Visa Difficulties Aside, Solas Nua Is Going Places With Specialized Fare
By John H. Tucker
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, February 4, 2007
When playwright Enda Walsh created "Bedbound," in which an Irish salesman and his crippled daughter are confined to the same mattress, he apparently based the female character on the fractured identity of post-"Celtic Tiger" Ireland.
For 30-year-old actress Linda Murray, however, the role served as a metaphor for her life.
The play was staged last year by the Washington theater company Solas Nua, and Murray played the lame Colleen, who's physically bound to her Irish bed. Meanwhile, Murray, a Dublin native, found herself legally bound to return to Ireland.
Unable to reestablish U.S. residency after her visa expired in March, Murray -- Solas Nua's founder and artistic director -- was exiled to Dublin after the show's run.
Despite her immigration impasse, though, she has continued to oversee Solas Nua's operations from across the Pond. That includes guiding the company to the kickoff of its sophomore season last week at Flashpoint's Mead Theatre Lab, with the U.S. premiere of Walsh's "The Small Things." (Even the playwright -- recently appointed writer-in-residence at Dublin's immortal Abbey Theatre -- was scheduled to attend today's performance.)
Although other U.S. companies specialize in Irish drama -- New York's Irish Arts Center and Irish Repertory Theatre come to mind -- Solas Nua (Gaelic for "new light") is arguably the only such organization with a contemporary bent.
"If it's older than 15 years, we won't touch it," says Murray by phone from Dublin, where she lives with her parents to save money for her frequent transatlantic treks. "Other Irish American organizations put on plays written 100 years ago, but there have been huge social, economic and demographic changes in Ireland, and we create an artistic environment in which people can explore the transition."
Ireland's younger playwrights are even beginning to upstage their iconic predecessors of the early 20th century, says Abbey Director Fiach Mac Conghail. "Our traditional writers -- the Synges, the O'Caseys -- are amazing, but from the mid-'70s onward, there has been an explosion of new Irish writing, and we depend on it," he says.
In addition to "Small Things," which Murray produced but needs a traveler's visa to attend, the 2007 Solas Nua lineup features "Scenes From the Big Picture," directed by Belfast native Des Kennedy, of Bush Theatre stock. Its playwright, Owen McCafferty, plans to be present for the opening performance in May.
"We want to give the most authentic representation of what's happening at home," says Murray, noting that Solas Nua's charter mandates an artistic director who is native to the Emerald Isle. Murray even extends the company's true-to-life philosophy to regional dialects, drilling accents into actors previously trained to use a generic "they're after me Lucky Charms" brogue.
That authenticity is appreciated by members of Ireland's new school of playwrights, including Anne Le Marquand Hartigan, whose "La Corbière" was performed by Solas Nua in the Georgetown public swimming pool before 200 people a night during last summer's Capital Fringe Festival. "To see the play done in the water was just brilliant," she says. "It was the best production I've seen since it premiered at the Dublin Festival."
Area critics such as Ronnie Ruff, who runs DCTheatreReviews.com, have also been dazzled by Murray's brainchild: "I have seen other [new] companies show promise over the last few years, but they haven't risen to the next level like Solas Nua."
Murray, though, says she won't be eligible to work in the States again until March 2008, making the nurturing of an upstart theater company especially difficult.
The saga began in 2002, when Murray, who studied Russian at Dublin's Trinity College, was invited by the Library of Congress to curate a collection on Russian ballet luminary Bronislava Nijinska -- the subject of Murray's ongoing doctoral work. Murray says she entered the country with the plan that she would receive a long-term working visa -- and that in doing so, she stumbled into a legal morass.
Days after Murray's arrival, the Bush administration barred government institutions from hiring foreign nationals. Murray spent the next several months curating three collections while hurdling the Atlantic back and forth on traveler's visas.
Fearful of losing access to the Nijinska collection, Murray recalls, she applied for a three-year cultural exchange visa allowing her to remain in the country while researching and working for the library. She was granted it with one stipulation: She would be required to remain in Ireland for two years after the visa's expiration, so that her native country might benefit from her newfound knowledge of Russian dance.
Murray was hopeful that she eventually could get the two-year stipulation waived, but efforts were unsuccessful. "I was right up against the wall of bureaucracy," Murray says. "I just felt jinxed."
So the Dublin native spent the next year as a transcontinental rover, carrying a full suitcase and an empty wallet, doing bit roles onstage, temping at Dublin agencies and researching at the Library of Congress. Although the job with the Library of Congress never completely worked out, she tried to pick up freelance work for Irish Theatre magazine while in Washington. She soon realized that contemporary Irish drama in DC was as hazy as a Donegal mist.
"There was knowledge about Yeats, Shaw, Wilde . . . but it just kind of stopped circa 1960," recalls Murray, who admits she never thought a ballet scholar like herself could launch an Irish arts organization. "I kept saying: 'Well, why? Well, why?' and people kept saying: 'Why don't you? Why don't you?' "
So she did -- "And I've cursed myself every since!" she says, with characteristic wry humor.
Theater plans began to come to fruition through meetings at a pub. Murray met with young actor Dan Brick (now Solas Nua's producing director, who at the time needed help with his Irish accent) and future development director Lora Nunn, organizing weekly sessions during which the three planned how to start Solas Nua. Six months and one fundraiser later, the theater officially opened with Walsh's "Disco Pigs" with Murray and Brick.
Murray says Solas Nua has survived on grant money from Culture Ireland, a part of the Irish government whose mission is to promote Irish culture abroad. The Irish Embassy has also supported Solas Nua, placing ads, producing brochures and hosting receptions on its behalf.
"It's in our interest that their productions receive maximum possible attention," says embassy spokesman Joe Hackett. "Many Americans travel to Ireland on business and vacation, interested in learning about the new trends of modern Ireland. Solas Nua's plays reflect this new Ireland."
Apart from theater, Solas Nua stages film screenings and literature readings, and Murray hopes to add dance and music seasons, import well-known Irish performers and open a resource center in New York. But Murray says that as long as she remains in Europe, Solas Nua's growth will be challenged. Unable to meet with potential donors and embassy representatives and attend auditions and rehearsals, Murray has days of discouragement.
"I wish the system was different," says Murray, who is fluent in five languages and who makes money temping for foreign-language centers. "I feel I'm providing a service to the American public. I want to pay taxes and live in America properly. I'd like to see a change in legislation to allow artists to move around more freely."
If there's one silver lining to the visa restriction, it's that Murray has spent time reintroducing herself to 21st-century Ireland, developing relationships with Irish artists and mining the country for cutting-edge productions.
Murray says she is on track to receive her doctorate next year, when she hopes to regain her work eligibility here. If at that time Solas Nua is unable to pay her a living wage, she says she will apply to U.S. universities as a ballet scholar.
Whatever happens, Murray says, she's committed to making sure Ireland's newer artistic lights continue to shine.
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