Podcast: Thomas Kilroy - The Playwright and the Archive

Thomas Kilroy

Thomas Kilroy is one of Ireland’s most celebrated playwrights and critics. Kilroy is a multi-award-winning playwright, a member of the Irish Academy of Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, and Aosdána. He is the recipient of many awards such as the American Irish Foundation award (1974); the Special Tribute Award from the Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards (2004); the Irish PEN/ A.T. Cross Award (2008). Kilroy’s archive at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway, comprising over fifty boxes of manuscripts is a record of his literary achievement as well as an insight into the work of a celebrated writer, his drafts, networks and legacies, across five decades.

In this podcast you can discover the archive of Thomas Kilroy, highlights from the archive and reflections on one of Ireland's most foremost writers and thinkers. 

Flyer from production of "Double Cross" by Thomas Kilroy. From the Kilroy Archive, NUI Galway

ESSE Conference at NUI Galway - Archive Tours and Exhibition

This week (22 - 26 August) NUI Galway welcomes to campus the 13th conference of E.S.S.E The European Society for the Study of English. The Society is a European federation of national higher educational associations which relate to all fields of study within English and the European study and understanding of English languages, literatures in English and cultures of English-speaking peoples.

The Archives service are delighted to support the conference with two exhibitions of literary works which highlight not only NUI Galway's rich collection of literary archives and special collections, writing in Irish and English from Ireland and the west of Ireland but also a visiting exhibition on-loan from the McClay Library of Queen's University Belfast. We hope conference delegates may take some time among a packed week to see the exhibitions and also take part in the daily lunchtime tour of the Archives.

The exhibition within our Archives and Special Collections Reading Room (Ground floor, Hardiman Building) offers a selection of highlights from our literary collections, such as first drafts and published first edition of John McGahern's acclaimed novel The Dark, known as "The Pit" in its initial writing; first editions of Thomas Kilroy's Booker-prize nominated novel, The Big Chapel; poetry in Irish from Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, letters from the late Seamus Heaney; programmes and images of Druid Theatre Company's many international successes such as its 1986 tour of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World and Tom Murphy's Conversations on a Homecoming. John Huston's film adaptation of James Joyce's short-story The Dead, with its deep Galway connections, is represented through material from the archive of Oscar-winning director, John Huston.

Exhibition in our Archives Reading Room

Also on display is a rare first edition of Cúchulain of Muirthemne by Lady Augusta Gregory, which was published in 1902 and represents a version of old Irish legends worked from oral and written folklore and stories collected by Gregory herself. The portrait of Lady Gregory, painted in 1912 by renowned artist Gerard Festus Kelly, also hangs in our Archives Reading Room.

Portrait of Lady Gregory at NUI Galway

Next to these published works are a wall-mounted display of water-colour sketches, painted by artist and playwright, Jack Butler Yeats. Brother of poet and senator, William, this 'Galway notebook' as it is known, contains many beautiful images of the landscape of the West of Ireland and captures the people, topography and culture of the West, through its fields and stone walls, Norman towers and castles and events such as the Galway Races.

In the foyer of the James Hardiman Library (through the electronic turnstiles) one can find the "Shakespeare Lives" exhibition. Assembled from the papers of celebrated Shakespearean actor and director, Sir Kenneth Branagh, located at the McClay Library of Queens University, Belfast, the exhibition offers a timely examination of the staging and reception of Shakespeare's work in Britain and northern Ireland both on-stage and on-screen.

Throughout the ESSE conference there will be daily lunchtime tours of Archives at 1pm, with a chance to see further material and explore in greater detail the documented heritage of the literary and theatrical collections of the Hardiman library. The meeting point is adjacent to the large 'Video Wall' in the foyer of the Hardiman Building. Please see your conference programme booklet for more information.

Looking forward to welcoming all ESSE delegates to Galway and to the Archives!

Remembering Alan Rickman - A star turn in Kilroy's "The Seagull" 1981

Alan Rickman and Anna Massey in Thomas Kilroy's version of "The Seagull",
P103/115

The news of the passing of actor Alan Rickman was extremely sad news for the vast amounts of people who had followed Rickman's varied career over forty years on stage and screen. Rickman, 69, was acclaimed for being one of the great character actors of his generation with a canny ability to enthral his audiences, from young and old, from  fans of Harry Potter to Dogma  or as an unequivocal De Valera in Michael Collins. Such was Rickman's charisma and presence, with an always distinct voice, was an ability to transform even a supporting character into a memorable and major role. You may not always remember the film but you always remember Rickman's character and all the great lines. (Sheriff of Nottingham: "That's it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings . . . and call off Christmas!" (Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves)

Rickman like so many screen stars began his career on stage and throughout a glittering Hollywood career maintained a successful stage curriculum vitae. Rickman was reported to be a pupil of renown at RADA and developed his craft on the fringe and regional circuit of the UK in the late 1970s and 1980s. Michael Billington, theatre critic of The Guardian notes that:

All this came to the fore in a golden period at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the mid-1980s when he was a stubbly, neurotic Achilles in Troilus and Cressida and a mockingly cynical Jaques in As You Like It. But it was his performance as the dissolute Valmont, successively in Stratford, London and New York, that elevated him to star status. Playing opposite Lindsay Duncan’s Marquise de Merteuil, Rickman conveyed both the lassitude of the practised seducer and the growing self-disgust of a man aware of his destructiveness."

Poster from the Royal Court production of "The Seagull"
starring Alan Rickman. P103/115

It was during this time that Rickman would perform in a play by Irish playwright Thomas Kilroy. Directed by Max Stafford Clarke, the play was premiered at the Royal Court on 8 April 1981. The play would have its Irish premiere, produced by the Irish Theatre Company at Siamsa Tíre Theatre, Tralee on 30th September 1981.

The idea of the version of Chekhov's classic to be translated and moved from the Russian provinces and set in the West of Ireland case from the director of the Royal Court, Max Stafford-Clarke. He wrote to Kilroy as follows:

"Dear Tom, I have been talking with Joe Dowling about the possibility of the Royal Court and the Abbey mounting a joint production of THE SEAGULL. The idea is that the play should be cast with English and with Irish actors and instead of being set in Russia, should be set in the midst of an Anglo-Irish family . . . Would you be interested in doing a translation and would you have time for it?”

The adaptation that Kilroy would write featured Alan Rickman as Mr. Aston and the cast would also feature Harriet Walter, Alan Devlin and others. Within the Thomas Kilroy archive at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway, the production files for Kilroy's Seagull offer a wonderful account of the development, writing and drafting of the play that stemmed from Stafford-Clarke's single letter. Billington would write in his 1981 review of the Royal Court London production:   It is a fine performance superbly backed by Alan Rickman's Aston."

Rickman's star ability to make any character and indeed any production his own and ensure it is most memorable for his audiences must be among the highest tributes for any actor. Both stage and screen will be far poorer with the loss of Rickman.

The Thomas Kilroy Archive is available at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway and a catalogue is available to read here: http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie/cgi-bin/FramedList.cgi?P103 

Cover of rehearsal script of "The Seagull" by Thomas Kilroy,
for production at the Royal Court theatre, London. P103/115

Honouring Stephen Rea at NUI Galway

NUI Galway has this week honoured the acclaimed Irish actor, Stephen Rea, by conferring on him an Honorary Doctor of Arts Degree. Rea has amassed a career in the performing arts on both stage and screen that has seen him portray a rich lineage of complex characters who are deeply connected to the Ireland of its time and place and also to an international connection to the wider world.

In advance of the conferring ceremonies, Dr Jim Browne, President of NUI Galway, said:

“NUI Galway is fortunate to be associated with many outstanding honorary graduates throughout its history. This week we are very proud to honour Stephen Rea for his outstanding and distinctive contribution to the world of culture, theatre and film in Ireland and far beyond. NUI Galway is very pleased to be in a position to recognise his exceptional talent and achievement. On behalf of the University I congratulate Stephen and each of the 2,500 students who will be conferred with degrees this week from NUI Galway. ”

Dr Charlotte McIvor, Lecturer in the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, delivered the citation in honour of Rea paid tribute diverse range of work over forty years in the Arts:

"Stephen Rea  has taken us around the world and through time, inhabiting souls whose fragile and often violently conflicted layers of self have laid bare struggles for identity and connection that are fundamental to the human condition.   He is one of the most recognizable faces of the stage and screen, yet always unfamiliar, shape-shifting to meet the terms of the worlds he has inhabited through his work. Through his characters, he has brought us face to face again and again with the brutal and divisive politics of our small island and elsewhere."

Within the archive collections of the Hardiman Library there is a vast array of records that document and highlight the relationships between Rea and writers, playwrights, directors and theatres that have shaped his career. A key relationship is to Irish theatre via Field Day Theatre Company, whom Rea was a founding member and also the connection with the playwright Thomas Kilroy, himself a later member of Field Day and the author of Double Cross, written for Rea and produced in 1986. The plays of Brian Friel again have a large presence in the archives through Field Day records but also via the archive of the Abbey Theatre, digitally available at the Hardiman Library, along with the Thomas Kilroy archive and many other related literary and theatrical collections.

The Kilroy archive contains manuscript drafts and notes of the play Double Cross, programmes and flyers and also correspondence with Rea as well as a range of records relating to Field Day Theatre Company.

Rea starred in many Friel premieres for the Abbey Theatre, including the Freedom of the City (1973) and Aristocrats in 1979 and also Making History for Field Day Theatre Company at Derry in 1988.

Here is a selection of some archive material from these productions as we honour an congratulate Stephen Rea.

For more coverage of the honourary conferring and for video interviews with Rea please click here.

New exhibition on Irish and Russian Theatre coming to Hardiman Library

A new co-exhibition, “Unchanged but the Spirit. . . ’, launching 7 October 2014, between the James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway the Russian State Art Library, Moscow, will for the first time in Ireland, present archive material on the production and stage history of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, from initial staging in 19th Century Russia to later adaptations in contemporary Ireland.

The Chekhovian classic The Seagull has engaged and provoked audiences since its Moscow premieré in 1896. From a poor initial reception from audiences and critics alike, the play was close to being abandoned and forgotten until it received its production at the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Constantine Stanislavsky in 1898. Since then, the play has been regarded as one of Chekhov’s finest works. In an Irish context, the play received a translation and adaptation by playwright Thomas Kilroy, premiering at the Royal Court Theatre, London in 1981. In opening up and combining the archive sources of Kilroy and other theatre archives of the Hardiman Library and of the R.S.A.L collections in Moscow, the exhibition will highlight how across cultures, languages, societies and centuries, theatre and its impact can remain unchanged.

This exhibition will simultaneously stage material from the theatre collections of the Hardiman Library and the Russian State Art Library in both Galway and Moscow throughout the month of October and is a unique chance to see a visual and archival history of The Seagull, in its many manifestations, from Chekhov to Kilroy.

All are welcome to attend the launch of the exhibition by Dr. Ian Walsh, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway, at the Hardiman Building (Room G011) at 6pm, Tuesday, 7 October.

Interview with playwright Thomas Kilroy

To get you all in a suitably festive mood ahead of the Culture night events happening this Friday 21 September, here is a video interview with playwright Thomas Kilroy conducted by Prof. Adrian Frazier, College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies, NUI Galway, to mark the cataloguing of the Kilroy Archive in 2011. It is a wonderful interview and offers great insights in Kilroy the man as well as Kilroy the Playwright. At 6pm, this Friday Culture Night, there will be a talk exploring the archive of Thomas Kilroy which is proudly held by the James Hardiman Library.

All our events are being staged at the Huston School of Film and Digital Media and run throughout the evening. For more details and for booking enquiries ring 091 493353 or email barry.houlihan@nuigalway

The video can be seen in full at this link: http://vimeo.com/celt/thomaskilroy


      Culture Night 2012 at the James Hardiman Library - What will you see?

 

Thomas Kilroy's "The O'Neill" staged this week in 1969

Forty-three years ago this week saw the first production of Tom Kilroy’s play “The O’Neil” on the Peacock Stage of the Abbey Theatre.

“The O'Neill”, Thomas Kilroy's first stage play, was written in 1966. It dramatizes the fate of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone (c.1540-1616), whose defeat by the English at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 led to the final dissolution of the ancient Irish order of government and the Plantation of Ulster. The Thomas Kilroy Archive is one of our featured collections here at the James Hardiman Library. The archive of Thomas Kilroy, held here at the James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway, features numerous drafts and version of the play, a French translation of the play, correspondence between Tom Kilroy and numerous individuals concerning the play including Ernest Blythe, Tomas McAnna, Cyril Cusack, Hilton Edwards and Kilroy’s agent Margaret Ramsay.

“The O’Neill”, Kilroy’s first play and still considered by many to be one of his best and also one of the most important in Irish theatre with its themes of Anglo-Irish relations under the main focus of Kilroy’s attention. 'What call had you coming here thinking to change us? We have our ways, our laws, and our language, the same as the English have, and we're proud of them . . .' 

 

A review of the original production, published in the Irish Independent, 31 May 1969, from Desmond Ryan is included below.

A feature interview with Tom Kilroy marking the occasion of the completing of the cataloguing of his archive is available on the James Hardiman Library website here

The full descriptive list of the Kilroy archive is available here

Interview with Thomas Kilroy at NUI Galway

Earlier this year the Archives and Special Collections service of the James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway were delighted to receive the personal archive of the celebrated playwright and novelist Thomas Kilroy. To mark this very great occasion, Professor Adrian Frazier of the Moore Institute, NUI Galway conducted a public interview with Thomas Kilroy, discussing at length Kilroy’s own personal life and experiences from his homeland of Kilkenny to his career as a playwright which brought him to world-wide notoriety.

The Kilroy archive contains research notes, drafts and scripts of all these and of his other plays, and his academic criticism. The creative work is complemented by correspondence from agents, theatre practitioners, publishers, and members of the public, as well as production material from the stage plays. There is a noteworthy collection of correspondence from literary friends and associates, such as Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane, Mary Lavin, John McGahern, and also papers from his board membership of The Field Day Theatre Company, and from his collaboration with The Abbey Theatre. The papers join other purely literary archives at the Library, such as those of John McGahern and Eoghan Ó Tuarisc, as well as archival collections pertaining to the Druid Theatre, the Lyric Players Theatre, and Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe. The collection is being processed and will be available to researchers from August 2011.

Watch and enjoy what is a really fascinating interview with one of Ireland’s most engaging writers. 

An Interview with Thomas Kilroy from CELT NUI Galway on Vimeo.

Letters from Literary Greats – and Evelyn Waugh's Mysterious Illness



A jest from Denis Johnston [1955]

The Thomas Kilroy Archives contain some fifteen letters which Kilroy received in his position as auditor of the UCD English Literature Society, in the mid-1950s. The Society hosted Irish writers of caliber such as Patrick Kavanagh, Denis Johnston, Benedict Kiely, Gabriel Fallon, Bryan McMahon, and possibly Walter Macken. More daringly, they also made advances on internationally-known writers T.S.Eliot, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and J.B Priestley. The English writers all declined eventually.

Some other writers were invited who were of prominence in the 1950s but are either largely forgotten now or are little read: there are letters from Seumas O'Sullivan (1879-1958), a poet and editor of The Dublin Magazine; Leonard Strong (1896-1958), a Plymouth-born Anglo-Irish writer; and from Joyce Cary (1888-1957), a Derry-born novelist.

Those were days when speakers did not have to be invited months in advance: Professor of English, Fr Peter Connolly (St.Patrick's Maynooth) accepted an invitation to speak two days before the event. Connolly, so it seems, was ahead of his time with his critical eye on Irish society and its Church (see more here).

Graham Greene's letter of polite refusal, 1956

Graham Greene easily wins out for his rhetoric of polite refusal, explaining that "I should always be charmed to have a drink with you in an Irish bar but I am afraid I always have to refuse invitations to speak. Speaking is too unpleasant for me and in one's middle years one seeks comfort" (2 February 1956).

By contrast, J.B. Priestley might receive a curmudgeon's award: "I do not feel contempt for your invitation, as you suggest I might, but it does seem to me rather unreasonable... To attend your meeting would take two days." He had been invited to speak at the Society's inaugural meeting on 6 March and was to reply to Thomas Kilroy's paper about American fiction: "I happen to know a good deal more about American fiction than you do because it has always been a special study of mine and I have both written and lectured in America on their fiction." (13 February, 1956) The archives also contain Kilroy's lecture for that event, entitled "The Angry Cloth" (6 March 1956).



Letter from "Harriet" Waugh, 1956



There is one puzzle among the letters - or is there? Evelyn Waugh had been written to and invited to another meeting, the previous year. A reply came from Harriet Waugh, talking of her father's illness and grimly stating that "no hopes of his recovery can be entertained" (30 September 1955). Harriet was only 11 at the time, and although Waugh had overcome a serious case of bromide poisoning in 1954, there was no grave illness on the horizon in '55 (according to Selma Hastings's biography): the letter is a gentle hoax. If there is anybody out there better able to compare the writing, please tell us whether this is in Evelyn Waugh's own hand.

Vera Orschel

"The Door"- Kilroy's First Radio Play

Last weekend, TCD held a celebratory series of lectures and discussions on Thomas Kilroy's work (Across the Boundaries: Talking about Thomas Kilroy ). In anticipation of it, and by way of follow-up, the media have published and broadcast a couple of items: noteworthy among them are Declan Hughes's article in the Irish Times (he is a co-founder of theatre company Rough Magic) of 27 April, and Vincent Woods's interview of some of the guests at the conference, in Arts Tonight, of 2 May. The two days were bookended by a reading of Kilroy's unproduced play, Blake, at the Abbey Theatre which is yet awaiting a full-scale production. (If you are interested in Blake, please also listen to this interesting interview with Kilroy.)

Talking of the media: one of the most interesting discoveries for me in the papers of Thomas Kilroy is how often he practices a cross-over between the stage, the airwaves, and of course, the paper it takes to get there:  over the course of his writing career, he has fashioned radio and television versions of four of his original plays, and of his adaptation of Chekhov's Seagull. He has also written four original pieces for the radio, and nine for television, not all of which made it to the airwaves.



Radio preview, 13 January 1968 (unknown paper)

The one of these that most interests me – and I'm waiting for the audiovisual archives to arrive yet, to listen to it – is the radio play The Door, which was broadcast by the BBC in early 1968 as Say hello to Johnny, after winning the 1967 BBC radio play competition. It was a very hard call for the judges, so Gus Martin in a contemporary radio newspaper column (see left). Cyril Cusack (who seems to feature in this blog a lot!) filled the speaking role of the protagonist, "James", and when Kilroy asked him to read a new stage play and give his opinion of it, he complimented him on this one: "may I now thank you for the Johnny play I was privileged to take part in. Anyone I met - Englishers - who heard it, gave an enthusiastic reaction. They were moved and edified." (21 January 1968).

Vera Orschel

Thomas Kilroy opens Cúirt Festival and explains the Galway Vibe

There were about fifty people in the foyer of the Galway Museum on Tuesday at 6pm, when Thomas Kilroy officially opened this year's Cúirt International Festival of Literature. He caused a few to laugh out loud (and a very few to frown a little), when he said that one of the attractions of the West of Ireland to artists and creative spirits was the way that the Irish language was never too far here, regarding and sometimes jostling its Anglo-Saxon counterpart, "knocking some of the rigidity out of English, getting the English language to throw off its clothes and run around all over the place naked." (More of this transcript is in the Galway Advertiser).


15 July 1989, John Updike to Thomas Kilroy

And then he mentioned two items from his archives:  a letter from John Updike, regretting he couldn't come to the George Moore symposium in County Mayo (1989), and another from Doris Lessing, whom Kilroy had met and invited to Cúirt in 1994, but who couldn't attend. Both express an interest in, and affection for the West of Ireland, and regret they cannot come. 

Kilroy also told us that Doris Lessing had at one difficult juncture in her life planned to stay in the West, but that after an unconclusive search (from Clare to Sligo) for a place to stay, she returned to London. Who knows what would have happened to her English if she had carried that plan out? The Cúirt Festival continues until Sunday.

Vera Orschel

Kilroy Making Theatre History

Thomas Kilroy's first play to reach the public was in fact a radio play, The Door, which won a BBC radio play competition and was broadcast in 1967 with Cyril Cusack in the main role. However, his first work for the stage, submitted to the Abbey in 1964, was The O'Neill (The Abbey, 1969). It cast into dramatic form a few episodes in the Ulster chief's fortunes, round about the Battle of the Yellow Ford (1598), and it was the first of Thomas Kilroy's "history plays" (seven of his original plays could be called that). He sought opinions about the draft play from the Abbey Theatre, from Hilton Edwards, Mary O'Malley, and Cyril Cusack, and got some interesting replies.

Cyril Cusack in Genet's
The Balcony,
1967

Cyril Cusack's letter is, in his own description, "ultra-cautious"; he does not think himself a good judge of a play, but despite all mincing of words he makes this comment on the play and on himself: "As it is, this is not the play I would ask, above all, to put on, and, alas, that is the only kind of play upon which I could possibly take a risk" (28 December 1964). An O'Neill could not beat him for mixing diplomacy with boldness.

Ernest Blythe, then director of the Abbey Theatre, reported that there were widely differing opinions on the Abbey board about the play. He himself committed himself as far as to say that "while O'Neill is not a play which might be expected to be wildly popular or a money-spinner and might indeed even provoke some public anger, we think it is far better than any previous play about O'Neill which has come to us and merits the most serious consideration" (24 May 1966).

However, despite such good feedback from The Abbey, The O'Neill suffered the fate of a quixotic journey via the desks of three successive directors and various others, before the Abbey finally produced it in May and June of 1969, with Dubliner Joseph O'Connor in the lead role. In the meantime, Kilroy's second play, The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche, was turned down by the Abbey in 1966 or early 1967, and then overtook The O'Neill by reaching the stage first (Dublin Theatre Festival, 1968).

Revival of "The O'Neill" on the anniversary of O'Neill's departure from Rathmullen

It's also noteworthy that when Brian Friel wrote his own play about Hugh O'Neill, Making History (produced by Field Day in 1988), he and Kilroy were in correspondence about it. There is an essay by Anne Fogarty about the way either dramatist makes sense of "The Great O'Neill" and of historiography. (Irish University Review, vol 32 no.1, Spring/Summer 2002) 18-32.
Vera Orschel

The Thomas Kilroy Collection - listing underway!



Thomas Kilroy in 1968, promoting the Dublin Theatre Festival

We can now formally announce the name and nature of the fifth theatre archives collection currently being listed at NUIG - namely the archives of novelist, playwright and academic Thomas Kilroy. It has been officially deposited in the James Hardiman Library just today, and to mark the occasion, a public interview was held here on campus: the Irish Times reported on this last Saturday. The collection contains 41 banker's boxes of papers, a few photographs, and some audiovisual material, and I have been chipping away at this rather quietly since the last summer. It means that as I blog, I usually fall back on material I saw a few months back, but hope that won't take the freshness out of it for yourselves – as far as archives can ever be "fresh"! 


Donal McCann in Tea and Sex and Shakespeare
(The Abbey Theatre, 1978)

The bulk of the archives is made up of drafts of Kilroy's novel (The Big Chapel, 1971), drafts of his plays for the stage (of which 16 have been produced to date), and drafts of his work for television and radio. Besides that, there is some illuminating (if not luminous) correspondence with agents, actors, and fellow writers: naming just a few, there are Seamus Deane, Seamus Heaney, Mary Lavin, John McGahern, Desmond O'Grady, Frank McGuinness... The rest of the archives is made up of things from Kilroy's work for the Field Day Theatre Company, for the Abbey Theatre, as well as other material from the academic side of his life. If that sounds interesting, please stay tuned.
Vera Orschel