Triple play

The middle installment of a trilogy he began with “The Lepers of Baile Baiste” and concluded with “The Gigolo Confessions of Baile Breag,” was staged at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in 2002 and is scheduled to begin preview performances Thursday at the Irish Arts Center in Midtown Manhattan.
“I’m very excited. Terribly,” the Boston-based playwright told the Irish Echo in a recent telephone interview. “The amount of work to take it there, I have to gasp for breath sometimes. Just writing the play is one thing, but actually getting it up on its feet, I think it’s the same amount of work involved in both.”
Helmed by David Sullivan, an MFA graduate from Boston University who previously directed two of Noone’s plays in New York, “The Blowin” is set at a construction site in a small town in the west of Ireland where a crew of workers learns the general contractor has hired an African refugee, or “blowin,” rather than a local, news that elicits various passionate reactions.
“I’ve rewritten in places, tightened it up (since the Boston production,)” Noone revealed. “I’ve had the opportunity to see where the tension just wilted. Often the reason for that is because what the audience expects is what the audience gets, so I saw where I was able to change the perspective and tighten the tension again.”
The playwright, who said he welcomes suggestions from actors and directors so long as they are tactful and professional, said he was fine-tuning the work throughout rehearsals in New York.
“It’s very difficult to do even when it’s staring you in the face,” he said of rewriting lines in a play, adding it is “like an epiphany” when he finds the words that work.
Explaining he had not initially conceived the three Baile plays as a trilogy, the former journalist said the development of and connection between the three works was something of an unintended evolution.
“It was a natural progression,” he observed. “I found that the territory they existed in was all one place, and that one place being Ireland, and then I found there were quite a few scenes that overlap in each play.”
Although each work is written to stand alone, Noone knows what common bond links them.
“Without sounding pedantic or didactic, I felt that they were three issue plays, based upon an Irish psyche over the last 20 or 30 years,” he imparted.
“The first one dealt with abuse, but without sermonizing, and told a story, in a way, that maybe exposed the effects on young people. The second one, I thought, is about the change regarding outsiders coming in, whether that be from a different nation or having a different color.
Ireland already has issues fighting between two religions, but I think it’s coming more and more to the forefront now as more refugees and immigrants come to Ireland, which is a change from Ireland having sent immigrants for so long, and the third play has to do with the crisis in Ireland during the 1980s with religion and sex.”
Having emigrated to the United States himself a decade ago, Noone said he is looking to find his voice as an Irish-American, although he emphasized he will never be far removed from the roots and people who have inspired him thus far.
“I think that’s a mainstay,” he said of his Irish heritage. “I’m pushing harder to find a way to provoke a response with an American identity, as the outsider, looking at America, even though I’m now an American and this is home, I’m looking at it now as a place I want to put on paper.”
One difference he has noticed between the Irish and Americans, which will surely translate to his writing, he thinks, is the manner in which the two peoples speak.
“I’ve become aware of the fact that the Irish have the tendency to be very voluble, whether it is in the lyricism of their speech, they go on and on,” he said.
“And Americans say what they mean. So, if you can walk the thin line between those two worlds like someone like Eugene O’Neill did at the time-even though he was too voluble also-say what you mean, but also turn a sentence inside out, so it doesn’t become a clich