Declan relishing role in play that offers no easy answers

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

“I wouldn’t be much of an actor if I judged my character in advance,” observes Declan Conlon of his upcoming role in Decadent Theatre’s production of David Harrower’s play, Blackbird, which visits Galway’s Town Hall Theatre next Tuesday, May 10, as part of a national tour.

Declan plays Ray/Peter in the two-hander which centres around a meeting between himself and a young woman, Una, with whom he’d had an illegal relationship when she was a child. That was 15 years ago, when he was 40 and she was 12. Ray was imprisoned for this and has forged a new life since being released. But Una has found him and arrives at his office, seeking answers.

Blackbird, which premiered at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival in 2005, went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in London’s West End and was staged by Decadent for the 2009 Galway Arts Festival. Like that production, this one is directed by the company’s Artistic Director Andrew Flynn – it’s being supported by the Arts Council as part of rebuilding Irish theatre, post-Covid.

Seventeen years since its Edinburgh debut and 13 years since Decadent first presented it in Galway, Declan feels it stands the test of time.

“It’s probably a bit more pertinent now than ever,” he says as he sips coffee in the sunshine outside NUIG’s Bank of Ireland Theatre on a break from rehearsals. “It’s a very strange piece,” he adds.

Declan recalls seeing a production of it in Dublin in 2007, when “it provided the discussion for the rest of the evening”.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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