Olwen Fouéré in conversation with Melissa Sihra

MS: Why did you choose a career in the theatre?

OF: It sounds like a cliché, but it probably chose me. I was fairly clear that it was going to be the arts, though I was very interested in medicine. The most obvious place for me to go would have been into the visual arts, which is where I started. I would have probably ended up as a sculptor, or would have gone in the direction of performance art. I’m not sure, but my interest was very much in the non-verbal aspect of art. And of course I ended up in the theatre which, in this country was pretty text-based. But what fascinated me about the theatre was what was underneath the text; the whole thing about presence and performance and the whole non-verbal world, which is so extremely active within the theatre space.

The other reason was probably a product of my upbringing. I was brought-up bilingual, my parents being Breton, and I was born in the West of Ireland. I experienced a kind of a linguistic identity crisis when I was quite young – three or four years old, where I found it difficult to decide between speaking French or speaking English. Speaking French was associated with the inside world, and speaking English was associated with the outside world, and I felt I had to make a choice, that I couldn’t be in this “middle-place.” And that middle-place, I think, is the place that is articulated by my choice to go into the theatre.

MS: And how has that choice impacted on your life?

OF: My choice to go into the theatre has created my own sense of personal identity. In other words, it is through the theatre that I feel I function in relation to the outside world, that I can make statements, that I can push the boundaries of communication, of understanding. I think it’s been extremely difficult for me to find my place within the theatre, but that difficulty is what has helped me to articulate why I’m in it, for myself, and hopefully for an audience as well.

MS: You speak about how you feel about the non-verbal aspects of theatre. How did you find being in a theatrical tradition that was and still is so language-based? Was that difficult for you as a performer? How did you feel you could express yourself apart from through language?

OF: The answer to that quite simply, is presence, bodily presence. If you think of the mind and the body as simply being aspects of the same thing, or the spirit and the body as simply being aspects of the same thing, that’s very much the performer’s being, I think. It is not simply about being in a space, it’s about multi-faceted being in a space. I’m fascinated by language, but I don’t believe that theatre has got anything to do with the primacy of the text, so that did present certain difficulties. But I also saw the text as a framework really, within which you could operate all these other powers, if you like.

A turning-point in my career was doing my first physically-based piece of theatre – Stephen Berkoff’s version of The Fall of the House of Ussher at the Project in 1978, which Peter Sheridan directed. We workshopped it for two months, using all kinds of physical work. It turned out to be an extraordinary piece, and really, Ireland’s first “physical theatre” production. While I already had an understanding of what it was to be present on stage, it was only after this piece that I developed a sense of physical grounding, which I can only describe as a sort of umbilical connection to the ground – where you are very rooted, and are using the ground in a more complex way than just simply standing on it.

I think that there is a confusion about the idea of being physically present on-stage. It’s not so much about “doing”, than about finding your stillness so that movement can come out of that stillness. I think that a lot of directors are more concerned with broad-strokes to do with character, delivery and interpretation. However, is this necessarily the director’s job? If I was a director I would probably feel that the actors should know all this already. To a certain extent it’s the director’s job, but the most important directorial task, I think, is to facilitate the creation of a world for the actor to inhabit, and to collectively define and refine the theatrical vocabulary that is being employed. There isn’t a huge amount of experimentation or big development in theatrical form happening. I don’t quite know why that is. It’s something to do with what theatre means in this country.

MS: How important is formal training in the theatre?

OF: It’s a difficult question, because I was so hungry for training when I started, but could only get full-time training abroad, and funding was a huge issue too. I was getting a lot of work at home, so that meant that I could learn through doing; but it was extremely hard and very, very painful at times because you’re exposing yourself so much; you’re learning through doing, and you’re doing it in front of an audience and you’re working with very experienced people. And sometimes it would take me weeks to discover something that I felt “someone could have told me this in a day.” However, that said, I think the organic nature of my training and my search meant that I had to look very deep within myself about why I was doing it and what were the areas that I wanted to pursue.

I do feel that very often training can block people – I’ve seen it happen. I’m so wary of it because I think you’re dealing with such sensitive areas of a person’s psyche, that a lot of blocks can be set-up. On the other hand that’s not to say that I’m against training – it’s a very, very difficult question. I think there are probably too many schools in Ireland for the size of the theatrical community. I think also, the whole theatre scene, what theatre is within this society needs to be opened up in a big way before it can cope with the amount of people coming into the business, because it is a business at the moment. Maybe if it was more central to people’s lives, it would be another thing.

MS: You say that the theatre in Ireland is like a business at the moment. What are the implications of this?

OF: I think there are fantastic energies there still, as there have always been within the Irish theatre. However, I think that it is commerce-driven right now. I think it’s getting more like London. I think that the old “bums on seats” or “get a star thing” is more important than the quality of the work. I think it is too expensive, I don’t think people should be paying any more to go to the theatre than they pay to go to the cinema. I would like to see something pretty radical happening. I go to see so many shows now where I think “why are we doing this?” – “So what?” kind of theatre. I think we need a war! We need a war for the value of theatre to really become apparent again.

MS: Is it too comfortable?

OF: Much too comfortable! I’m not against entertainment. I think entertainment is important, but even as a huge populist thing, the theatre isn’t vibrating at the moment and we’re somewhere in this place where only certain people can afford it. I don’t have a problem with it being writer-driven – we have fantastic writers so why shouldn’t it be writer-driven? It’s not the writers’ fault that it’s become so text-based. And there’s already a whole move away from text-based theatre. I went to see a show recently, and here was the primacy of physical theatre, but there really wasn’t a reason for why it was happening, and I thought, “give us a good play!”

Theatre’s place in society has become problematic. I still regard it as my church, if you like, and regard myself as a priest of that church. But it is too elitist at the moment, not in its practice, but in its position in society, partly because people have to pay so much to go. And if the theatre feels it has to spoon-feed the audience, then the audience starts to get used to being spoon-fed, and they start to want only that. Then management starts to lose their nerve, unless they are the type who really want to challenge. It depends what yardstick is used as a measurement of success. There are a number of managements in this city who measure success according to box-office. Once you start to measure success like that, you are playing to the lowest common denominator. That’s the big problem for theatre.

MS: Is it all negative – is theatre losing the power to affect us now?

OF: I don’t think it has lost the power, but it’s not doing that at the moment because of the kind of stuff being produced and the level that it’s going on with – where you get a fantastic play maybe, but produced really badly. I think the power is still there, lying in wait, particularly amongst the acting community. If I was to really pursue this question or problem, I would say that I would try to set up a core group to work together within their own space, the way directors like Peter Brook, Grotowski and Lepage did. Just to see if you can really push things in some sort of way.

MS: Who do you admire now, in the theatre?

OF: I need to travel more, but I very much like Robert Lepage’s work, especially his earlier work. I love the way he works with a community of actors, and they lead the process as much as he does. I have done a workshop with Anne Bogart at SITI. She’s extraordinary – a great facilitator with a self-effacing way of working. Part of her system has evolved from modern dance principles, which I can relate to immediately. I am particularly interested in many aspects of Japanese theatre also.

MS: In 1980 you co-founded Operating Theatre company with composer Roger Doyle. The kind of work that you have created together has pushed and broadened the boundaries of theatrical representation in this country. What were your motivations for setting up the company, and why do you think this kind of experimental theatre is important?

OF: The artistic policy of the company was to create original work with music as a core element, combining my interest in performance generally with Roger’s interest in music-theatre, and looking at how most of the music in theatre is just added – on at the end, as an after-thought, or used for background, underscoring or scene-changes. I think music is an incredibly powerful force in the theatrical environment, so the aim of the company was to use music as a core element to it.

MS: You mentioned Chair, a piece you are working on at the moment. Two years ago the company produced a piece called Angel/Babel. Can you tell me about what you are trying to do with these pieces?

OF: With Angel/Babel we wanted to work with music leading the text and allowing the text to move around the music. Roger Doyle had been working on Babel for a number of years. So I came in with another element which was “angel”; angel being the representation of Babel, or the idea of a being, some sort of energetic being, growing out of the criss-cross of information within the new inner-space of information technology. And that fascinated me: this whole new space that had been created, which is sort of no-where. So it became a semi-science-fiction kind of thing, but very much just working from my physical sense of this being, and all the music that Roger had been working on up until then. And the text just started to grow around these ideas. So it seemed like a slightly reverse way of working; allowing the musical ideas and the performing ideas to lead the process, as opposed to allowing the text to lead the process.

I think it’s important that this sort of theatre happens. I wouldn’t stand up on a box and say “this is what has to happen”, but I feel if you work on that level, a lot of deeper things come through, and it probably gets a little bit closer to the Artaudian notion of some sort of shift without the intellect, in a way, being able to get involved, to filter or articulate it. So, for all the shows we’ve done, that’s the one I’m proudest of in terms of what we wanted to do. There was a mixed critical response, but the audiences’ response in general was quite powerful – people were a bit disturbed by it – send them home disturbed!

MS: In Angel/Babel language seemed to be taken-apart, and then put back together in a new way. The textual signs were broken down and manipulated by the musical sounds and your bodily movements as you lay on stage as a kind of floating, cyber-body. The effect was quite haunting, with all the elements of performance (lighting being very important also) working together to create a sense of space that was like an infinite void, or vacuum. There was a sense of immense loneliness and humanity in the piece. It seemed to articulate the irony of modern communication – about how the more technologically sophisticated we are, the more alienated we become.

OF: You are quite right to say that language was totally broken-down; in the script there were words broken-down and repeated, and that happened even more when I started working with the interactive elements of light and sound. The text was more like a map that came through a kind of a creature which was trying to articulate itself through a flow of information that was sustaining and, in a sense, creating it. So we would start with certain words and begin to understand, and start to connect certain words. So it’s still text-based, but I don’t know if anybody could really be able to make sense of it just by reading it off the page. What would you call that? Would you call that text or would you call that something else? A verbal map? It’s difficult to define. The text never made a complete sentence, but “text” probably isn’t the right word because text implies a kind of context, coherence or framework.

The new piece will have a lot of complete sentences and “found” text. It is still in its infancy. It’s called Chair and it’s based on Andy Warhol’s lithographs of the electric chair, which I’ve always found very powerful. I’ve done mini-performances of this idea of the electric chair. We are looking now, very much at the subtext, the idea and its shadow, the idea of text being shadowed musically through a pitch to midi system, where the musical shadows take over from the speech and then the speech is completely obscured, but still being triggered, so you know that somewhere, behind this musical shadow, which is to the fore, there is somebody speaking, but all you hear is the shadow, and the shadow goes back behind and the speech comes forward. While we are working with the image of the electric chair, the piece is not really about execution. Death-row will come into it, execution will come into it, but it’s more about the image and the shadow of the image. Warhol was working constantly with the shadow of images, like Marilyn Monroe, the shadow of her fame, where her fame is her shadow, but it has come to the fore, and in a way, is in front of her. So it became about construct and organism; construct being the shadow, and organism being the original thing. The construct is created by other people. We’re playing with the repetition of images; what happens when one image is repeated? And does that create another kind of shadow?

So we’re going to have a central spine which will deal with this idea, and then around it will be woven the image of Prometheus, of him being bound, because he gave mankind a secret – secret knowledge for which he’s being punished. This seems to me to be a very eloquent underpinning of the electric chair. The harnessing of natural energy, electricity, for execution, actually goes against the creator or humanity, if you like.

MS: How do you respond to the critics?

OF: I think the standard of criticism in this country isn’t great. I do read them, because they don’t bother me one way or another. I know a lot of people who won’t read them, and I say “why not?”, because you are allowing them too much power. If I feel pleased with my work, then negative criticism doesn’t bother me.

MS: How do you feel about critics abroad compared with Irish critics?

OF: Not that much different. The only difference I find is that English critics tend to be more positive about Irish work that we don’t really see very clearly here. For instance, Marina Carr’s work, such as By the Bog of Cats, which got brilliantly reviewed by the English critics, but got mixed reviews here. So it’s very interesting. And I think that’s because of two things. One is a negative one, which is that Irish theatre is “fashionable”, and the second, and positive aspect is that it’s taken out of its context. We’re so used to very rich work happening here that we’re initially not all that impressed by it. But when it’s removed from its own context, we suddenly see that it’s very powerful writing, compared to some of the other stuff that’s happening in, say, London. I can’t say for American critics, but British critics do not seem to have any impact on what’s happening. The only person in Ireland whom I felt had any kind of impact in that way, was Fintan O’Toole, because he always came from a very informed basis. I always read him, and have often disagreed with him, but because he has such a wide-reaching interest in other things, and everything seems connected, I feel that there is a follow-through in some sort of way, in how he views theatre. And I don’t see that anywhere else, and I think it should be there, whether it be just looking at something from a different point of view, or asking questions from a different angle. I don’t think it’s about reading the paper to see whether you want to go to a show or not. That’s a review, it’s not a critique to just say “you’ll enjoy this!” or “don’t miss it!”

MS: You have played the lead role in two of Marina Carr’s plays, Mai in The Mai and Hester Swane in By the Bog of Cats. Both roles were written for you. Tell me about your experiences working on these plays, and in her early work Ullaloo.

OF: With Ullaloo, which was produced at the Peacock in 1990, Marina was still experimenting very much with form, and a lot of her influences were more to the fore than her own voice at that point. There was still something extraordinary going on, but there was a layer that needed peeling back. This was a strange time for me as I had had a baby who had died in the womb. I remember carrying the baby for the first two weeks of rehearsals, but it is still a very cloudy time. Working during a time of personal tragedy, and trying to perform, is very difficult. It’s very difficult unless you’re actually working in a piece which allows that to be channelled out. But if I go to the theatre and see an actor working out their own stuff as opposed to working with their own stuff… well, they are two very different things. I hope it hasn’t happened to me.

When I was given the script of The Mai I had very mixed feelings about it. I thought – brilliant writing – because Marina is a wonderful writer, but I wasn’t sure about the character particularly. I couldn’t stand her – The Mai! She drove me mad, and I thought, “who would want to play a woman like that?” I was on Robert’s side! And it was that very contradiction, and the fact that Marina had written it with me in mind, and that she was such a contrary character to the kinds of characters that I would normally expect to be asked to play, that made me intrigued enough to decide to do it. And it was an absolutely fascinating journey.

Whatever connection Marina and I may have, either as people, or as artists, when I mix with her work, something else happens. And this has created something else, alchemical. The Mai was an extraordinary journey. What fascinated me was that there was no morality involved in the play, of any kind. It was about going deep into some primal kind of energy and need. The Mai, from this sort of housewife, teacher character, became this “seeker after” everything that was exotic and unattainable. She had a belief in the transcendental nature of sexuality. I think the sexual relationship between her and Robert was probably extraordinary. And this connection that the Mai has made with this desperately errant husband is the thing that brings out the artist in her, and brings out the death-wish. All of this fantastically creative woman’s energies have been so narrow all her life, and this is the portal to the otherworld – through this man. I’ve always found something incredibly powerful about that through-line, which carried me through that play, in a way that I didn’t expect at all. I found it very releasing to be in as well. With Hester it was a different story. I had a totally immediate connection with that character. I think that’s the best role I’ve ever been given to play, in terms of me as an actor, rather than as a creator of the work. As an actor, that’s been my best one.

MS: Was that because Hester is an outsider, also straddling two worlds, the inside and the outside?

OF: Yes, very much so. It was something that I could relate right back to my childhood, even down to the physical landscape of where we were, the bogs. For me, that was very much the West of Ireland, where I was brought up. The connection with her need to stay there. It articulated a lot of things for me, in a way.

MS: Of being in a dual world?

OF: A dual world, yes. And the bleak landscape. I’ve always loved a vast stretch of bog.

MS: How involved was Marina in your creation of the roles?

OF: Very much, yes. I don’t think I would have discovered what I discovered in The Mai without her being around. She made one very key comment which was probably then how Hester Swane was later created. During the rehearsals for The Mai, when we were just starting to run it, Marina said; “whatever she is, a teacher, or whatever, she’s more of a tinker.” And that immediately unleashed the darker side of her, the more primal passions. That was a real trigger, and made me connect with all the things I’ve been talking about in relation to The Mai, where she’s kind of, an artist.

With By the Bog of Cats it was fantastic – short rehearsals – four weeks and we just worked very hard, very quickly. In week three Marina and I went out together and talked through everything and she gave me a couple of key things – very simple – key things which were not really to do with the character or anything like that, just about rhythms, and taking time. Working within a company as opposed to working on my own, I tend to be quite resistant to just demanding space around me, but with Hester Swane, Marina planted it in me that this was Hester’s world – so take it, and don’t let anyone else intrude on it, in a way. And that was a thing that was planted mentally, and was actually very good. Marina is invaluable to have around at rehearsals. She is also probably the only writer who sees rehearsals as a voyage of discovery for herself, as much as anything – that fantastic thing of being delightedly surprised at what comes out. She sees what she has given as being something to come to life through performance. I have worked with some writers who keep it within the play they have written, all the time. She loves when it explodes out of there.

MS: It can be precarious with, essentially, three voices – the director, the playwright and the performer, all informing the process.

OF: Very much so. I’m all for the presence of the writer in the rehearsal room – as much as possible, and I feel the best directors are there as facilitators to that exchange between the writer and the performer. Tom Murphy for instance, is very, very precise about aspects of rhythm, language and character. Some people can find that constricting, but I love being in that sort of situation where you have to push against something that’s clearly very strong. He’s an extraordinary person and I’ve always had a very productive working relationship with him. Patrick Mason is one director who has a great ability to create the space for that kind of exchange between the performer and the playwright. He very gently guided both Marina and me through our own journeys during By the Bog of Cats.

MS: Do you think that women are under-represented in the theatre in this country? Who are the female voices in Irish theatre?

OF: Well, we only really have one female playwright in this country, one really significant female voice – there are others coming through obviously, but not yet into the mainstream. And I’ve only worked with one or two female directors. It’s something that I don’t think about that often and maybe I should; I’ve only worked with one or two female directors in my entire twenty-something years – they’ve all been male! And I’ve really started to think about that recently, because it’s not a question that bothers me in any kind of way, but I saw something emerge – I thought, isn’t it interesting, that when I did Marina’s plays I felt an extraordinary kind of connection and release – and was that connected to gender, or not, who knows? As for being under-represented – I don’t feel that there’s anything stopping women from coming through. If anything, it’s probably the opposite – we’re almost on the verge of positive discrimination – which I don’t agree with anyway. But there aren’t that many women out there – that’s for sure. But I don’t think it’s a question of representation necessarily, it’s just that they aren’t coming through.

MS: Why aren’t more women in Ireland writing and directing for the theatre?

OF: I’m glad you brought this up, because I always refrain from thinking that these things are gender specific, but I think that they probably are – and there is a need for something to change. I don’t quite know why it is. Is there something, do you think, in that whole gender thing which is about the woman being able to keep things fluid, and that things don’t have to become fixed? And therefore, the whole kind of massive operation of bringing a show in is a more complex one for a woman, or whatever, if you really take on all the aspects that are there, as opposed to saying “I’m going to get this show up?” So, maybe it has something to do with that need to take on all the aspects of what you want to be dealing with – there’s this necessity to keep things fluid, and that can be very disastrous within the theatre environment, because so many people have to be brought along in the ship at the same time. I’m very interested in directing, but that aspect of it does scare me, and it’s possibly significant, that with my own work, I always have to have a third person, like a co-director or co-writer, because I don’t trust my own ability to bring it in.

MS: Would you say that this tendency indicates an inherent of lack in confidence in women?

OF: I suppose it is a lack of confidence ultimately. Even with me, it’s not that I lack confidence, but I lack organisational confidence.

MS: Have you ever been terribly interested in getting into film and television, or do you resist that?

OF: Resisted, or it’s resisted me, I’m not sure which way around it is. But it’s never something I’ve actively pursued, no. The kind of fame and recognition that comes with film and television is of no real value to me, other than in terms of money! In film I miss the sense of being able to map any kind of path through it. You’ve no control over the arc, so your artistic involvement is entirely to do with the moment of shooting. The moment is the entire context – nothing else.

MS: How important do you think a grounding in or knowledge of theatre history is to practitioners? Have you systematically studied the history of theatre and its traditions?

OF: Not at all, and I would very much like to. I’ve tended just to pick up things as I get interested. I would have said that I didn’t think it was that important, but I think it is important now because, I don’t think there’s enough out there at the moment for people to actually realise just how radically differently you can look at what theatre is, and what it’s about. When I started I wasn’t particularly aware either, but because I worked with the Stanislavsky system at the Focus Theatre, it was very much connected to personal belief. Then working with the Sheridan brothers at the Project Arts Centre, it evolved very much around social, political kinds of issues. It was also very much based on personal belief, and giving voice to that belief. There’s an awful lot to discover out there, in the theatre of the world. It is important for us all to start realising where it can be and where it has come from.

Extract From: Theatre Talk: Voices of Irish Theatre Practitioners, edited by Lilian Chambers, Ger Fitzgibbon and Eamonn Jordan (2002)

Cross Reference: Other essays on and interviews with this performer

See Also: Radical Contemporary Theatre Practices By Women In Ireland, edited by Miriam Haughton and Mária Kurdi and Performing Feminisms in Contemporary Ireland, edited by Lisa Fitzpatrick