Róisín takes risks with Theatre Festival show

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

There’s no shortage of exciting new work in this year’s Galway Theatre Festival which kicks off this Friday, April 29, and runs until May 7. One of these shows is a locally produced work, My Poet Dark and Slender from Mmm Theatre, which will be at Druid’s Mick Lally Theatre from this Friday until Monday, May 2.

This unconventional drama, fusing a variety of theatrical styles alongside music and choreography, is the brainchild of Róisín Stack, one of the most creative people on Galway’s theatre scene.

Róisín, who works part time as Communications and Development Associate with Druid, has been involved in drama for more than 15 years, firstly as a student, then as a performer, director teacher and administrator.

The Shrule woman studied drama in Australia and in Ireland –  doing the Masters at NUIG –  and subsequently taught in both countries. As a performer, she has been involved with the Melbourne Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe and San Francisco Mime Troupe.

In Galway, Róisín has worked with Macnas, with Mephisto Theatre Company and the Town Hall Theatre. In addition, she and fellow arts worker Craig Flaherty set up the Jolt initiative in 2011 to assist young theatre-makers and to explore more experimental approaches to theatre-making.

While she has considerable administrative skills, Róisín’s creative side will be to the fore in My Poet Dark and Slender.

It’s based on a Pádraic Ó Conaire short story, M’fhile Caol Dubh, about a woman who has a brazen love affair with a poet who is not all he seems.

This passionate, dark and beautifully written story starts in 1915, and the Easter Rising provides much of the backdrop to the action, although in a subtle way.

“I’m working off an English translation which I came across years ago when I was doing the Masters at NUIG,” explains Róisín. A friend left it for her with a Post-it note that said ‘you might find something in there’. She did.

The translation is by the late Kerry writer Bryan McMahon, whose work she loves, having directed his play, The Honeyspike, for Mephisto Theatre Company.

“My instinct was to script it, which I did,” she recalls of her approach to the Ó Conaire work. But that didn’t do it justice.

So she asked herself a fundamental question: “Why do I want to do theatre anyway, apart from telling a great story?”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.