This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/feb/14/riverrun-joyce-finnegans-wake-olwen-fouere-national-theatre
The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
Previous version
1
Next version
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Olwen Fouéré's riverrun: the watery voice of Joyce's Finnegans Wake | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The Irish actor Olwen Fouéré's extraordinary riverrun, which is coming into the National Theatre's Shed next month, was born in Australia three years ago on Bloomsday – 16 June, the feast of St James Joyce, when literary pilgrims across the world celebrate the day and night that the author sent Leopold Bloom on his odyssey through the streets of Dublin. | The Irish actor Olwen Fouéré's extraordinary riverrun, which is coming into the National Theatre's Shed next month, was born in Australia three years ago on Bloomsday – 16 June, the feast of St James Joyce, when literary pilgrims across the world celebrate the day and night that the author sent Leopold Bloom on his odyssey through the streets of Dublin. |
| Fouéré was asked by her Australian hosts to read something from Ulysses. "OK, I'll do a bit of Molly Bloom," she recalls saying with a groan, "if you'll let me do a bit of Finnegans Wake too." | Fouéré was asked by her Australian hosts to read something from Ulysses. "OK, I'll do a bit of Molly Bloom," she recalls saying with a groan, "if you'll let me do a bit of Finnegans Wake too." |
| Finnegans Wake, a torrent of words, jokes, literary references, scraps of songs, place names and puns in several languages, has a reputation in Ireland much like Proust's À La Recherche du Temps Perdu – much picked up, much put down again. One friend remarked that even more Irish people claim to have read it than claim to have been in the GPO when the 1916 Easter rising broke out. | Finnegans Wake, a torrent of words, jokes, literary references, scraps of songs, place names and puns in several languages, has a reputation in Ireland much like Proust's À La Recherche du Temps Perdu – much picked up, much put down again. One friend remarked that even more Irish people claim to have read it than claim to have been in the GPO when the 1916 Easter rising broke out. |
| Fouéré, whose strong, handsome face and sweep of white hair are captured in one of the giant portraits greeting travellers arriving at Dublin airport, has always been a fearless actor. Brought up in the west of Ireland by Breton nationalist parents, speaking Breton, Irish, French and English, she has performed the classics including Shakespeare at the National Theatre, but also balanced on the borderline of performance art, dance and music, embracing the difficult. She was a founder and artistic director with the composer Roger Doyle of the avant-garde Operating Theatre, and riverrun was produced by the Galway Arts festival, where it was first seen, and her own company TheEmergencyRoom. | Fouéré, whose strong, handsome face and sweep of white hair are captured in one of the giant portraits greeting travellers arriving at Dublin airport, has always been a fearless actor. Brought up in the west of Ireland by Breton nationalist parents, speaking Breton, Irish, French and English, she has performed the classics including Shakespeare at the National Theatre, but also balanced on the borderline of performance art, dance and music, embracing the difficult. She was a founder and artistic director with the composer Roger Doyle of the avant-garde Operating Theatre, and riverrun was produced by the Galway Arts festival, where it was first seen, and her own company TheEmergencyRoom. |
| In 2011 she was in Australia performing in Mark O'Rowe's Terminus, a brutally poetic nightmare vision of Dublin, constructed in three intertwined monologues. | In 2011 she was in Australia performing in Mark O'Rowe's Terminus, a brutally poetic nightmare vision of Dublin, constructed in three intertwined monologues. |
| She duly gave her bawdy Molly Bloom one more turn for her hosts, then picked up Finnegans Wake, and read from the last page: "And one time you'd rush upon me, darkly roaring, like a great black shadow with a sheeny stare to perce me raw. And I'd frozen up and pray for thawe. Three times in all. I was the pet of everyone then. A princeable girl. And you were the pantymammy's Vulking Corsergoth. The invision of Indelond." | She duly gave her bawdy Molly Bloom one more turn for her hosts, then picked up Finnegans Wake, and read from the last page: "And one time you'd rush upon me, darkly roaring, like a great black shadow with a sheeny stare to perce me raw. And I'd frozen up and pray for thawe. Three times in all. I was the pet of everyone then. A princeable girl. And you were the pantymammy's Vulking Corsergoth. The invision of Indelond." |
| She recalls: "Where the river dissolves into the sea with those extraordinary final words 'A way a lone a last a loved a long the' – ending in mid-sentence – I knew immediately this would be my next project. The voice of the river." | She recalls: "Where the river dissolves into the sea with those extraordinary final words 'A way a lone a last a loved a long the' – ending in mid-sentence – I knew immediately this would be my next project. The voice of the river." |
| Joyce himself spent 17 years wrestling with the text (those haunting last words join up with the first words, "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs", a stroke of genius which has had a calamitous influence on generations of creative writing students. It was finally published in 1939, just two years before his death. | Joyce himself spent 17 years wrestling with the text (those haunting last words join up with the first words, "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs", a stroke of genius which has had a calamitous influence on generations of creative writing students. It was finally published in 1939, just two years before his death. |
| Fouéré had never actually read the entire book, just dived in and out at various points. She spent two years working backwards from that last page, disentangling the voice of the river from the text, giving public readings of different versions, before the final text emerged, to enthral most and baffle some. She is an androgynous, shimmering figure on stage. | Fouéré had never actually read the entire book, just dived in and out at various points. She spent two years working backwards from that last page, disentangling the voice of the river from the text, giving public readings of different versions, before the final text emerged, to enthral most and baffle some. She is an androgynous, shimmering figure on stage. |
| "The river's voice changes constantly, often unidentifiable as male or female, an ever-changing force of onward motion, recycling the past into the present. Towards the end the river's voice becomes clearly that of a woman letting go of the past and sensing the future following behind her." | "The river's voice changes constantly, often unidentifiable as male or female, an ever-changing force of onward motion, recycling the past into the present. Towards the end the river's voice becomes clearly that of a woman letting go of the past and sensing the future following behind her." |
| She never actually sat down to learn it, she said, but when rehearsals started, only three weeks before the first night, she found that apart from an inevitable tendency to skip or loop at a few points, she already knew the text. | She never actually sat down to learn it, she said, but when rehearsals started, only three weeks before the first night, she found that apart from an inevitable tendency to skip or loop at a few points, she already knew the text. |
| "I still do not know how I know it. It has been a very diffferent process in comparison to anything I have done before. It leads me. I dive in and hope only that I will not forget to swim." | "I still do not know how I know it. It has been a very diffferent process in comparison to anything I have done before. It leads me. I dive in and hope only that I will not forget to swim." |
| • riverrun is at the National Theatre's Shed from 11 to 22 March | • riverrun is at the National Theatre's Shed from 11 to 22 March |
Previous version
1
Next version