The
Story of Kinsale College’s Amphitheatre.
Around
the turn of the millennium, my wife Belinda, was invited to run a
theatre course for adults at Kinsale college. John Thuillier, the
then Principal, was an educational visionary who had already set up
the best Outdoor Education Course in the country and an arts faculty
that was refreshing and different. We were allowed to design a fun,
exciting and practical training where students could experiment with
acting in a free and uninhibited way. It was quite unlike any other
professional drama training in Ireland or any of the headbound
University courses. One early difficulty for the course though, was a
theatre. We didn’t have one. Though, back then, we had three light
and airy rooms for rehearsals, when it came to performing our
productions, we had to move house – pack everything into a lorry
and tumble into the Town Hall, or a venue in Cork. Building our own
theatre, never seemed an option. Who thinks like that? Well, Rob
Hopkins did, fortunately for us.
Once
a drama training had been established, a permaculture course was next
to take root in Kinsale college. As it was the only such course on
the planet, people came from all over the wide world to join it. The
numbers overwhelmed. Permaculture aims to create a more sustainable
way of living with the earth. It emphasises the provision of local
needs with the least destruction to the world and its resources
possible. Rob Hopkins, (leader of the course) was interested in his
students serving the college community and asked Belinda what the
drama course needed. Only a theatre, she said. And so the idea of a
mini-Shakespeare’s Globe, made from natural building materials and
sitting in the grounds of Kinsale College, was born. Rob and Belinda
were, of course, both quite mad.
Why
the Globe? Partly because the sort of natural building techniques
that the Permaculture students were using were common in
Shakespeare’s day, and also because Belinda has this slight
infatuation with a man from Stratford – though not the Shakespeare
of set texts in the junior and leaving certs. There is a very
different Shakespeare to that ghastly fellow, and people mostly love
him when they meet him. Although Belinda was interested in all
aspects of theatre, mime, clowning, tragedy, masks – she had just
been to see the Globe in London and was fired up about creating a
smaller version on the college grounds with Rob and the permaculture
hordes. And so, with plans drawn on the back of an envelope, Rob set
to work with a team of Permies (as they were affectionately known)
and in a matter of months raised an odd-looking, but strangely
attractive stage (a theatre that Bilbo Baggins might act on and not
seem out of place). It was made out of cob (straw and mud) with wood
frames.
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| Rosalind from college production of As You Like It. Photo by John Allen. |
Colossal cedar beams held up the turf roof. With a view to
practicality,
I was at first perturbed at my wife’s eagerness to stage a large
end-of-term play in a theatre so completely open to the elements. Any
actor, stepping onto the apron of the stage in a downpour would have
been immediately drenched. And as for the audience ... well, there
were no walls and no roof for the groundlings, or any spectator.
There were benches in a semi-circle that formed, with the rest of the
theatre, a large ‘O’. But protection from the ravages of nature?
There was none. And in Ireland, if I might import a quote, ‘the
rain it raineth every day’. Or at least, sometimes it seems so. For
some reason, this didn’t seem to overly concern Rob or Belinda.
Faith, I dare say, wears no mackintosh.
It
was however, a tremendous achievement to get a performance space
ready for the end of term play,
the Merry Wives of Windsor.
We rehearsed in this open air arena, like ancient Greeks but without
their blue skies and dusty olive groves. It wasn’t until the show
went on that I realised that the amphitheatre was something out of
the ordinary. The play electrified the audience. Of course, it is a
great play, and the actors excelled. But there was more to it than
that. The space had a magic that modern theatres entirely lack. The
Globe and all early Elizabethan theatres, were designed to maximize
contact with the audience: to connect with playgoers in as direct a
way as possible. A modern theatre seeks to distance the audience from
the actors. In Kinsale amphitheatre, the audience are in
the play. Not in a way that will discomfort or embarrass them. In a
way that will enchant and enthral.
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| Jacques from college production of As You Like It. Photo by John Allen |
That
first spring – in early May, the weather held all week. The air was
a little refrigerated. I was playing mandolin in musical
accompaniment to the play and my fingers once went a funny blue
colour. It was something though, to watch Falstaff’s antics with an
awareness of a starry infinity overhead. We all realised, the
permaculture students had raised something rare and unique. Alas, Rob
Hopkins left for England before the amphitheatre went much further.
But not before starting the Transition Town movement (now an
international phenomenon) in Kinsale, from the college. The baton was
taken up by lecturer Graham Strouts, with assistance from Paul
O’Flynn, and gradually, year on year, the amphitheatre has been
improved and enlarged by diligent permaculture students. Walls grew
and backs appeared for the benches. But most difficult of all, was
the provision of a roof for the audience. We knew our meteorological
luck couldn’t hold out forever; but how could we prop up canopy
across the wide auditorium? Nobody wanted great pillars obscuring the
spectacle of a play. Eventually, Christie Collard from Future Forests
arrived and designed a reciprocal roof: impossible Escher-like cross
struts which suspended a roof above the audience like a conjuring
trick. Christie’s experience with natural building, meant that he
shaped structures entirely in keeping with the beautiful and
idiosyncratic appearance of the theatre. Travel where you will, there
is nothing like it. It is pretty and unusual as Elizabethan
architecture was, because, as with buildings constructed back then,
the amphitheatre has grown organically. Instead of the prefabricated
square and rectangular monstrosities that modern architects inflict
upon the landscape, this wooden O is human. The grass roof is a
little prairie on the house. Throughout, the theatre is an arcadia of
trunks and beams. The place seems to have a sense of humour and is
full of inbuilt jokes, the windows being made from recycled portholes
of washing machines. In a world that is becoming increasingly
regulated and conformist, it is part throwback, partly a dream of the
future. One could almost say, the amphitheatre is a physical
embodiment of the spirit of the drama course it serves. Always
growing, always different, always human, busily creative and comedic.
For
many years, hardened amphitheatre devotees sat on hard seats and
braved the chill of evenings in early May by arriving with cushions
and even sleeping bags. Those days, for good and bad, are pretty much
gone. The Auditorium is soon to get a thorough draughtproofing and
stuffed seats. It’s not centrally heated, but on a May evening,
there is no longer any danger of blue fingers or toes. I like to
think that it’s the sort of place Shakespeare’s ghost visits now
and then. Arriving unseen through the thick walls, seating himself at
the back and enjoying plays – all manner of plays – even his own,
in one of the most intimate and thrilling auditoriums a person could
ever visit.
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| photo by John Allen |
Links:
Kinsale
College: http://kinsalecollege.ie/
Christie
Collard and Future Forests:
http://www.futureforests.net/Christy_in_Ethiopia.htm
Rob
Hopkins and Transition Towns
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| photo by Alicia Falvey |
