Dick Walsh
Playwright and actor in Pan Pan’s The Seagull and Other Birds
The show is called “Americanitis: the baby steps of narcissism”. Could you explain the title a little?
Americanitis was a term used to describe what essentially was neurosis, depression, anxiety, and alienation. Mostly it occurred in the new big cities in America, whose populations had grown rapidly, like in Chicago. These cities exploded, and they were the first examples of modern capitalist cities. And it’s here that they first started to diagnose anxiety and depression, with early American psychologists referring to it as Americanitis. Narcissism is a bit of an obsession now. It’s generally associated with artists and we kind of tend to think of modern living as narcissistic. Or, if you like, in neo-liberal terms we are all chasing and trying to fulfil our own desires.
How does Chekhov’s The Seagull get used alongside the new plays involved in the show?
The Seagull was chosen as a frame for bigger ideas – why make art, why make new forms – and then the new scenes that explore these themes come out of the framework, whilst the characters from The Seagull are still there, always present to remind you. The play will change every night theoretically. We could start doing a piece on Virginia Wolf, or we could do my play, and progress through the show, but the characters are always those from The Seagull seen through the lens of different plays. So for instance, we do a scene from the TV show Girls, and it’s the characters from The Seagull saying those lines. There’s a lot of TV references in it, and the actors constantly have to find in
So you play Hannah from Girls?
I’m Constantin, so yeah I play Hannah. There’s a lot of TV references and the actors have to find new ways of entering into a character, and in this case the frustrated artist is Hannah.
As artists playing frustrated artists grappling with art-creation, how meta is this?
I think it would be fair to say that Pan Pan is almost more concerned with the personality of the actors than it is with the characters, they are just as important to the show. So there are these almost stock characters from The Seagull, but at the same time it’s the actors themselves we’re watching – we were chosen with our personalities in mind. For instance I’m a writer, and a bit of an actor but not really, so that may be why I was asked to play Constantin – for that overlap between theatre and reality.
Is there anything pure about art creation as far you’re concerned in this play, or is it all narcissism?
You’ve got to be careful with Pan Pan shows not to come to the conclusion that there is something being said or done, but here we are just asking the question “Does all art come from narcissism?” And maybe it does. But maybe there is something more beautiful behind it – maybe art can redeem us. Chekhov for instance sets Constantin up as a bad artist at the beginning, but then Constantin kills himself at the end. So how narcissistic was he really if he killed himself for art? That suggests there might be something more serious here. There is a joke in the whole production about narcissism, but also very much the suggestion that perhaps there is something more serious, more honest and earnest in art. Maybe.
You wrote a piece for this called Segues which is part of the show?
Yeah, the concept for this involved taking texts from different TV shows, radio shows and transcribing them directly as they are, and getting actors to perform them. The idea is that it’s the simplest form of theatre that they create all the time on radio and television. You have all these people chattering and talking about things in a very banal way, you have a meaningless text with a void of great words, and yet you have great depth about semantics, war, and sex. Somehow theatrically it works.
The Seagull and Other Birds runs from September 25th to October 5th at the Project Arts Centre, Essex Street, Temple Bar. Tickets cost €15 to €25.
Words: Roisin Agnew
