‘A Famous Country Theatre’, in The Bell, 1, 2 (Nov. 1940), pp.76-84.

[Source: The Bell, 1, 2 (Nov. 1940), extracts supplied by Kelly Matthews, DPhil [prep.], UUC 2006. ]

The story of the origins of Birr Little Theatre, which Farrell hopes will stand as ‘an example to other country towns’. It begins with description of town of Birr ‘3,300 inhabitants’ and notes that ‘Its own centre is the dignified late-eighteenth century square where once British military bands gave promenade concerts, and where now Bloody Cumberland’s Doric column stands headless awaiting the statue of Tone or Emmet or Parnell to replace that of the unlucky victor of Culloden and loser of Fontenoy.’ (p.76)

‘The story of how this country town was given a permanent theatre goes back about seven years to a young Birr man, Mr. J. I. Fanning, one of a well-known professional and business family. It is important to remember that he had no advantages which men in other towns do not equally possess. Unlike the Fays, Dudley Digges and the others of the Ormonde Players, who forty years ago taught themselves in their ‘Theatre-Royal-Back-Drawing-Room-At-Home’ that stage-craft which they later brought to the making of the Abbey, he had neither Gaiety nor Queen’s Theatre to show him modern Irvings, Kendals, Bensons, Trees, or give him a whiff of the dramatic impulses moving in other countries. Unlike the writers who brought Literature to the making of Ireland ’s great Dramatic Movement – Martyn or Moore or Yeats – he had not lived in other lands, seen an Antoine’s Free Theatre or a Theatre de l’Oeuvre. All he had was what any young man in any country town has – books and the chance, five or six times a year, to see a play at the Gate or Abbey in Dublin. I am going to tell you what he has succeeded in achieving with that perfectly normal equipment.’ (p.77)

‘For the interest of other country theatrical groups I am going to give plenty of detail.’ (p.78)

Materials used, townspeople recruited, local businesses giving credit (‘and when Irish business-men are denounced for ‘lack of support of the Arts’ these things should be remembered’), rent paid, price of construction, list of plays performed each season (some written by A.P. Fanning, brother of the theatre’s producer) and profits/ debt payments made.

Then, [81] after 17 plays performed, they decided to do ‘Paul Vincent Carroll’s great play Shadow and Substance’: ‘They slaved and slaved, and then [...] on the night of the dress-rehearsal, the players, dressed and tuned tautly on the stage, were told that the producer had just received a decided and formal objection to the performance of the play.
 There have been many since to blame the Players for having yielded to this unauthorised, and extra-legal form of censorship. There were many at the time who wished ‘to insist on our right to let the people see our play and judge for themselves.’ But what could they do? Two or three members of the cast were not prepared to continue in face of this opposition. Already, too, rumours of the formal [p.82] objection had gone about. Whispers of ‘Communists’, ‘Anti-Clericals’ were in certain sections already mounting against this group of very devout Catholics and Protestants. To have produced the play in that atmosphere would have been to submit it not to any artistic, religious or social judgment, but to the mercy of a medley of passionately held opinions, misconceptions, and timidities of every kind, loyalties as ingenuous as they were sincere, with possible disaster to the Theatre and perhaps grave consequences for the men and women who had to work out their lives and livelihood in the town they had to greatly benefited.’

‘There remain, in addition, the implications for all dramatic enterprise in Ireland, implications running back through O’Casey and Synge to all the best in Irish drama. Rookery Nook? Yes! A Damsel in Distress? Yes! But not Shadow and Substance?’ Farrell notes that only two plays have been produced in the two years since then.

‘One of the principal hopes of the founders – that the existence of the Theatre would call forth locally-written plays – has not yet been adequately fulfilled.’ (p.83.)

Farrell [calls for] plays or books on Irish theatre to form a ‘library’: ‘There is a half-empty bookcase, destined to be a library.’ (p. 84.)


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