My Time in West Cork
Agnes Walsh

It all began at a session at "Charlie's" in Cork city. I went for the music, and because I was told someone from an island in West Cork and someone else from the Dingle in Kerry wanted to meet me. Both Pauline and Sean were interested in my work on the Cape Shore of Placentia Bay where I am artistic director and writer for The Tramore Theatre Troupe, and especially in how I turn the oral history of that area into theatre. They are workers on community-based projects with mandates to keep their areas alive culturally. So we chatted and the excitement grew. I was invited to have a look at both areas and see what they had already set up with cultural and arts projects.

While things are still in the works with Sean in County Kerry, I found that there was no containing Pauline's energy and desire to work with me in West Cork. So I gathered a group of people interested in starting some cultural projects on Bere Island in Bantry Bay during that visit in spring of 2003, and was invited back in the fall. Meanwhile last summer my troupe here began rehearsing a J.M. Synge play, In The Shadow of the Glen. It was our first scripted work not based on the oral history of the Cape Shore. In August we staged the play with great success. Synge's words sounded beautiful in the mouths of the Cape Shore actors, whose ancestors came from Waterford, Wexford, Tipperary, Kilkenny and Cork counties.

In October, I went to Bere Island, about a two-hour drive from Cork city. A drive through the most beautiful and melancholy hills on earth. Right away the group I had formed got on their feet with the same Synge play. As a poet I can't begin tell you how much the beauty of the West Cork accent meant to me. I was there for four weeks and they insisted on staging the play before I left. Which we did to a packed hall. Since November The Bere Island Troupe has performed several times around West Cork and their audiences are demanding more.

I am going back to Bere Island this spring to help the troupe with their oral history gathering. I want to write a play with them based on their rich stories and folklore. Presently we continue honing the skills necessary to research and write via e-mail, and in conjunction with a writer's center in Eyeries, a town on the northern tip of the Beara Peninsula. The Bere Island Troupe will be in Newfoundland this summer, and will perform in Cuslett, the home base for The Tramore Theatre Troupe, in early July. They will also be hosting traditional dance workshops in Cuslett and you should see these folks dance! Don't miss this exciting group all the way from West Cork.