A Quiet ‘Rehearsal for the Revolution’: "Quietly" (2012) by Owen McCafferty
Résumé
"Quietly" marks Owen McCafferty’s debut at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Performed in November 2012, it is the first play the Northern Irish playwright premiered in the Republic. His major plays – "The Waiting List" (1994), "Mojo Mickybo" (1998), "Scenes from the Big Picture" (2003) – were written for the London National Theatre or Northern Irish stages. Like most of McCafferty's plays, "Quietly" articulates the tension between past violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the present as perceived by working-class characters who struggle to come to terms with their past. This piece expresses the difficulties of redemption by staging two enemies of a troubled past and a third character who functions not only as a representative of another community but also as a witness. It examines the triangular relationship of a Polish barman (Robert) who fled his home country because of poverty, Jimmy, a Catholic whose entire life was marked by the murder of his father in 1974 and Ian, a Protestant, who regrets being involved in bombing attacks on Catholics when he was a teenager. He now wants to make amends and has looked for the families of the people he killed. Jimmy has agreed to meet him in Belfast in the pub owned by Robert where his father was murdered, in 2009.
The marginal role of Robert, as both an actor and a spectator, recalls the concept of ‘spect-actor’ as developed by Augusto Boal in his book "Theatre of the Oppressed". That is why, one may view this play as a space for two actors and one ‘spect-actor’ playing political roles towards the aesthetisation of reconciliation.
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