Raging: Three Plays/Seven Years of Warfare in Ireland (NHB Modern Plays)

Wild Sky, Embargo & Outrage

Deirdre Kinahan

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781839040863
• eBook ISBN: 9781788505765
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre britannique

A trilogy of landmark plays commemorating seven years of warfare in Ireland, from the 1916 Easter Rising to the Civil War which began in 1922.

Wild Sky is a story of interlocking lives: of the politicised Josie Dunne, and of Tom Farrell, who is driven only by his love for her. As the Rising plays out, there are unforeseen consequences for everyone involved...

Embargo focuses on a pivotal moment during the Irish War of Independence in 1920, when dockers and railmen refused to transport armed troops or handle any weapons arriving from Britain.

Outrage follows two sisters, Alice and Nell, who play key roles in organising civic resistance and the propaganda war. Like everyone else in Ireland, they become deeply conflicted as the country spins toward a devastating Civil War.

Each of the three plays was first performed a century after the event which it depicts, and they were commissioned and performed by companies including Fishamble: The New Play Company, Meath County Council Arts Office, Dublin Port Company and Iarnród Éireann.

Together, they challenge the historical narrative, mixing true-life testimonies with powerful drama to create a theatrical hurricane of empathy, action and truth.

OUTRAGE

The Civil War (1922–23)

Dedicated to the memory
of my own
Róisín

Outrage was first produced by Fishamble: The New Play Company, in partnership with Dublin Port Company, and Meath County Council, during St Patrick’s Festival, as part of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media’s Decade of Centenaries programme. It was commissioned by Meath County Council Arts Office, and ran in the Kells Courthouse and Pumphouse in Dublin Port from 17 March–3 April and then was streamed online.

PJ		Naoise Dunbar
ALICE		Caitríona Ennis
NELL		Mary Murray
Director		Jim Culleton
Set Designer		Maree Kearns
Costume Designer		Catherine Fay
Lighting Designer		Kevin Smith
Composer & Sound Designer		Carl Kennedy
Hair & Make-up		Val Sherlock
Dramaturg		Gavin Kostick
Producer		Eva Scanlan
Production Manager		Eoin Kilkenny
Associate Producer		Cally Shine
Stage Manager		Sophie Flynn
Assistant Stage Manager		Síle Mahon
Wardrobe Supervisor		Aoife O’Rourke
Technical Venue Manager		Laura Murphy
Chief LX		Matt Burke
Production Coordinator		Ronan Carey
Marketing		Dafni Zarkadi and Freya Gillespie
FOH Coordinator		Daniel Culleton
PR		O’Doherty Communications
Music Advisor		Gerardette Bailey
Original Song by		Michael Brunnock
Set Construction		Andrew Clancy
Cover Artwork by		Leo Byrne and Publicis
Dublin
Filmed by		Media Coop

Characters

ALICE

NELL

PJ

Note on Text

When lines are in bold there is an element of choral speaking.

Commisioned by Meath County Council Arts Office.

ALICE/NELL/PJ. The sundering came slow at first.

PJ. In grumbling on street corners.

Voices raised in the heat of a public house.

NELL. Darts of accusation in jaded rebel eyes.

ALICE. But then you could see it take hold.

Take hold like a creeping contagion,

snaking through the countryside.

The sundering was like a blight rolling in on the mist.

A scourge

PJ.…that whipped up anger, dissent and discord amongst towns, families, columns, councils, courts,

ALICE.…lovers and friends.

PJ. Lines were being drawn now right through Irish households.

Irish villages.

Irish hearts.

NELL. It was civil war.

Civil war…

PJ. Despite our best efforts to avoid it.

NELL. Pat Finney.

PJ. Pat Finney.

ALICE. Pat Finney.

NELL. He came for me in the heat of it.

The fire of it.

The curse of it.

PJ. The curse of civil war.

NELL. The first night that I saw him was at the burning of Castle Saunderson, when we were all still of the one army, all still of the one mind. One of our blackened faces grinning in the moonlight.

ALICE/PJ. Finney.

NELL. He came and knelt right beside me to peer through the thorn, to thrill at the sight of the blaze taking hold. O and how we thrilled at our bonfire of the vanities. Our bonfire of arrogance, privilege, greed. How we thrilled to watch another colonial mansion burn. To hear the old house scream and crash and spit into the night sky. I remember I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to turn my back on that inferno… the glory of it, the justice.

Yes –

ALICE. He was with you then.

NELL. He was with us then.

PJ. Finney.

NELL. Growing in confidence,

in violence.

He slipped his arm about my shoulder but I didn’t respond.

War makes heroes and demons, doesn’t it?

So how could war in Ireland be any different?

No matter what the priests say.

Or the Staters.

Or the books.

PJ/ALICE. Heroes and demons.

NELL. I was organising in County Cavan for Cumann na mBan when I got that chance to see Castle Saunderson burn. I was active throughout the Tan War. Active, if the truth be told, since first I got a job as a baker’s assistant on Talbot Street in 1902, when I came across the resplendent Maud Gonne and her women’s political movement. I was little more than a child at the time, thirteen, but joined up with Inghinidhe na hÉireann and that set me on my course through this world.

ALICE. Pat Finney.

NELL. Pat Finney.

ALICE. I had met him once in Dublin, I’m sure of it.

When I was delivering a despatch to a group of ministers. I can see still see him in my mind’s eye, seated among them, all elbows and knees, sprung! I didn’t like the look of him, the way he ate me up entirely with his eyes but I could see that he was well thought of by the men, well respected…

NELL. As one of our most efficient killers.

ALICE. At the heart of our war with Britain.

NELL. Finney.

PJ. I never knew him before that night.

Never met him in all my skirmishes, battles, ambushes, through the years. Not even when he was training recruits down home in Meath –

ALICE. Finney.

PJ. – though I had heard whispers of his… talents. His name was well known in the IRA even if he never courted the limelight.

And his name was feared.

NELL. One of them that had grand plans for himself for when the fight was over.

ALICE. The fight.

It was my sister Nell that first brought Ireland’s fight into our home. Wrapped up carefully in her baker’s apron.

Hot on her floury hands.

And she found willing recruits in us siblings.

Much to our mother’s bewilderment.

And much to our mother’s cost.

My mother lost two of her sons to bullets on O’Connell Street.

Then there was Nell.

And then there was me.

PJ. Alice.

NELL. Alice.

ALICE. Drawn into the excitement of revolution like a moth to a flame.

PJ. Even though there were nearly ten years between them, Nell was more than a sister to Alice, she was her goddess, her compass. Not me. I think she would have followed Nell through to the gates of hell.

ALICE. I was writing for the Irish Bulletin in the department of Propaganda of Ireland’s first Dáil when I met PJ.

PJ. The department being the illegal arm of our illegal government consisting of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Wild Sky
• Embargo
• Outrage
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information