INTERVIEW: Mysterious visitor brings healing to isolated lives in ‘The Naturalists’
Photo: The Naturalists by Jaki McCarrick stars Tim Ruddy and Sarah Street. Photo courtesy of Richard Termine / Provided by Everyman Agency with permission.
Thanks to the Pond Theatre Company, New York City audiences are able to experience some of the best theatrical offerings available from contemporary British and Irish writers. Case in point: The company is currently presenting the world premiere of The Naturalists, a play by the accomplished writer Jaki McCarrick.
The drama, co-directed by Pond founders Colleen Clinton and Lily Dorment, follows two brothers who live in an isolated hamlet in County Monaghan, Ireland. Their lives are disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious woman, and after she impacts their life, things will probably never be the same. Themes of atonement and healing feature prominently in the drama.
McCarrick, an exciting voice on the theatrical scene, has connected with the Pond before, when the company staged readings of two of her other plays, Belfast Girls and Leopoldville. Recently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with McCarrick. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What’s it feel like to be on the verge of your New York theatrical debut?
The Naturalists is my ‘world premiere’ debut in New York, and that feels both fantastic and a bit scary. I have never seen this play ‘on its feet’ before. It’s had three readings — with different drafts — in Ireland, London and Manchester, but I’ve no idea what it looks like actually staged.
There’s a lot of trust involved, as, until August, when I attended some rehearsals of the play at the Irish Arts Centre in New York, I’d never previously met the Pond team. However, having seen the directors, actors and design team in action, I now think this female-led company are going to do a magnificent job.
My first play, The Mushroom Pickers, had a showing in New York, in 2009, at the Gene Frankel Theatre and another play, The Moth Hour, had a staged reading at Irish Repertory Theatre. But, yes, a world premiere, and in one of the most important ‘theatre’ cities on earth, is quite daunting!
How did you connect with The Pond Theatre Company?
I had noticed them on social media so sent them some of my plays to read. In the past couple of years we were in contact a lot as they staged readings of my plays Belfast Girls and Leopoldville. I’m also working on an all-female version of the all-male Leopoldville, and Pond have read some scenes from this play, too.
What inspired you to write The Naturalists?
It was inspired simply by seeing an abandoned shop with the name ‘Sloane’ on the front, outside Newbliss in Monaghan (Ireland) where the play is set. I wondered what had happened to the people who ran the shop. Then I remembered two brothers who used to live near where my father is from, in Sligo. These two were always together and never married, and I thought I’d base my story on them. Of course, then I had to invent the reason as to why the shop had been abandoned.
In The Naturalists, the central character of Francis is a former bombmaker. He’s the ‘mastermind’ behind the notorious Narrow Water bombings — and is an entirely fictional character, as no one, in fact, was ever charged for this crime. In Francis, I wanted to create a character with a past that was particularly complicated. I wanted the character to have done something so dark that he could barely forgive himself for it — mainly, because I wanted to see how a broken human being can come back to a moral stature of some kind, is able to reset his moral compass. I also wanted to look at what such a crime does to the immediate family of the perpetrator (and not the victim in this instance) — and how, through the forces of nature and love, he and his brother Billy find their way back to some semblance of normality.
All the characters in the play are emotionally disfigured in some way, and all via the environment of the play, find a way towards harmony. The harmony they find is not religious — but something that awakens within them, is in tune with nature, whereby the three main characters, Billy, Josie and Francis eventually develop a healing relationship ‘where all is shared.’
Did you have to do any research on County Monaghan, Ireland? Are you familiar with the area?
I live right beside this area, so I know it well. Though I did research the political background of the central character, Francis, and also the area of natural history, as there are many references to nature in the play. With regards [to] the nature references, I was also completely informed here by the fact that for many years I’ve facilitated creative writing workshops for The Pushkin Trust in Tyrone. This is a great place where children get taught about the natural environment and a variety of arts subjects. The ethos of the trust has a great effect on the children, who are often from socially deprived areas of Northern Ireland. And I myself, over the years, have learned so much about trees, seeds and wildlife here. A lot of this knowledge went into The Naturalists.
What’s the theater scene like for a playwright in Ireland?
There are only a handful of subsidised theatre companies in Ireland, and philanthropic funding is far behind the U.S. So it’s difficult to get work on. Until recently, the Irish theatre scene was also very much dominated by male writers (in that theatres rarely commissioned women). In an recent article I wrote for the Times Literary Supplement on Irish Women Dramatists, I came across shocking statistics such as the percentage of female writers commissioned by the Abbey Theatre until quite recently had been around 3 percent.
Things are improving now, especially after the #wakingthefeminists movement. Having said that, until (relatively) recently I’ve been London based. My agent and most of my theatre contacts are in the U.K., so I’ve had — and continue to have — my work primarily staged there. My play Belfast Girls makes its West End debut in London next year.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Pond Theatre Company’s production of The Naturalists by Jaki McCarrick continues through Sept. 23 at Walkerspace, 46 Walker St. in Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
