Stella breathes new life into much-loved Coppélia

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Model Kate Moss, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini of Girls Aloud and The X-Factor, and Tim Burton’s film Mars Attacks have all helped to inspire Ballet Ireland’s latest show, a modern version of the 1870 classic, Coppélia, which comes to the Town Hall Theatre next Wednesday, December 9.

This new version of the comic ballet has been choreographed by Ballet Ireland’s choreographer in residence, Morgan Runacre-Temple, while the storyline was written by actor and playwright Stella Feehily, who was reared in Donegal and is now based in London. Stella has written several plays for The Royal Court Theatre, most recently This May Hurt A Bit, which explored Britain’s National Health Service, which is being destroyed by the Tory government.

Stella became involved in Coppélia when she successfully responded to a Ballet Ireland application seeking a scriptwriter for a new version of this ballet, centred on Dr Coppelius and his life-size dancing doll, Coppélia whose presence causes consternation at a town festival.

It was a new challenge for Stella, who began life as an actor but always wanted to be a writer, and it was one she embraced.

“You start with Charles Nuitter’s original script and look at where he took inspiration from, and then look at many other versions of it,” she explains of the process.

“Nuitter created a light, frothy tale, but even the most benign production is still rather spooky in that Dr Coppelius wanted to steal a soul,” she adds. The ballet was originally inspired by two stories from gothic writer Enrst Hoffman, so there is a dark undertone.

Stella met with choreographer Morgan Runacre-Temple and they discussed their ideas, which included creating 1950s style mannequins, based on the notion of The Stepford Wives. From that, they further explored how someone like singer Cheryl Cole evolved from the grungy singer with Girls Aloud to the elegant Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, who seems constricted by the clothes she wears.

Our modern obsession with youthful perfection, especially for women, is central to this re-telling of Coppélia, where a man falls in love with a doll rather than with a real woman.

The original librettist Charles Nuitter may not have had a feminist tone in mind when writing Coppélia, but the 1870s marked the first wave of feminism, and contemporary art reflected that, says Stella.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.