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The Alabama Writers’ Forum posted their review of Steve’s latest books, Stanislavski in Ireland & Breaking Boundaries.

Reviewed by Nicholas Helms

Founded in 1963 by the Irish American actor Deirdre O’Connell, the Focus Theatre of Dublin brought Stanislavskian method acting to Ireland and challenged the country’s parochial preconceptions about theatre. Two recent works chronicle the life of Focus Theatre: Stanislavski in Ireland: Focus at Fifty, a collection of essays that serve as biography of the Focus Theatre and of its talented and eccentric founder, Deirdre O’Connell, edited by Brian McAvera and University of Alabama theatre professor Steven Dedalus Burch; and Breaking Boundaries: An Anthology of Original Plays from the Focus Theatre, a collection of Focus Theatre’s work, edited by Steven Dedalus Burch. Together, these volumes put a microscope to the theatre of Dublin in the 20th and early 21st centuries, charting the type of regional theatre work that, despite its far-reaching influence, so often goes unrecorded. Together they sketch a lively narrative of a theatre that produced high quality work for fifty years while scraping by economically and struggling against the established theatres of Dublin. O’Connell’s Focus Theatre revolutionized Irish theatrical practice, and these two volumes chronicle the far-reaching—and often unremarked—effects that a small theatre on the fringe of the mainstream can have.

Stanislavski in Ireland: Focus at Fifty includes a history of the Focus Theatre under Deirdre O’Connell by Mary Moynihan; a recent history of the theatre in the 21st century by current artistic director Joe Devlin; an overview of acting styles in 20th century Ireland by Steven Dedalus Burch; a series of remembrances by Mary Moynihan, Elizabeth Moynihan, Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy, Jimmy Murphy, Brian McAvera, Kevin O’Brien, Ronan O’Leary, and Joe Devlin; and a collection of interviews conducted by Steven Dedalus Burch.

Deirdre O’Connell, born in America in 1939 to Irish parents, studied under Lee Strasberg for five years at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York City. She moved to Dublin in 1963 and that April created the Focus Theatre’s Acting Studio, which later opened its doors as the Focus Theatre in 1967 with Doris Lessing’s Play with a Tiger. She worked as the artistic director of Focus until her death in 2001, after which Joe Devlin took up the position. As Brian McAvera notes, Deirdre O’Connell “cleared away (or cleansed) Irish acting of its nineteenth century melodramatic roots to give naturalistic acting room to breathe; and then Joe [Devlin] came along and introduced non-naturalistic work, broadening the baseline.” Deirdre O’Connell accomplished this feat through weekly improvisation workshops in Stanislavskian method acting, building a company from the ground up in Focus’s early years and then continuing to develop that company throughout the lifetime of Focus.

The eclectic collection of works in this volume, from history to interviews, from essays on aesthetics to character portraits of Deirdre O’Connell, keeps the reading fresh and fluid. The story of Focus Theatre is well documented within the volume—including a lengthy set of appendices on the Theatre’s performance history—but the variety of perspectives keeps that story from feeling monolithic or static. Instead, the collection assembles a series of snapshots of Focus, touching on Deirdre O’Connell’s life and leadership, the experience of actors in the studio, the society and politics of Dublin theatre, and the various styles brought under the rubric of Stanislavsky’s method. Joe Devlin’s lengthy essay on the more recent stylistic forays of Focus feels digressive at times, but it also reveals the enthusiasm of Focus Theatre’s leadership. Though Deirdre O’Connell left behind no writings suitable for the volume, her perspective is well represented by interviews from actors and writers associated with Focus. She emerges as a mercurial character, a stern redhead dressed all in black who gave clear criticism and pointed encouragement, whose entire existence centered on Focus.

The commentaries of Focus’s company members are perhaps the most illuminating portion of the book. Mary Moynihan interviews actor Margaret Twomey, who talks about the early days of Focus and the Stanislavsky workshops O’Connell held on weekends. Elizabeth Moynihan writes about Focus’s more recent history, while Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy and Jimmy Murphy discuss specific productions (Strindberg’s The Father and Murphy’s The Hen Night Epiphany, respectively). Steven Burch also conducts a series of interviews, which are arranged by topic rather than speaker, creating a patchwork of perspectives on various facets of the Theatre, including sections on auditions to the company, Stanislavski training, and memories of Deirdre O’Connell. This style is one feature of the volume that helps it bridge the gap between the genres of history and biography. For instance, while Burch arranges the interviews to tell the story of Focus, he is always clear to foreground the voices of the company members, a move that he and McAvera consistently make throughout the volume. Stanislavsky in Ireland, then, is a piece of theatre history that privileges the first person account. In recording the work of Deirdre O’Connell, Joe Devlin, and the entire Focus company, McAvera and Burch capture both the spirit of Focus and its constituent voices. In effect, they perform Focus’s history, tracking both the practices of the theatre and its influence on the theatrical landscape of Dublin. They also implicitly call others to attend to such histories as readers, writers, and theatre practitioners. Focus Theatre is a story of Stanislavsky’s widespread influence, but it also sketches the influence that a local community of actors can have upon their city. Theatre, in this book, is as much a groundswell as an aspiration to perfect method.

Breaking Boundaries: An Anthology of Original Plays from the Focus Theatre offers examples of how this groundswell can build into an influential body of work. This volume includes seven original works which premiered at Focus Theatre: Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy’s Alice in Wonderland (1979), an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s work; Declan Burke-Kennedy’s The Day of the Mayfly (1980), an exploration of intimacy and adultery; Michael Harding’s Talking Through His Swift (2003), a single-actor portrayal of Jonathan Swift’s wit and social manner; Elizabeth Moynihan’s Pinching for My Soul (2011), a three-character play comprised wholly of monologues from a security guard, a drug addict, and a politician’s wife; Brian McAvera’s Francis and Frances (2011), a breathtaking delve into the consciousness of painter Francis Bacon; Mike Poblete’s New York Monologues (2011), a series of short yet poignant monologues fleshing out the trauma of New Yorkers on September 11, 2001; and Aiden Harney’s Hollywood Valhalla (2012), an examination of the final days of film star Rock Hudson’s life and his decision to reveal his struggle with AIDS.

The range of these plays is staggering: this volume moves from the surrealism of Mary Elizabeth Burke Kennedy’s Alice in Wonderland to the realism of Declan Burke-Kennedy’s The Day of the Mayfly and Mike Poblete’s New York Monologues, then back to surrealism again with Brian McAvera’s Francis and Frances. While all of these plays reflect Focus Theatre’s commitment to Stanislavsky’s system of acting—as passed on by Deirdre O’Connell—they also display the wide range of genres and forms that such acting can take on, from realism to surrealism, from single-actor plays to ensemble pieces to a series of monologues, from abstract content to contemporary political issues. Of particular note are Elizabeth Moynihan’s 2011 Pinching for My Soul and Mike Poblete’s 2011 New York Monologues. Moynihan’s piece is a three-actor play of interwoven monologues. The characters include Chike, a thirty-something African/Irish security guard with aspirations to be a writer; Shania, a nineteen-year-old Dublin junkie; and Brona, the forty-something wife of a wealthy businessmen. Their monologues and narratives cross over each other onstage, and though the characters comment upon each other they do so as strangers, never directly, and any encounter they have is described in the past tense rather than enacted onstage. As such, the play reproduces the alienation of urban life and class discrimination. Mike Poblete’s play is a similar pastiche, a series of fourteen character monologues expressing reactions to the fall of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. The monologues come from all walks of life, including the unnamed voices of a reporter, a mortician, a tour guide, and a homeless man. Some of the voices memorialize the lives lost in the event; others selfishly celebrate the good fortune such a catastrophe can bring to media and to business. Moynihan and Poblete’s work shares a careful attention to character development in the Stanislavsky method, a quality shared by all the plays in this collection. Overall, Breaking Boundaries documents the wealth of talent that Focus Theatre has trained and tapped into over the past fifty years, both during Deirdre O’Connell’s tenure and during Joe Devlin’s.

This pair of texts acts as a compelling biography of one local aspect of Dublin theatre in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. So much of local and regional theatre, while it burns brightly in its own place and time, never reaches the outside world. While the Focus Theatre may have shut its doors in 2012, these texts have captured its light, both as a documentation of the history of Irish theatre and as a witness of the power and vibrancy of theatre that lives off the beaten path, whether or not such theatre is noted by the academic community. In that respect, Stanislasky in Ireland and Breaking Boundaries act as a subtle call to action for theatre historians to preserve the work going on in their own communities. Performance itself may be ephemeral, but scholarship need not be so.

Nicholas Helms is a PhD candidate and assistant to the director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at the University of Alabama.

– See more at: http://www.writersforum.org/news_and_reviews/review_archives.html/article/2014/06/19/stanislavski-in-ireland-breaking-boundaries#sthash.W4xQe2uS.dpuf

From APR.org.

An American girl, Deirdre O’Connell, is the heroine of this unusual history of a Dublin theatre.

Born and raised in the Bronx, of Irish immigrant parents, O’Connell studied acting at the New York Dramatic Workshop and then with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. There she was introduced to The Method, the Stanislavski System, which became the ruling passion of the rest of her life.

Incidentally, she was not alone. American method actors include Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier, James Dean, Paul Newman, Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight, Al Pacino, Karl Malden, Ellen Burstyn, Ben Gazzara and Marilyn Monroe.

(Dustin Hoffman portrays an overly devoted method actor in “Tootsie.” He once held up the filming of a commercial by questioning the motivation of his character, a tomato.)

The Method was a thoroughly established training technique in the United States, but not in Ireland, when in 1963 Deirdre O’Connell, age 23, moved to Dublin and established her teaching studio and repertory company, Focus Theatre, finding its physical home in an abandoned clothing label factory on Pembroke Place. Working on a shoestring, she kept the workshop and the small, 72-seat theatre going until . . . . .

Read the rest of the story at APR.org.

It’s not every day an author celebrates his book launch at the Áras, the Irish equivalent of the White House. However, Dr. Steve Burch, a University of Alabama faculty member, has experienced just that.

Irish President Michael D. Higgins and First Lady Sabina Coyne welcomed Burch and co-editor Brian McAvera to the Áras to celebrate the launch of Burch’s books “Stanislavski in Ireland—Focus at Fifty,” a history of Ireland’s Focus Theatre co-edited with McAvera, and “Breaking Boundaries—An Anthology of Original Plays.”

Deirdre O’Connell, the American-born daughter of two Irish immigrants, moved to Ireland to open the Focus Theatre in 1963. This was the first theatre in Ireland to use the acting techniques Constantin Stanislavski taught, techniques that teach a series of exercises to help an actor portray believable emotion night after night. The original acting company trained for four years before producing its first work.

O’Connell shook up the Irish theatre world. She introduced plays by Anton Chekhov and Tennessee Williams that had never performed in Ireland.

“The critics and audiences were blown away,” said Burch, UA associate professor of theatre and dance. “It was the first time an Irish audience had seen a piece that was so emotionally true, and the first time they had seen this type of ensemble work.”

“[Deirdre O’Connell] is the greatest single influence in Irish theatre since the 1960s,” said Higgins. For 40 years, O’Connell directed, acted and managed the theatre until her death in 2001.

Burch co-edited “Stanislavski in Ireland–Focus at Fifty” with McAvera, a long-time friend and colleague. The book details how Focus sustained its place at the forefront of Irish theatre through the stories of the people who built the theatre.

“I went to Ireland in the summer of 2012 to conduct interviews with many members of the original troupe,” Burch said. “Many famous people in the industry got their start at Focus, and so many of them opened up their stories and, in many cases, their homes for the book.”

The accompanying anthology “Breaking Boundaries—An Anthology of Original Plays” is a collection of original scripts produced at Focus. Burch says he wanted to gather a collection of plays that best represents the breadth of performance at Focus.

“Irish theatre has been a lifelong pursuit. I am part Irish, and I grew up in Boston. When I was 14, I went to the public library and read ‘The Plough and the Stars’ by Sean O’Casey. Irish theatre has been a part of my life ever since,” said Burch.

Read the original story in the Dialogue.

Television interview at the publisher’s book launch in Dublin, Ireland, Oct 1, 2013.

Posted by apangburn in Shakespeare, The Rude Mechanicals

Has it really been ten years?

For their tenth anniversary, the Rude Mechanicals have returned to their roots, planning new productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, two plays they performed back in 2003. Those shows took place on the Presidential Pavilion near the Ferguson Plaza under the conceit of a traveling theater troupe; the audience awaited the arrival of the actors who marched up singing “500 Miles Away from Home.” Realizing at the end of the first performance that they needed a parallel tune for their exit, Mark Hughes Cobb made a spur of the moment choice: “500 Miles” by the Proclaimers.

That song has remained the troupe’s signature sign off piece, but in the intervening decade a lot has changed; the performances now take place at Manderson Landing by the river, the company performs an entertaining half hour of songs beforehand, and the cast list for this year’s Midsummer contained several children not even born when the group first performed. What remains unchanged year to year, however, is the energy generated by amateur actors performing simply because they love the thrill of being on stage and the theatrical power of Shakespeare. This energy works particularly well for…. Read the rest of the story….

Posted by J.M. Gamble in New Work

On April 27th, 2011, a massive tornado ravaged much of the southeast, including Tuscaloosa. Now, a little over a year later, the Shelton State Community College Theatre Department—in conjunction with University of Alabama professor Steve Burch and community members Paul B. Crook and Kim and Chad Gentry—has developed what can only be described as a “theatrical event” to commemorate the event. Inside the Tornado consists of ten short plays and two songs which explore different experiences surrounding the storm. Except for the first play—“Home” by Paul B. Crook—all of the plays were written by students in Burch’s playwriting class.

Each of the plays made some use of the same impressive set (designed by Jaia Chen): the frame of a house with broken walls and, suspended from the ceiling, a bit of twisted metal fencing with assorted items—a wheelbarrow, a white picket fence—attached to it. The sound and lighting (designed by Frank Duren and Erin Hisey, respectively) were extremely effective at portraying the ambience of a storm—Duren’s sound often included bits of news broadcasts about the storm, as well as sounds of the tornado itself—behind the dramas on stage.

Some of the plays—“The Man in Black,” “Dorm Life,” and “Future Perfect”—presented the experience of living through a storm: the loss of power, the inability to communicate, and the inanity of petty quarrels in the face of a life-threatening situation. Amanda Steven’s “The Man in Black” was particularly moving as it dramatized the plight of Mia (played wonderfully by the very young Margaret Carr), a young girl whose father had died in an earlier storm, and whose mother—Sheila, played by Susie Johnson—would die in the course of this one. Carr’s screams as . . . . . .

Read the full story here.

Posted by apangburn in Classical Theatre, Improbable Fictions

Have you ever laughed at a joke that was blatantly overtly sexual, or a fart joke, and had a friend or parent chastise you? “That humor is so crude and disgusting! Find something more civilized!” And then, if it’s your parents, they sometimes go off and mutter about the way things are going downhill these days, and how back in their day humor was all clean…

The literary among you may well counter with Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” citing the string of fart jokes in the Miller’s Tale. But the theatrical among you would do better to thank the Greek playwright Aristophanes for making crude humor a classic in his play Lysistrata, which the staged reading troupe Improbable Fictions performed at the Kentuck Art Center during the artistic week leading up to the Druid City Arts Festival.

Directed by Steve Burch, a professor of theatre at UA, Lysistrata is a comedy written in frustration over the long, bloody Greek civil war between city-states Athens and Sparta, the Peloponnesian War. In the play, the women of Greece who have been left behind by their warring husbands and lovers, have become increasingly frustrated. The Athenian woman Lysistrata (Natalie Hopper) has decided to put an end to the fighting by forcing the men to make peace. So she convinces the other Greek women to withhold from their men something they desperately would want: sex.

The comedy that erupts from there often involves the rather strong sexual desires of both the men and the women. While the women attempt to pull off ridiculous antics to convince Lysistrata to let them leave their siege of the Acropolis, the men have slightly more… obvious problems. 

Read the rest of the story…..

(From http://improbablefictions.wordpress.com/tag/lysistrata/)

If you missed last Thursday’s staged reading of Lysistrata, fear not!  Here’s the mp3:

Sadly, you can’t hear just how many tube socks were stuffed into Kinesias’ pants…

Cast List:

Lysistrata…………………………………………..Natalie Hopper
Cleonike………………………………………………Allison Hetzel
Myrrhine…………………………………………………Molly Page
Lampito………………………………………………Susie Johnson
Corinthian Woman………………………………Amber Gibson
Boeotian Woman……………………………Dakota Park-Ozee
Leader of Men’s Chorus…………………..………….Nic Helms
Men’s Chorus…….Frank Sharpe, Eric Marable, Jr., Asher Elbein
Leader of Women’s Chorus……………………Deborah Parker
Women’s Chorus…………Amber Gibson, Dakota Park-Ozee, Dori Burns
Athenian Magistrate……………………….Mark Hughes Cobb
Kinesias………………………………….………………Joey Gamble
Spartan Herald……………………………..…………Motell Foster
Spartan Ambassador………………………..………Russell Frost

Adapted and Directed by Steve Burch