ARTicles vol. 7 i. 4: Director Carmel O’Reilly

Carmel O’Reilly, envoy of the Irish drama scene in Boston, has made her name in the theatre world as a director of Irish plays. She founded the Súgán Theatre Company in Boston, and she was honored with the Elliot Norton award twice for outstanding director and the 2004 Eire Society Gold Medal for her contributions to Irish culture.

O’Reilly’s roots in Irish theatre are deep. She remembers how, as a child, ”touring theatrical companies and amateur drama groups were always part of Irish country life. I recall waiting excitedly on a long bench in the front row of the parochial hall for the curtain to rise.” As Artistic Director of the Súgán Theatre Company in Boston, she was able to profile a new generation of young Irish writers, work with young Irish actors, and “engage in creating a new perspective of modern Ireland through theatre.” Now at the A.R.T. she tries her accent at Greek tragedy, but Greek tragedy with a twist—Christine Evans’ Trojan Barbie.

In preparation, O’Reilly, Evans, and set designer David Reynoso visited an Anselm Kiefer exhibition at MASS MoCA. Kiefer is a German artist, mostly known for his post-war painting and use of interesting textures such as straw, ash, clay, and lead. “So much of Kiefer’s work struck a chord with the visual images of the play,” she recounts. Through her collaboration on Trojan Barbie, O’Reilly gets the sense of a “marriage of opposite ideas…ruthless cruelty alongside the most transcendent ideas of beauty.” This play has, as Evans calls it, “a car crash collision with Euripides.” O’Reilly elaborates: it is “classical text juxtaposed against modern idioms. Its title refers us back to Trojan Women, but its inclusion of ’Barbie’ pushes us into the present.  This duality is integral to the play….Sometimes we are not sure whether we are experiencing a past or contemporary event.”

Lynde Rosario is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T. / MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.