Fortnight Publications Ltd.

The Ideological Burden of WritersAuthor(s): Rebecca O'RourkeSource: Fortnight, No. 243 (Sep., 1986), p. 23Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25550946 .

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THE IDEOLOGICAL BURDEN OF WRITERS Rebecca O'Rourke

BOOKS

and ARTS

OURSELVES ALONE returns to the main

stage at the Royal Court prior to being shown at the Dublin Theatre Festival with a clutch of awards and a string of phrases culled from last year's notices announcing it as "the" play about Ireland.

It can be a terrible burden for writers to

carry the whole weight of political ideol

ogy and history on the backs of their crea tions. Difficult too, to keep to the side of the line where politics is making the

writing: creating its plots, tensions and

characters, pushing the language into new

places because of the urgency of finding another way to express some old, or new,

truth about the word. Too often, the

writing is simply about politics: flat, pre dictable plots and card board characters

haranguing their way through the stock

phrases of political rhetoric. Which Une, I

wondered, did Anne Devlin walk? She describes the play's conception as,

"two women's voices?one funny and one

serious?and then I found I had a third? the voice of a woman listening. And then the father and a stranger came into the

room. And I found myself wondering who the stranger was and what he was doing

there. And I set the play in Andersons town because once I used to live there?

and I still do." The women are sisters and sister-in-law:

Josie, the serious one, totally committed

to her work for the Republican cause,

cracking up over the ending of a secret 10

year affair with the local big man; Frieda, the funny one, working as a hair dresser

and living for her singing, turning her back on her Republican family; Donna listening for the sound of her baby crying, the ap proach of footsteps signalling a raid, the rattle of bin lids and waiting for her man to come out of the Kesh.

The play is most alive, easiest in the bitter serious flow of statement and obser

vation when these three have the stage alone: talking, joking, drinking amongst themselves, always with an ear tuned to

the world outside. It was good to see women's lives centre stage like this. But

inevitably, the men intrude: the plot turns on them. Both in the progress of the

stranger?a British would-be-volunteer

who becomes Josie's lover?and by each

woman's sense of herself in relation to her man. The various options men offer are

paraded and examined for their good and their bad, never once, though, is the op tion of doing without them put directly.

Always, too, the personal life is seen in

relation to, affected by, the political situa tion around them.

Conflict between the public and private, in terms of the consequences for political action and personal identity is at the heart of this play, as are the questions of loyalty and commitment they inevitably entail. The limits of women's lives are clearly brought out: the men bring emotional and

physical violence into their relationships with the women: the protective, sustaining circle of women together is frail and con

stantly broken: by the soldiers, by the

father, by political work, by the presence and absence of the men. Only Frieda steps outside of it. Her determined ambition to

make a life for herself as a singer gradually comes to seem less frivolous and to de

mand as much respect as Donna's loyalty to her man, Josie's committment to the

cause.

At the plays end, amongst the chaos of

personal and political betrayals, she de clares her intention of leaving, for

England. "It's not him," she says, "its Ireland I'm

leaving". It's a provocative, and an ambig uous note to end on: the temporary col

lapse of the political themes, with the

suggestion that personal reasons influ

enced and distorted political judgements and independance seen in terms of reject

ing Ireland and the family.

Fortnight September 1986 23

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