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10/26/2016 06:00 AMIt is a century since the Easter Rising—an armed insurrection launched by Irish republicans during Easter week to end British rule, eventually leading to Ireland’s independence.
The Gaelic Players theater troupe, based at the Irish American Community Center (IACC) in East Haven, has many members, who, as descendents of Irish Civil War veterans, were profoundly affected by this significant historical event.
And so, the Gaelic Players, now in its 49th year, have decided to mark the 100th anniversary of the uprising by performing The Plough and the Stars, Sean O’Casey’s classic play set in 1916.
The play runs Wednesday, Nov. 9 through Saturday, Nov. 12 at 7:30 p.m. with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, Nov. 13 at The Irish American Community Center, 9 Venice Place, East Haven.
“O’Casey lived through this time in Dublin and wrote about it 10 years later, before it was romanticized by history,” says Gaelic Players founder Charlie Starrs of Wallingford. “He wanted to show the human side of war, and it’s amazing how relevant the play still is. It could be set today in Syria, for instance.”
From the Other Side of The Stage
Brian Beirne of Madison has acted in numerous Gaelic Players productions over the years. But this is only the second one he is directing.
“I was raised in Ireland and my family moved here 29 years ago,” he says. “My aunt, who is assistant to me [in this production] has been in the group from the very beginning. As a kid, I’d go to see her in shows and kind of got roped into it. I had no previous acting experience.”
Beirne points out that The Plough and the Stars is one of the greatest pieces by O’Casey, one of Ireland’s most noted playwrights.
“It is to Irish theater what Les Miserables is to Broadway,” he says. “The uprising was where the birth of Irish independence was born and this play has that as the backdrop. But the story is about the everyday man and woman on the street, and how it affected their lives. We get to bring these characters to life.”
Although it’s billed as a tragedy, Beirne notes that it’s not all death and bloodshed.
“All Irish plays have comedy, drama, a little bit of romance. There are a lot of comedic lines here and there in the play. The Irish have always known how to find humor in any situation. I think it’s what’s got the Irish people through a lot of things through the years.”
Beirne is enjoying the creative challenges of directing this show.
“Directing has given me a whole new appreciation about what people behind the scenes have to do—all the aspects of the whole,” he says. “Everyone is doing an amazing job, breathing life into the characters that O’Casey had written. It’s an honor to be up there with them, many [of whom] I’ve acted with over the last 25 years.”
Actors’ Viewpoint
Making this play particularly poignant for the cast is the multi-generational connections many of them have to the Irish fight for independence. In fact, a daughter-mother-grandmother trio in the cast is descended from a veteran of the war: Eileen O’Keefe Roxbee of Guilford (whose grandfather fought in the uprising), her daughter Kara Roxbee, and granddaughter Caroline Pfaff, both of Madison.
And, John O’Keefe of East Haven, O’Keefe Roxbee’s father, who came to the U.S. when he was 19, performed in the play when it first debuted at the IACC in 1977.
O’Keefe Roxbee, president of the IACC, who portrays Bessie Burgess in the play, grew up in New Haven and has lived in Guilford for the past 25 years.
“I grew up singing songs of the rebellion, sad songs,” she says. “I know the importance of keeping that history alive, how it was kept alive for us through the passion of parents, aunts, uncles. It’s this way of never forgetting what was sacrificed for Irish freedom. So this play is just a perfect connection to that.”
O’Keefe Roxbee started acting in Gaelic Player productions as a teenager in the 1970s.
“Parts would come up and I’d jump in here and there as I was raising my kids and working,” she says.
Although O’Keefe Roxbee has no formal training as an actor, “It’s in our blood,” she says. “I come from a family of musicians and dancers and have that artsy gene somewhere.”
She says she’s gotten good feedback for her acting, which is why she keeps doing it.
“It’s a great group of people. We support each other,” she says. “It’s hard work and we all know how hard it is to remember all these lines, maybe we’re gluttons for punishment! But it feeds us somehow, and why I think we come back year after year.
“I do this for me,” she explains. “This is my outlet. I have a very strong connection to the club and my Irish heritage and for me, this is where my heart is.”
O’Keefe Roxbee describes her role as Bessie Burgess:
“I play the Protestant person in the play, interestingly,” she says. “She’s the person with a different perspective—a Protestant loyalist’s point of view. But like everybody else in the play, she’s affected by what’s happening, the humanistic side of war comes out that’s not about being a loyalist or fighting for freedom, but taking care of ourselves. So the message is, no matter what side you’re on, we’re all people in the end and we’ll do whatever we can to help each other.
“I provide some of the humor,” she adds. “It’s a total character piece and Bessie is quite the character, and we’ll get some laughs, for sure.”
Karl Ryan of Branford, who plays Fluther Good, says the play transports him back to his hometown of Dublin. His father was born in 1932, some time after the events in the play, but the conditions his father grew up in were similar to the tenement house O’Casey portrays.
“Doing a Dublin play, it’s like my whole body remembers what it’s like to be there. It’s a tangible connection to my ancestors. When you act something out like this, it’s like stepping through a window into the past. Not a lot of people get to experience that.”
Ryan came to the U.S. in 1989 and started acting with the Gaelic Players in 1991. Like other cast members, the Gaelic Players was his first acting experience.
“My father had been a teacher of speech and drama,” Ryan recalls, “and he gave me a love of poetry and literature, so the interest was always there, but I had never been on the stage.”
He describes his character, Fluther Good, as “a bit of a character, somebody who lets on to be a certain way at times that maybe they’re not. He’s a bit of a clown, a bit of a blowhard, and pretends to be bigger and tougher than maybe he is. But he’s also a bit of a working class philosopher, and has interesting takes on the situation the characters find themselves in.”
A Play about Community
Ryan adds that he thinks the play is about community, about people just trying to survive in their own little situations, while coping with big issues of life and death and poverty.
Jason Simms and Jillian Mackey Simms, who play Jack and Nora Clitheroe, are only in their third production together, having moved from Portland, Oregon to Deep River in 2013. But Mackey Simms, originally from Connecticut, had grown up watching her grandmother and aunts in Gaelic Players performances, and so is coming full circle.
Simms came to the troupe with professional acting experience. As co-founder of the Metal Shakespeare Company in his senior year in college, he performed at the Oregon and Colorado Shakespeare festivals, which are the two biggest in the country.
“I play Jill’s husband,” Simms explains. “The Irish revolution is brewing and it’s a couple days before the uprising. I had been involved and start to get re-involved in the underground militia. Jill’s character, Nora, doesn’t want me to. She thinks, ‘You’re going to die. Why not be happy and don’t go fight?’ The whole idea of the play is to show the human side of war and not glorify it. In a way, she’s the voice of reason.”
Simms and Mackey Simms also performed as a married couple in last year’s performance of P.G. O’Dea’s A Man of Ideas. Simms thinks that it’s helpful in some ways to have that physical connection as a couple.
“But,” he says, “My character is kind of a jerk. He yells at her, hurts her. His behavior would be a major problem these days. The toughest scene is when I have to actually throw her to the ground. Hers is a really iconic, emotional role; sort of the Hamlet of Irish theater.”
Simms sees the Gaelic Players as akin to a group of craftsmen.
“A lot of people have never done any acting anywhere else but have acted in dozens of our shows,” he says. “They’re kind of extreme experts on Irish theater. It’s a small amateur group but some of the people are very talented and experienced and right up there with actors who do professional Irish theater.”
The Gaelic Players production of The Plough and the Stars; a play in four acts, runs Wednesday, Nov. 9 through Saturday, Nov. 12 at 7:30 p.m. with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, Nov. 13. Tickets are $15 through Nov. 1, $20 after Nov. 1 and are available by calling 203-318-8258 or emailing gaelicplayerstickets@yahoo.com. The Irish American Community Center is located at 9 Venice Place, East Haven.