It is one of the defining moments in recent Irish history, the point arguably when the relationship, which was always strained at the very best, broke, snapped and the call of truth, of freedom from a foreign power, became enshrined in the hearts of those who sought to fight the British Government, and those who saw history as being there to hold with both hands and create a home that could not be breached by the powers or influence of Westminster.
The story of the Easter Uprising is well known, any visitor to Dublin cannot be failed to be moved by the sense of history, of the stories of valiant men and women who did everything in their power to see the back of what can only be described as an invading force. However, there is always something more to find, a story, a resounding an echoing tale of heroism in which many might bypass as they revel in the glory of the aftermath which came with such a high price.
Lizzie Nunnery should be considered as a modern Renaissance woman, an artist who not only is one of Liverpool’s finest poets, a musician and song writer who captures beauty throughout her gigs, but also as a writer, a playwright to whom the world is always a fascinating and intriguing place in which to learn from, to find a moment in which to research and bring to the public’s attention.
To Have To Shoot Irishmen is Ms. Nunnery’s latest production, a story of heroism in the most unexpected quarter, in the passion and voice of a pacifist who advocated change and his incredibly strong hearted wife, whose own voice demands to be heard. It is a story that speaks volumes and one that underlines exactly just how fervent a writer and observer Lizzie Nunnery is.
Ahead of To Have To Shoot Irishmen coming to the Everyman Theatre stage, I was able to be able to interview Lizzie about the play and her own particular way of observing what is around us.”
It’s always a pleasure to speak to you, I have to say though To Have Shoot Irishmen – you’re not ever shy from dealing with subjects that might have others turning away, are you? You’re happy to confront and talk about these particular subjects.
LN: “Yeah, I think that as a theatre audience member, I’m always really excited to see new writing that takes some challenging issues and so much drama lies in extremes of human experience. I think that there are so many plays that go into the dark and difficult places because we kind of need to explore them as humans and as a society, but you know there is also there is also a lot of warmth, humour and humanity in the play.
There’s a lot of music, a lot of folk songs which creates a slightly different atmosphere, it’s not all gritty reality, there’s a lot of really beautiful abstract moments that the actors have created; they’ve all got these incredible voices. Elinor Lawless who plays Hanna in particular has an amazing voice with so much power to it so I think that it will be quite an intense journey through the play but also in some ways, uplifting.
We look at the events of Easter Week and specifically the murder of Francis Skeffington through the Irish and British eyes, it’s a play, not a polemic, it’s not condemning any one of the four characters. It’s about showing four people in absolute moral chaos, caught up in the literal chaos of conflict, how they react and doing their best in the moment. Most of us are never really tested to that extent by the times we live in, it’s very important to put those stories on stage and I think by asking an audience to connect with those different perspectives, You are doing something very human and warm, you’re asking people to emphasise, that always seems like an important job for theatre to do.”
You tend to do that incredibly well, if you don’t mind me saying so, by your use of music within a play, although other plays do use music to great effect, yours seems to resonate with deep, personal thought. The way that you put you structure the music and weave it through the play. I’m thinking of Narvik for example?
LN: “It’s personal in that it’s written by me and Vidar (Norheim) with this play we’ve got some original songs and Vidar has written some really beautiful compositions as well but then we’ve got some traditional songs that were written very close to the real events in 1916, which is really exciting. At the time people would be writing songs almost like newspaper articles, they’d write a folk song about the events of the day and they’d be selling it on the street like a penny for the sheet music.
It was really lovely doing the research and coming across these songs, some of them I already knew from folk clubs and I placed them in the storytelling and also re-arranged them and slightly changed or made meanings more ambiguous within these songs that might have been sung over the years as more straightforward rabble-rousing tunes, we’re kind of putting a question mark on some of the lyrics of these songs and to make you think about how these events from 1916 impact on now, how did those ripples of violence run from that moment from today?”
Again, I’ve always been in awe of the way you structure your plays, when you think about what you’ve created in the past, after your first play Intemperance, that’s over a decade ago now, and the way that you’ve progressed – have you seen that progression within yourself or the way that you write?
LN: “Yeah, I do think the more you write, the more get the craft of it and the better you get at the process of it as well. Seeing a script through the ups and downs and the process of collaboration with directors, producers and actors. I definitely feel more confident in all of that more than I did ten years ago. It’s been great being at the rehearsal room with To Have To Shoot Irishmen, I’ve had a wonderful time working with the Director Gemma Kerr who’s so brilliant at communicating with the actors and who has left so much space for everyone to experiment in the room and find their own way through the play.
The actors have had a lovey time with it and I’ve been given a lot of space to be around as a writer. It’s important to keep commenting on how the lines might be interpreted how the characters might be interpreted so it’s been a genuine collaboration in that way, whereas, I remember with Intemperance not really being sure what a writer should do in a rehearsal room or whether I was allowed to speak, obviously I was invited to but it takes confidence to do so. I think that’s a marked change in me as a writer over the past ten or twelve years of writing.”
That’s very interesting about what you say about effectively joining in the process of the play. From what I’m aware of, not many writers actually do attend any of the workshops, they might be there for one or two initial meetings, but you seem to get involved, quite rightly, in the process all the way through.
LN: “I do these days, but I think there a lot of writers like me who get involved but you’re right, there are a lot of people who would rather just be around for the first few days of rehearsals with the read-through and then kind of come back at the end with the run-throughs. I think because Gemma Kerr and I have been discussing this play and planning this production for years now, it’s always been about the two of us approaching this together and obviously we’ve got all these other amazing artists as well. From the start, this was treated as a collaboration that I was embedded in.”
That’s very cool! You’ve got a great team with you, acting-wise, haven’t you? Gerard Cairns, Elinor Lawless, Robbie O’Neill and Russell Richardson as well.
LN: “They are all incredibly multi-talented, they all sing, they have instruments – we have mandolin, piano, harmonium and percussion onstage and they’ve all taken to all that and been all incredibly committed and working so hard as well. We’ve got a great Designer too – Rachel Rooney, this is her first professional production, she’s just graduated from LIPA and she’s doing beautiful things, I can’t wait for audiences to see her lovely set. We’ve got a wonderful Lighting Designer – Richard Owen, who’s got decades of experience, he did Narvik, it’s really nice to carry on some of those collaborations from Narvik as well.”
Its sounds like a glorious feast! It really does, I would really not expect anything less from the power of your writing to install that kind of I can’t wait to see it moment onstage. With the play being up at The Everyman, you’re very much at home there as well, aren’t you?
LN: “I am and it’s a real gift to feel so involved with a theatre, that is something that you can’t take for granted and I’m very grateful to The Everyman and Playhouse for all their support they’ve given me over the years. We’re rehearsing in the Youth Theatre’s space at the moment, it’s really lovely to go the Green Room and everyone’s so friendly, there’s so many people I know from working there in the past and I used to work in the Box Office and at Stage Door and in the Literary Department, so I’ve not just been involved there as a writer, I’ve done so many different things there over the years, that it does feel like a family, which is a credit to them really that they make me feel like that.
The cast have said it as well. Robbie O’Neill is from Liverpool but the others aren’t, and they’ve all commented on how friendly Liverpool is as a city and how warm and friendly The Everyman building is as well. They immediately felt welcomed and that’s a great thing to hear.”
It’s uplifting to be honest, I know that you’re an immensely popular writer and singer-songwriter. I’ve had the pleasure of writing about you many times now over the years and each time it’s a thrill, but I know that audiences find that as well because you are one of their own effectively, you are so embedded in the Liverpool mindset and psyche with your work. I know like me you don’t do the pride thing at all it must be heartening to your artistic soul?
LN: “It’s really nice to feel part of the artistic community in Liverpool, it’s been great whilst we’ve been rehearsing Spymonkey have been in the main rehearsal room and having Tmesis across the road so we’ve been bumping into them in the street, there is a brilliant feeling of all these talented people making work and everyone being very supportive of one another as well, so I hope that continues to develop in Liverpool. There are exciting things happening at The Unity as well and the new Hope Street Theatre opening, I think we’re actually heading into a new phase, we’re going to see a lot more smaller companies emerging in the city and making brilliant work.”
It says a lot about you that you have great praise for all that’s going on. One last question about the actual play. With Narvik, there was a man very much entrenched in a wartime, naval setting, quite willing to do his job within the storyline and this one is very much about a pacifist- you’ve almost done a 180 degree turn on this the tale of one of the protagonists.
LN: “You could see it that way, there are some links dramatically, all four characters could be seen as protagonists in the play, it’s kind of seen through Hanna’s eyes really, the drive of the play is trying to piece together events and to understand what happened to her husband and while Francis Skeffington was a pacifist, he described himself as a fighting pacifist, it was a position from where he was prepared to die for Ireland but not prepared to kill for it. We talked about this in the rehearsal room actually, he was a very driven man, his pacifism was going out on the street and standing on a box and shouting and he and Hanna had their own newspaper where they put articles about feminism and anti-militarism and there was an incredible drive to that pacifism. It was very hard to exist as a pacifist at that time, this was during World War One, so it wasn’t a position of apathy, there is a real parallel of one person wanting to fight for their Government in war and another to decide to fight for pacifism in war actually.”
I get that, one of my great-great grandfathers was a pacifist during World War One and in World War Two they sent him to work in the BSA factory in Birmingham and a German bomb landed on the factory and killed everyone inside and he was one of the last bodies to be pulled out and I always found that story – this pacifist effectively died in war so I do get your point on that very much so.
LN: “That’s exactly what happened to Frank, he spent his whole adult life campaigning against militarism and organised violence and it’s this great, tragic irony that he died at the end of a gun and then the other characters all have complex relations with conflict as well. Hanna, Frank’s wife, was an incredible woman, she was a feminist, Suffragette – twice imprisoned and on hunger strike during her life, due to her feminist activism. She and Frank were Nationalists but they believed dual causes of Nationalism and Pacifism, they thought Ireland should be free without violence and then when the Easter Rising happened in Dublin in 1916, Hanna found herself caught up in those events, these were friends- these rebels who were seizing guns, so the play pitches her at a real moment of crisis where her principles are really challenged with what’s happening around her.
William Dobbin is an 18 year-old soldier who guards Frank overnight before he’s killed and h’s Irish but he’s part of the Anglo-Irish Protestant community in Dublin, he’s a soldier for the British Army. It was really important to me to get that complexity and perspective into the play that actually he’s there as an Irishman fighting for Britain and absolutely believing that it was the right thing to do.
It was so exciting for me doing the research, thinking about the story and to imagine the clash of perspectives onstage really. That we could have these four characters looking at exactly the same things but through totally different eyes, these irreconcilable differences, that’s really exciting as a writer when you hit upon that where there’s so much drama in that”
I look forward to the play immensely! Thank you always for your valuable insight and time, Lizzie
To Have To Shoot Irishmen by Lizzie Nunnery is on at the Everyman Theatre from Thursday 25th October to Saturday 27th October. Tickets are available to purchase from the Everyman Theatre Box office.
Ian D. Hall