who came out of the war." Believe it or not, this is Foueres debut on the main stage of the Abbey. She is tickled by the anomaly of the situation.
"I suppose it is because I've done so much off the wall stuff," she concludes, with a throaty chuckle. "I've always been interested in `nonverbal' theatre, a theatre which is more about being than about talking," she continues. "I'm fascinated by mime and the possibilities of physical language, or even vocal language without words."
She traces this desire to go beyond linguistic limitations to the fact that she grew up bilingual "It means that you never quite trust language". Her Breton parents always spoke French to her at home, but she started to answer them in English after the age of five meanwhile she was learning Irish at school. The result was a linguistic "crisis of identity" "I got shy about talking in general. At baby school I used to think that the other kids would know what I was saying even if I just said it in my head. I had this belief that I could communicate in a different way."
The youngest of five children, Fouere was born after her parents came to live in Ireland in 1948, settling in Cleggan, where the family still runs a shellfish firm. Yann Fouere, her father was forced into exile after the second World War "He was a Breton separatist and after the war, such minority groups were considered a threat to the French nation state." To escape a severe prison sentence her father left the country, travelling first to Wales, a haven for many other Bretons at the time.
"My mother and the three oldest children went to join him there, in the home of Gwyn for Evans, the first Welsh MP. But after two years the British police came to deport them back to France. They were given 24 hours to leave the country."
The family fled to Ireland, spending two years in Dublin, where they ran a pato making business, and Fouere's mother, who had been a model in Paris, did part time cosmetic modelling.
The early years in Cleggan, while the Fouere's were waiting for their house to be built, were tough going. "We rented a tiny cottage with no running water. My parents would have to go down to the lake with buckets. In the evenings we would all join in the packing of the shellfish. I still have great biceps from carrying the fish boxes," Fouere recalls.
After boarding school in Dublin, she toyed with the idea of going to NCAD, but did private lessons with a sculptor in Bray instead. "I fell into theatre by accident. It felt right to me. I went to the Focus Theatre and saw a superb production of Uncle Vanya. I knew this was where I would go.
She trained at the Focus, under Deirdre O'Connell and Mary Elizabeth Burke Kennedy. "It was the only place in Ireland that offered training to actors. I was impressed by the extraordinary quality of work there." Then Jim Sheridan offered her a part in The Risen People and she acted in many plays with both Jim and Peter Sheridan at the Project Arts Centre during the mid and late Seventies.
It was not an easy time for her, given her interest in experimental and alternative ways of performing. "I felt like a fish out of water. In the roles I was playing, I couldn't get to grips with what I wanted to get to grips with. There was a pressure to interpret female roles in a certain way."
She felt as though her career was splitting in two. "There was mainstream theatre, and then performance art the other stream. For a long time that was where my true heart lay."
The "other stream" has involved collaborating with artist James Coleman on a variety of projects, from 1980 to the present day. "The first video we did was called So Different and Yet, she recalls. "It was a 50 minute performance, written by James, with me in a green dress lying on a chaise longue. We did it in a single take, after two months of rehearsals." The performance revolves around themes of history, memory and fashion, and is still being exhibited around the world.
Her collaborations (also still ongoing) with composer Roger Doyle were also part of this "other stream", as were her performances of The Diamond Body. Of the latter she says. "My reputation for androgynous roles started there. It is liberating as a performer not to be bound by gender. I'm usually more interested in playing men's parts anyway, which is difficult if you're a woman.
When she got the title part in Salome, she began to feel that at last the two split off parts of her career were beginning to merge. Since then she has played a variety of different roles, several of them male, some of them not even human. She has played Hamlet in Hamlet's Nightmare at the Project Arts Centre (1992), Ariel in The Tempest with the English Shakespeare Company (directed by Michael Bogdanov), and, just recently, a woman time traveller who dresses as a man and who turns out to be "the embodiment of the pure spirit of communism" in Naomi Campbell's Slaughter City with the RSC at the Barbican in London.
In addition to all of that, she was also willing to take on one of her most powerful roles, the title role in Marina Carr's phenomenally successful The Mai `The Mai is different again. She is all woman. Working with Marina tempted me to go on the journey that would lead me to an understanding of her. In the end I was wearing dresses all the time, both off stage and on, and enjoying it. I'd forgotten some of the nice things about being a woman.
MEANWHILE, Fouere's quicksilver imagination is beavering away on new projects. She has designed an installation for Holles Street hospital called The Noctilucent Angel. She is hoping to get funding to realise the piece, which will include an aquarium and a series of perspex boxes. "It addresses the issue of fertility and the responsibility we have to the earth." An American playwright living in Dublin, Martin Borosan, is writing a play for her about Georgia O'Keeffe, the renowned American painter whom, facially, Fouere closely resembles.
That she can embody such a diverse cast of characters is of no surprise to Fouere. She quotes the Father in Six Characters in Search of an Author. "We all think that we're one person.
But we're not. It's the greatest illusion in life. Each of us is made of many persons. We're one thing to one person, another thing to someone else. She adds. I agree. We may have a core being but, the people that we are always changing.
The most enjoyable project by far in recent times for Fouere has been her work with John Crowley on his devised show for Bickerstaffe, Double Helix which will be revived in a further developed version at the Peacock in June "We all wrote it together, starting with a few central ideas provided by John. It was the first time I performed words I had devised myself, playing a character that, guided by John, had come out of me. It was a chance to flesh out my pet obsessions. I loved working with John on devised material. I wish he had been around 20 years ago when I was starting off. I would have liked to do a lot more devised stuff."
Fouere ahead of the posse, has had to wait for Irish theatre to catch up "A lot of things that interested me 20 years ago are coming in now. This is more my time."
