The Abbey Theatre

I'm throwing this in on an off day because there are so few pictures and they aren't particularly interesting to anyone but me. (And Kenzi who is super into Theater)

But the Abbey Theatre has great meaning for me because it was founded by my favorite poet, W. B. Yeats. I've spent a lot of time this semester reading his work and learning about his life. I got to drive through "his" countryside in Co. Sligo and passed "his" mountain Ben Bulben. We even passed by the place where he is buried.

Portrait of W. B. Yeats

The Abbey Theatre was a part of the Irish Culture Revival. After 700 years the Irish seemed to be slowly giving into the English. They were forgetting their language and heritage -- they were giving up. But in the early 1900's countless Irish men and women lead a revival to renew Irish culture. Yeats was at the head of the literary side. I love that he brought back the old Irish stories and wrote poems about Faeries along with all the plays and modern poems he wrote. Including my favorite modern one "The Rose Tree." (Pearse and Connolly were the two main leaders during the 1916 Rising both of whom were shot in Kilmainham Jail)

'O words are lightly spoken,'

Said Pearse to Connolly,

'Maybe a breath of politic words

Has withered our Rose Tree;

Or maybe but a wind that blows

Across the bitter sea.'

'It needs to be but watered,'

James Connolly replied,

'To make the green come out again

And spread on every side,

And shake the blossom from the bud

To be the garden's pride.'

'But where can we draw water,'

Said Pearse to Connolly,

'When all the wells are parched away?

O plain as plain can be

There's nothing but our own red blood

Can make a right Rose Tree.'
I could go on and on, but I'll get back to the Abbey Theatre. Yeats and a few of his friends founded it in 1904. As a result, it wasn't nearly as old as some of other theaters I've been in this semester. (That would be Smock Alley Theatre est. 1662. The difference with the Abbey Theatre, however, is that it was, and still is, devoted to investing in and promoting new Irish writers and artists.

 To this day, every production which is held is steeped in Irish Culture. The one which we went to see that night was Donegal.

It was an amazing story about a young musician coming back to his home in Donegal with his American girlfriend after a successful tour in the States.  After a fight with his dysfunctional family, his girlfriend tries to convince him to go back to the states with her, but he realizes that his family in Donegal are more important. Out of this comes my favorite line of the show. He says to the girl, "You don't speak the same language." Of course, he wasn't talking about an actual language. He was basically saying that she didn't understand Irish culture, but she didn't get it and left for the States.

The first scene

All in all, the play wasn't the easiest to understand, especially for us who weren't Irish. There are all kinds of things you can only get if you're finely tuned to Irish culture. I only understood a fraction of the iceberg, but it was a wonderful production, and I'm glad I got what I could out of it.

Turning back to W. B. Yeats, I'll leave you with one of my favorite "wild" poems that he wrote: "The Stolen Child."

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.