Burn baby burn - playwright Hilary Fannin on Children of the Sun

Hilary Fannin, an award-winning playwright, novelist, memoirist and journalist, introduces her new play, a radical reinterpretation of Gorky's Children of the Sun, co-produced by Rough Magic Theatre Company and the Abbey Theatre, which premieres on the Abbey’s main stage from April 18th.

The multi-award-winning Rough Magic Theatre Company celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year, one of those time-bending facts that fairly put a stop to my gallop. I remember as if it was a decade ago (not four) lashing down Dublin’s Essex Street, past the bus depot and empty shop fronts, to Project Arts Centre, to witness the company’s brilliantly ambitious early productions. It was the1980s then, an era of emigration and ill-judged perms, long before anyone could have imagined Temple Bar awash with shivering, fake-tan-streaked hen parties populating the cobbled streets.

I wasn’t a founder member of Rough Magic. I was at that time an actor with a different company, living on a FÁS scheme allowance that somehow covered rent and pints and the purchase of a lot of black eyeliner. In truth, those Rough Magicians felt like a pretty intimidating bunch, educated, articulate, seemingly clear-sighted and confident. I know now, of course, that they were no different from the rest of us young theatre-makers in the rain-soaked 1980s: stubbornly hopeful, longing for change, fuelled by ambition, commitment and resilience.

That resilience is wholly embodied still by artistic director Lynne Parker, who has been at the helm of the company since its inception and who I’m delighted to be working with again, for the third time now, on Children of the Sun, a co-production with the Abbey to mark Rough Magic’s significant birthday.

With incalculable help from Olga Taranova’s literal translation of the Gorky original, which revealed a big, unwieldy, four-act play (written in nine days during the writer’s brief incarceration in St Petersburg during the abortive 1905 revolution), we delved in. The Abbey then came on board after artistic director Caitriona McLaughlin saw an early excerpt of Children of the Sun two years ago in a showcase called Rough Weekend. We were, needless to say, thrilled. (That showcase was part of COMPASS, an initiative that will see a variety of new work commissioned by Rough Magic and then co-produced with venues in Dublin and around Ireland.)

Money and budgets being what they are, it's not often that a playwright gets the opportunity to write a big play. It’s been daunting and energising and occasionally terrifying, but it’s never been less than a privilege to work with such talented theatre professionals.

In our case, Children of the Sun was developed with unstinting support from the Theatre Royal Waterford, which must surely be the most beautiful theatre in the country. With a cast of 11 and requiring an extensive production team, it is a big play, a humorous play, a play with heart. A portrait of a society on the verge of momentous upheaval (a state of affairs to which all but one of the family remains blind), it is a piece with a universality that almost seems to demand collaboration across time and space. It may not be Gorky’s greatest work, but its theme of being unable to read the writing on the wall chimes heavily with our own era.

Gorky, the prophet of the coming revolution, challenges the role of the privileged class, and the purpose of art, in a fragile society built on unequal and unstable foundations. But despite the serious subject matter, it can still be described as a comedy; at any rate, it was through humour that I was able to untangle, deconstruct and reinvent both character and story.

Money and budgets being what they are, it’s not often that a playwright gets the opportunity to write a big play. It’s been daunting and energising and occasionally terrifying, but it’s never been less than a privilege to work with such talented theatre professionals. This immensely talented acting ensemble and brilliant production crew have brought a complex and challenging story to vivid life. Being part of their team in this production has been soul-enhancing.

Anyway, back to my shock at how fast time slips through our fingers. The play’s fictional scientist Protasov, whose experiments with time are at the heart of our new interpretation, concludes: 'There is just the beautiful now to cradle our failures.’ I couldn’t agree with him more: there is just this, the glorious now. Whether our theatrical endeavour is ultimately deemed a success or failure, it has, in personally challenging times, tethered me to the beautiful now, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Children of the Sun stages its world premiere at the Abbey Theatre (18 April – 11 May) as part of Rough Magic’s 40th anniversary celebrations - find out more here.

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