Soliloquy January 1972: Rehearsal – A Jaundiced View

When I dropped in recently to see how “The Crucible” was progressing in Scoil Ursula, I made the startling discovery that “Rehearsal – Drama Circle Style” was a totally new innovation. It was no longer an artificial situation where people came together to practice “saying and doing”. Instead, we had “Drama of a Non-Theatrical” nature as well as the opposite and a climate where subjective comment often prevailed over artistic idiom. When I arrived on the scene, the stage was set, literally and metaphorically for the night’s proceedings. Mc Kinney was seated in the centre of the auditorium, both elbows firmly on the table with his script wedged between them. His hands supported his weary head as his eyes moved cautiously through the list of characters. “They’re all here for once” came the cacophonous grunt. “Now folks, the beginning of Act III”.

A small group of big men were huddled in a circle in the centre of the stage. They seemed to be concentrating on some obscure object in the centre of the circle and it certainly was not the producer. Quite suddenly, they exploded into laughter and scattered like shrapnel to the four corners of the stage, lying naked to us all, the object of attraction. It was Fitz telling another from his repertoire of “good ones” on Paddy the Irishman.

All the birds were viewing Sheila Horan’s new navy bellbottoms, with a conglomeration of “Oohs” and “Ahs”. Sheridan used one of his not so talents in drawing a celestial nymph on the blackboard, while Eily sung a not so seasonal “Silent Night”. “For God’s sake, will you get started or I’ll decapitate somebody and the grunt now changed to a bellow with a faint trace of rouge appearing on the left cheek. Silence fell for a foreboding moment, and then the night’s disasters commenced. The cast got down to their task like a flat battery starting on a cold engine on a frosty morning. They creaked and groaned and didn’t gain much momentum until George, wielding his stick in an immaculate way, called down from heaven, “A blast of wind on Thomas Puttnam”. Much to the producer’s dismay, there was no shortage of suggestions from the cast as to how George could most forcibly apply his blast.

However, the real crisis did not occur until Abigail saw “the yellow bird high on banana tree”. At this moment Fitz was completely out of position and in his script there was no indication as to how he might return to his proper habitat. But Fitz, like the cute old soldier that he is, would never let it be said that he couldn’t find his way out of a tricky situation, so he gambled and lost. You see, at this point, Sheridan was to make a grab for Abigail, Sheila was to jump up onto the table, Catherine was to run to the window and Lionel was to come downstage, due west of Parris, who was not paying any attention, Puttnam was to jump down off the bench but because of the fact that he was mitching during the previous rehearsal, he was not too sure of the timing of the move or how far he should jump.

Completely oblivious to what was about to take place, Fitz struck out gallantly to reach his rightful stance. Just then Abigail cried “Yellow Bird” and set the wheels of his important move in motion catching Fitz in midstream, Lionel nursed his lame leg into Fitz’s path and Sheridan found himself cut off from his prey. The result was a headlong collision in the centre of the stage. On top of all this, Puttnam jumped too far and found himself doing a double-leg-Nelson with Parris and to crown it all, Sheila tripped over an unidentified body and banged the inside of her knee off the edge of the table, leaving her incapacitated for the rest of the week. The marshal who was standing at the door “as straight as a telephone pole” thought it his duty, as a member of the security forces, to do something about it and he went in to sort things out. At this stage the producer could take no more and he cried out “enough”. So we all escorted him out of the building, trying to convince him that things had not gone as much astray as might be thought at first sight.

The Sligo Drama Circle produced a newsletter during the early years of its existence. It was named “Soliloquy” during some periods. The correspondent often wrote under the pseudonym “Pegeen Mike”. This is an excerpt from one of the newsletters that we have in our possession. If you have copies of other newsletters, perhaps you could let us have copies. Please contact us through our contacts page.