Oldal 264 [264]
APPENDICES
APPENDIX E
EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH CECILY O’NEILL
Budapest, 27" August 2011
by Ädäm Bethlenfalvy
AB: It is obvious that process drama is really close to theatre. Creating
a theatre event with the participants involved in it, with the teacher giving
most of the form and the participants giving most of the content. So my first
question would be how would you define theatre? What makes good theatre
for you?
CON: Good theatre for me is something that engages me. That moves me
from where I am, either emotionally or intellectually to a new place, where
I see things anew. Where I have a new insight or perspective over, I realise
something that connects up other pieces of knowledge, or understanding or
wisdom. Not that I will necessarily be able to put that into words. The greatest
art defies explanation. What we see at the end of King Lear, not very hopeful
necessarily, but we had an experience that has moved us, changed us, disturbed
us. Made us uneasy. Lady Gregory said that theatre should be a wise disturber
of the peace. Not in the sense of disturbing the peace so that you end up
provoking a riot or driving people crazy. But that in a way the best theatre
will leave us with a sense of unease, of the ground having shifted a little bit.
And that is a hard thing to do. For me the hardest thing to do is to switch of
the inner critic. You are always thinking: why are they doing that, why are
the lights so bad, or why did the director decide to do that? And a really good
piece of theatre will stop that, and that is so rare. That makes me quite an
annoying theatre companion.
AB: Would that mean that you consider a process drama successful if it
creates a similar unease?
CON: Absolutely. And that is rare. I think the work we did this week the closest
it came to that was when the king and Anita, that moment when I had no idea
what was going to happen, it was a challenge for the group to find words that
would be satisfying enough to make that encounter meaningful and not just
an easy solution. If he had said I don’t need to look at you with my eyes, to feel
you have a good heart, and you are the girl for me and that stuff. You know.
It was more complex than that...
AB: But I was feeling in that moment that actually people were working to
remove that unease. They are trying to resolve the situation in some sense.
CON: Of course they are.
+ 263 +