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Patrick’s Testament
For
Patrick McDaid, Steve Smith,
Eartha
Holley, the cast and the crewof
FIRETHORN
at DCCC
Thought bullets hit my brain at the
theatre last night
when I realized that your FIRETHORN
is not just a complex or a difficult play,
but both history and your testament
in which you give us culture, destruction,
pain, and, here and there, a touch
of hope, the language of the conquered
who want to remain Irish, even
though they long ago lost
the language of Eire and now speak
the language of those who bit off
part of the green isle, but with a
lilt and a vengeance that has made Ireland
the spring of some of the best
of English literature,
when you and Steve Smith, our young
director and your heir in the lair
down in the Black Box, who relates
to those who came before us,
played the rhythms of Cuba and left
us alone
in the darkness,
sparing us, right in front of our
eyes, none of the details of tying to trees
young men who had collaborated with
Battista’s corrupt regime,
blindfolding the last few minutes of
their lives, before firing
bullets into their brains, bullets
into the bodies of their souls,
when you brought back the struggles
for equality in the US in class and color-
torn America, when you made the
audience gasp at the verbal abuse
by a young white woman student, who
threw up old anger, prejudice,
and profanities at a black professor
at DCCC,
when you were unafraid to bring in
the Grim Reaper
from medieval morality plays, and
let the black-robed angel
of death embrace the doomed like
lovers on their last night,
unleashing scenes of dark brutality,
violence and rage
—scaring the hell and the heavens
out of your audiences,
when you moved closer to James the
Joyce and when your own
stream of experiences and thoughts, your
knowledge of history,
your awareness, your deeply seated archetypal
fears
began to seep into our own
consciousness, weaving
dreams and nightmares, realities and
facts
from the theatre of cruelty, also
known as life,
I felt as if you and Steve and Eartha
and the cast and everyone
who contributed to the play were
sharing
with all those of us who sat in the
dark,
chunks of your legacy, earthy clumps
of your testament.
Patrick, thank you and farewell, all
at once.
I shall miss your voice, your disquietude,
your wisdom,
and even your impatience that
sometimes made me think
of Peter, the Saint with the sword.
Patrick, I shall miss your caring,
your willingness to raise
curtains and hope.
Slán agus beannacht leat. Fare
thee well and blessings with you,
Patrick. Slán agus beannacht leat.
Henrikwww.henrikeger.com
DCCC, Media, PA 28 Feb./12 Mar. 2008
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