“We like to make memories here,” Artistic Director Maire Logue said as we crossed the street from St. John’s Theatre and Arts Centre in Listowel to the hardware store of “the literary capital of Ireland.” We needed a prop for the Irish premiere of my play “Boann and the Well of Wisdom.”
As we swept through the store, Maire pointed out some buckets that looked too modern. Then we found some milking buckets that would work. Maire grabbed three of them and breezed out the door, telling the clerks she was taking the buckets.
“Whatever you like, Maire,” they called after her.
Turning back to me, Maire continued, “Someday you’ll be winning an Oscar and think, ‘Remember the time I was in Listowel? Remember when we stole the buckets?’”
One of the purloined buckets did join the production when we returned to the theatre, where Kylie Logan was rehearsing as Boann, Jim Armstrong as Nechtan and Mary Courtney as live musician, all directed by Mary Linehan. We had all traveled from New York on a shoestring budget partially raised by online and in-person fundraisers.
Having won Best Play in the 2024 1st Irish Festival, “Boann and the Well of Wisdom,” a poetic drama based on the myth of Boann, the Irish goddess of poetry and creator of the River Boyne, was honored to receive lodging and rehearsal space for a week at St John’s, a 19th-century structure that once belonged to the Church of Ireland.
Still, we needed another prop — a collection of four stones for one of our final scenes. So, one evening Jim, Mary Courtney and I drove out to Ballybunion. From a cliff overlooking the Ladies Beach we admired the sea and the descending sun but saw no useful stones. We returned to the car and looped around to the Men’s Beach, which had a handy parking lot with easy access to the strand. There, at the end of the path, as if they had been put there for us, was an array of rocks, the first cousins of the New York rocks of previous productions. The Ballybunion rocks joined the show.
Mary Linehan, Kylie Logan and Mary Courtney in rehearsal at St. John's Theatre, Listowel.
Listowel proved quite hospitable to us. The Horseshoe Pub became our veritable show cafeteria. At John B. Keane’s pub, Billy Keane gave us signed copies of his latest book. On Wednesday his pub hosted a singsong with Marty Courtney, Mickey MacConnell and 20 women Gardai who happened to be in town for a convention. On Thursday we played at a session at Christy’s the Well pub.
On Saturday night, the full house at St. John’s gave the performance a standing ovation. Many stated that they were stunned and needed time to mentally digest what they had seen.
We returned to John B. Keane’s to celebrate with sausages and chips provided by Billy Keane, more music, and lots of laughs.
Next day, we drove across the country in the rain to Drogheda, where the River Boyne meets the sea. The stage at McHugh’s Venue, where we would perform two shows, stands about two blocks away from the Boyne as well as a mural to its eponymous goddess.
We arrived in town during the Lu Festival of Lights. Before our first performance we watched the stories of Saint Oliver Plunkett projected onto St Peter’s Church and of Cuchulainn’s boyhood exploits projected onto the 13th century St. Laurence’s Gate.
McHugh’s Venue featured outstanding acoustics, and the actors and musician used this to great advantage in two intimate performances for audiences of poets, storytellers, actors and friends who’d come up from Dublin and down from Down.
After the mini-tour ended, I headed West to visit family in Mayo. I left the Listowel bucket with my cousin, Janet Hunt, who hoped it would help lure home a heifer who had wandered onto her neighbor’s land. This plan produced a new play title, “The Mad Heifer and the Bucket.”
Heading back to Dublin airport on a grey All Saints’ Day afternoon, I stopped at Knock Shrine in whose cemetery my great-grandfather and other relatives are buried. I inserted the four Ballybunion rocks into gaps in the graveyard’s stone wall and gave thanks. May they remain for years to come.
The author is pictured right at the end of the Drogheda show.
