Armagh Project 2015

There aren’t really flies here, doesn’t get warm enough, but there are moths aplenty. They remind me of summers past. It’s why we would sit in the near-dark with the windows wide open. Ryan said, “The lights are what draw them in.” So we would play infinite rounds of Cards Against Humanity, empty plastic 2-liters lining the edge of the table with trace cider resin the bottom divots of the bottle, warping the florescent hues of dim, supplementary wall lights. Our faces were shadows and highlights. The sun would set, fade, and peak out again while hours unwound around us.

“It’s huge!” They say now, shaking this moth out of their shawls and the sleeves of their robes. It swirls to the window that way that moths do, and the wings patter against the glass as it tumbles to its escape. Maybe it’s the same moth, come to see me now that word’s gotten around. Flittering in my hair to tie me to another planet and confirm a portal to another space and time, even if only for the moment where I forget what year it is and what I’m doing.

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While walking the streets of Armagh, I continuously come across Chrysanthemums. The sight of these flowers tend to always comfort me, as they remind me of home. As a child my mother and I would plant these together, we would spend the entire day planting and laughing. I looked forward to this day every year, because it meant that for one day my mother was all mine. My mother was and still is the most wonderful woman I know and I cherished those hours spent with her. Colors, herbs, and plant life have always caught my attention and especially the meaning behind them. Chrysanthemums symbolize a life full of ease and when presented to someone as a gift they will bring them peace and happiness. I am especially drawn to the yellow and orange mums, which I believe is because those two colors seem to be appropriate with the emotions I have been feeling this week. Orange symbolizes adventure, risk-taking, confidence, competition and independence. Yellow symbolizes hope, happiness,positivity, and clarity. When the colors are put together they stand for rebirth and new beginnings. The two colors seem to intertwine quite often and the sight of them always clears my head of all my worries.

During my time here in Ireland, there’s been a couple things that have stuck to me. First and foremost is Armagh’s sense of community, and (I presume) importance of family and religion. I say this because everyone and everything opens and closes at the same time, and when I say that I mean you cannot go out to get a cup of coffee before 9AM or get anything to eat after 9PM, because nothing is opened. Continue reading →

Legend has it that St.Brigid of Kildare, an Irish nun, asked St.Patrick, to grant permission for women to propose marriage after hearing complaints from single women whose suitors were too shy to propose. Initially, he granted women permission to propose only once every seven years, but at Brigid’s insistence, he acquiesced and allowed proposals every leap day. The folk tale suggests that Brigid then dropped to a knee and proposed to Patrick that instant, but he refused, kissing her on the cheek and offering a silk gown to soften the blow. The Irish tradition therefore dictates that any man refusing a woman’s leap-day proposal must give her a silk gown or buy her 12 pairs of gloves, to hide her embarrassment.

My back was warmed as I clambered up
From the balmy banks of the hearthfire,
And as I leapt upon the sill to see
Through the glass of my quiet home,
An outer gasp blew through the trees
And shook the raindrops from their heads.

Winter took too many of their limbs,
Cracked them clean into snowdrop clumps
That melted into the rotting copse rinds,
Fresh for the coming of the Spring rain
And the hungry sod of the wet earth;
Such destruction should not have to be.

Now I sit by the ledge and watch,
The scorched heavens’ unholy racket
Through the din of thundering fury;
My elderly master creeps behind me,
His fingers dig trenches in my black fur
And I realize how wonderful it is to be home.

From the treeline strode a man. Exhaustion is no thing to a furious man, and he was far from calm. A cascade of rain and lightning fell around him, as it always fell around him. The Great Storm is thought to be ceaseless, but the answer lies in the horizon. He marched toward the hill in the field, hefty walking stick in hand. The man on the hill stood bold and tall, as straight and smug as the spear he held. Continue reading →

Somewhat in the vein of viewing character orchestration, I was a little put off by the fact that, in Dancing at Lughnasa, the boy is imaginary. All of his lines are delivered by older Michael, who stands off to the side. This is an interesting approach to presentation, but is also jarring somewhat as if the boy never existed– a phantasm haunting the memories of his aunts and mother. However, it does as a layer of separation, showing that Michael is removed, that he is looking back. But Michael also delivers his own monologues, which provide the audience with the internal musings of the boy/his older insites. The play runs as if it somewhat doesn’t need young Michael at all. The main focus plays around the women. Gerry and Chris have Michael, and Gerry comes by to see both of them. However, if Gerry and Chris were to have tried for a child and failed, or the boy die young. The connections between the two would still be similar, providing a different progression of the play, but it would still provide the same outcome for the other women– the advancement of society and break away from tradition.

The Marconi provides the women a window beyond the conventional, but the window is very similar to that of the past, the festival of Lughnasa is a pagan harvest celebration that breaks catholic tradition, which Kate sees as hedonistic, warning against continuously. The women embrace this freedom of the festival as an escape from the traditional norms, but at the same time, the traditional norms are weakened by the the progression of society and technology. Marconi allows the women to dance to music whenever it is working properly, isolating tradition in a lone bubble on the timeline of history. We return to the old, unstructured ways more easily than we may think.

Back to Michael, albeit a decent narrator with his own story, his role in the play ad a child is greatly eclipsed by the other women and his lack of physical presence further facilitates the notion of his removal from the play entirely.

Brian Friel utilizes character orchestration in his play, Dancing at Lughnasa as a device to distinguish each character from one another through their singular voices, and speech patterns. An obvious example would be the character Michael  as the narrator as an adult and then as a young man with in the story. There is a difference between these two characters through tense change. The narrator is speaking of the past and the boy is in the present. The characters also differ because the child speaks in simple, stubbornly short sentences, which also make the boy distinct when amongst other adults of the play as an withdrawn adolescent. The narrator has a better grasp of language, as well as himself.

Another example is of the character Father Jack, a war veteran. A side from assumedly suffering from post-traumatic stress, returning home was also difficult because he fought for the British Army whilst the Catholics and Protestant were at conflict. Brian Friel gave Father Jack a distinctive voice to in culminate this character’s internal struggles. This can be observed through the of many question marks in his dialogue to reflect his uncertainty, as well as ellipses between short phrases. For instance, “Perhaps… I feel the climate so cold… if you would forgive me.”(p27) and then later, “I may do that… thank you… you are most kind” (p27).