Sir, – As the director of The Big Dealwhich premiered at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, I would like to respond to Sara Keating's review (Life Culture, August 16th).
Ms Keating criticises the work for being a mere act of bearing witness, more documentary than dramatic.
The work does not credit an author and is a documentary text, bearing witness is our objective.
Comparing the work to something it is not rather than assessing it within the documentary practice in which it exists appears to me to display a lack of objective critique on the part of the reviewer, particularly when she concludes that the mere act of bearing witness means the work fails to explore the greater significance of the women’s stories. This greater significance, in Ms Keating’s opinion, is the women’s perspective of how others view them, however, it is through the act of bearing witness that we ask the audience to conclude this for themselves. – Yours, etc,