Take a closer look at the world of James Joyce's "The Dead." Click on one of the links below to read articles featured in Court's Chicago Plays program.

Reviving “The Dead”:
A Cast & Designers Interview
Court Theatre’s Ken Meier talks to those returning from last year’s production.

Creating Traditions: Old and New
by Lauren Bergquist

The Tapestry of Living
A Conversation Between the Playwright Richard Nelson and Actress Blair Brown

The Legacy of Dubliners
by Jocelyn Prince

Synopsis of the Play
by Celise Kalke

Reviving “The Dead”:
A Cast & Designers Interview
Court Theatre’s Ken Meier talks to those returning from last year’s production.

Charles Newell (Director): Certain plays contain within them some timeless truth that has relevance for us each time we see it. In our culture we hunger for traditions because so many have been forgotten, taken away, or ignored. One of the most prevalent standing traditions for theatre going for a family is seeing The Nutcracker or A Christmas Carol at Christmas time. These kinds of annual pilgrimages are a way that we mark our lives and, even though the event is the same, we ourselves are different. And so we can enjoy its familiarity, but we also can reflect upon that tradition based upon where we are in our lives.

Paula Scrofano (Gretta Conroy): Having repeated roles before in my career, I’ve found that the gestation period between productions seems to deepen my awareness of the character's inner self. It also frees you from the mechanics of learning a role.

John Reeger (Gabriel Conroy): An actor always hopes to improve upon his or her previous performance. It’s only that little nagging voice inside you saying, “connect more fully with the character” that keeps the actor from merely repeating a performance.

Stephen Wallem (Bartell D’Arcy): As with a favorite film or album or book, people love to revisit something that has moved them; that has taken them to an emotional place beyond just being entertained.

Brian Sidney Bembridge (Scenic Designer): Revivals are always an interesting thing to design. Do I completely forget the original design of the production? I think I almost always look at the original. But, I generally do not use that as a starting point. Last year I designed several revivals all of which looked nothing like the original productions.

Linda Roethke (Costume Designer): I could see it in that is about ‘family’ coming together to celebrate. It’s about knowing love in many forms, some painful, and the joy of having it in one’s life even though it changes with time, and death.

McKinley Carter (Mary Jane): There is a lack of spectacle to this play which I think is unique in this commercial holiday season. Its simplicity is unexpected which is also its strength.

Newell: We felt when we produced the show last year that the kind of audience response we got clearly represented a need for catharsis. It is amazing that our work has the ability to create that kind of emotional response. In some ways, it is our responsibility to respond to the need people have to come into our space and have this communal, emotional experience.

Reeger: When you think of the other traditional holiday plays and movies such as A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life, there’s often a dark side to the story. Scrooge must go through some terrifying journeys in order to find redemption, and Jimmy Stewart’s character must do likewise. We need to see the dark in order to appreciate the light. Joyce’s story does that so beautifully.

Wallem: I heard numerous comments from audience members last year about how they wanted to see the production again so they could follow a different character’s journey through the Morkan’s party. Some commented that they felt they were no longer watching a play but instead peering into the window of an actual holiday celebration.

Bembridge: The great thing about it is that it feels like a real story. It is neither light like The Nutcracker, nor is it cliché like A Christmas Carol. There is a great deal of depth and history to the characters in this story. It makes you think about your holidays past and all of the characters that have taken refuge in your memory.

Fans of Joyce’s work have long believed that one could return to a text like Ulysses a countless number of times before absorbing all of its intended content. Do you think a stage production like James Joyce’s “The Dead” is capable of a similar depth?

Carter: I think there’s a lot to absorb in this production, in particular the relationships between each of the characters. It is possible to glean from both the scene that’s happening before you and the reactions going on behind it.

Wallem: I was fascinated by the numerous interpretations of the text I heard both in rehearsal from fellow cast members and from audience members during the run of the production. Often, we as cast members would discover something new in the text during an actual performance.

Rob Hancock (Michael): In my opinion, the audience is seeing only a small portion of the stories that come to life in the play in just one viewing. These characters have such detailed, specific stories to tell that there’s no way to catch them all.

Bembridge: The play offers great depth both visually and textually. Unlike the film, “our” version gives the depth of the language and story, and it also allows the audience members to fill in the gaps.

Since you are on stage each and every night of a run, in many ways you are constantly revisiting and reinterpreting a text. Are there things you plan on doing differently (or similarly, for that matter) in this year’s production of “The Dead”?

Deanna Dunagan (Aunt Julia): Since we have different cast members the interactions will be different. The actors that play these roles will elicit a different response. But happily much of the cast will also be back, so in that way we can deepen relationships that already exist.

Christa Buck (Lily): Last year I was an understudy and had the pleasure of doing nine performances. This year, I’ll get to be more in touch with [Lily], rather than worrying so much about when I enter and exit!

Carter: A big change for me will be having a different Aunt Kate…

Scrofano: I’m sure the fact that there will be some changes in the cast will affect my performance. I know Charlie will encourage us to see the play with fresh eyes.

Reeger: I can’t imagine Charlie ever telling an actor “I want you to just do what you did before.” I expect he will tell all of us to approach this with the same energy and freshness that we did last year. Hopefully certain basics, such as confidence in learning my lines and speaking with the Irish brogue, will free me to concentrate on the character.

Wallem: Many of us in the company from last year commented on how quickly the process of creating this “party” came to a close; how we had just begun to scratch the surface of these characters’ lives. I’m very excited to revisit my character with both the knowledge of what “worked” for my interpretation last year and the challenge of approaching him with a fresh outlook.

“The Dead” is, of course, a story based around a Christian holiday tradition. Do you find any parallels between your own personal holiday traditions and those of the characters in “The Dead?”

Buck: The only time my whole family gets together is at the holidays. We’ve made more of an effort to make them memorable, especially since both of our parents are no longer with us. In “The Dead,” members of the family have passed on, and the remaining relatives keep up their traditions. We don’t sing like the Morkans do, but we do tell stories and remember times.

Carter: Coming from a family with a lack of holiday rituals, I look forward to my adopted “Dead” family events. The Irish traditions of singing, dancing, and sharing are simply lovely.

Newell: Ever since the early 1970s, my mother would give an annual Christmas Eve party. If Gabe and Greta’s experience at their Aunts’ party makes them encounter the fear of the death of their relationship, I conversely would experience the hope of a birth of a relationship. Specifically, my future wife came to these Christmas Eve parties since the time we were in high school, and every year I would look forward to seeing her. She would come back to Washington to be with her family, and the shared experience of that party is part of what allowed us to build on our own relationship.

Reeger: Every Christmas, members of our family would get out their violins and cellos and perform string quartets. Then we would all gather around the piano and sing carols. I remember my cousin Fred and I would even put on costumes and lip sync to recordings of “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” or “Frosty the Snowman.” Then, just like the Morkans, we finished the traditional holiday meal with suet pudding and butter sauce. I always hated the taste of the pudding, so I loaded up on the butter sauce!

Bembridge: This play is just like the Holidays around my parent’s house. We always have a party Christmas Eve which brings a gathering of old friends, family and neighbors. It is one of my fondest memories of my childhood. And to this day it is still my favorite thing about the holidays.

Dunagan: We always did exactly what the people do in “The Dead”; get together at my grandmother’s house and play for each other. We would sing Irish songs while my dad played songs on the guitar. I wonder how many families do that sort of talent show? To me that seems so natural, sharing your musical gifts with your family.
###

Creating Traditions: Old and New
by Lauren Bergquist

About two months before the beginning of the holiday season, it is inevitable that certain magazines will have at least one of the following headlines: “Create New Family Traditions;” “How to Survive the Holidays Stress Free;” and “Perfect Recipes for the Perfect Holiday Meal.” These headlines juxtapose our culture’s dueling sentiments about the holiday season: it is a time to celebrate and remember your religious heritage with family and loved ones; and it is a five-week marathon/obstacle course that challenges your endurance, resilience, and sanity. This duality of the holiday season has produced many clichés--the frazzled mom trying to do too much; the clueless husband shopping at the last minute; crazed shoppers desperate for the season’s most popular gift; the non-Church goers attending Christmas mass; and the overzealous holiday decorator, to name a few. Movies such as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, The Bishop’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Miracle on 34th Street, support these clichés and yet achieve their shared goal: to put us in the holiday spirit.

In her book Celebrating the Family: Ethnicity, Consumer Culture and Family Ritual, Elizabeth Pleck coins the phrase “post-sentimental era” to describe our culture’s current attitudes towards the holidays and the family rituals that accompany them. According to Pleck, the post-sentimental era began during the mid-twentieth century as a result of the various social movements of the 1960s (civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, etc.), which criticized family rituals as being racist, sexist, classist, and even pointless. The result of these criticisms is how many of us feel about holidays and family traditions today: nostalgia tempered by cynicism and irony. We acknowledge that the holidays are in many ways consumer driven and fabricated by savvy marketing. However, every year we hope to experience just a little of what we think holidays were like years ago: genuine, meaningful, and most importantly, fun.

In truth, the paradoxical nature of American holidays has been at the forefront of our social conscience for well over a century. For example, in as early as 1883, The Nation wrote about Christmas: “so much mingled hope and dread--hopefulness over dreams of what we may receive, and dread at the thought of what we shall have to give.” In 1894, the New York Tribune echoed this attitude: “... As soon as the Thanksgiving turkey is eaten, the great question of buying Christmas presents begins to take the terrifying shape it has come to assume in recent years ... the season of Christmas needs to be dematerialized.” For as long as America has been the leading industrial force in the world, the friction between commerce and religion has caused inner-conflict for those who want to observe the sacredness of a holiday, but who also want to give the best presents, bake the best holiday treats, and have the best holiday decorations.

James Joyce’s “The Dead” resonates with audiences because it fulfills our expectations of how holidays were and should be celebrated. The Morkans’ annual Feast of the Epiphany party is not about presents or having the best holiday decorations. Instead, their party focuses on good conversation, laughter, song, dance, delicious food and plenty of drinks. As we watch “The Dead,” we realize that the way we celebrate holidays today--regardless of culture, religion or nationality--may not be as different as we think: conversations pick up from where they ended the year before; the same blessings and prayers are said at the dinner table; the same tensions exist between the same family members; and the same stories are lovingly told about each other. And for all we know, the Morkan sisters could have been bickering in the kitchen about the meal, or fretting about the place settings before their guests arrived. But like many holiday family gatherings today, once the guests have arrived, the first drinks have been poured, and the first toast has been made, the stress of the occasion disappears and everyone is able to simply enjoy each other’s company. This inevitability is reassuring. Once we strip away the bells and whistles that have come to outwardly define many holidays, we can see that their essence is still there. For each one of us, this essence is unique and defined by our own traditions.
###

The Tapestry of Living
A Conversation Between the Playwright Richard Nelson and Actress Blair Brown

BLAIR BROWN: How did you and Shaun come to work on this project?

RICHARD NELSON: My friend, the director Trevor Nunn, kept saying to me there was this Irish composer I should meet named Shaun Davey. So I called Shaun and we spent much of the summer together in ’91 in Dublin. Although I had grown up as a kid seeing musicals, I hadn’t seen any for years until I worked on Chess in the ‘80s with Trevor. This rekindled my interest and got me looking for a story to adapt as a musical—a story that I hoped would be character-based and character-driven, as are my own plays. So the order, I suppose, was: Shaun Davey, a musical, a character-based Chekhovian story, a summer in Dublin—which led to James Joyce and "The Dead."

BB: Had you ever thought previously of adapting any of the Dubliners stories as plays?

RN: No. I’d never adapted prose before.

BB: Had the movie version of “The Dead” affected you at all?

RN: I saw the movie—a beautiful movie—when it came out. And it was a hurdle for us until I could articulate to myself and Shaun a big difference between the movie and the original story. The movie was directed by John Huston when he was dying, and its dark, melancholic feel comes, in large part, from Huston musing on death. Joyce’s story, on the other hand, was written by a 26-year-old man, who was not dying, but rather looking at the rich tapestry of living. So we felt there was a vibrancy in the story—that characterizes the world of the party. Shaun’s music very much picks up on this vibrancy.

BB: The songs in JAMES JOYCE’S "THE DEAD" start off presentational and then become a piece of the action, then a confession and interior monologue. Did you make a conscious decision to deconstruct the musical form in this way?

RN: Yes. One of the comments about the show that I’ve most liked was, “Your show is like a history of the American musical theatre. You begin in the 1920s, with presentational songs, and you end with people singing their thoughts.” We did make a truly conscious effort to try to find a different way of making a song necessary.

BB: Would you want to use this approach to create another musical?

RN: As I said, the story “The Dead” is very character-based, as is the play, as are my own plays. So, I’m sure I will apply that interest to future musicals, as well as to future plays.

BB: What’s it like now when you’re working on a straight play? Do you get to a point where you think, “I wish there were a song here…”

RN: No. Not really. The pleasure of playwriting for me is in the people, your characters, finding out more and more about them. That’s what matters, whatever form it takes.

BB: You know, from the page, JAMES JOYCE’S THE DEAD is hard to imagine. I don’t think any of us went into rehearsal knowing what we were getting into. The book is like clear water, it just runs over your hands. It doesn’t cry out, “buffo here; she sobs there…” It’s much more complex than that, which is great.

RN: And there’s very little dialogue. The whole first scene is 45 minutes, and there’s very little dialogue at all, and the songs are meant to appear as found or real songs. It’s the choices the characters make—what song they choose to sing—that is revealing.

BB: The experience of performing the show is that the audience comes to you. This is the incredible subtle power of the piece.

RN: That was the dynamic we were after.

So many people came to me saying--as if no one else had thought of it--it’s like walking by a house and peeking in somebody’s windows. So many people made that discovery, but they made it on their own. That’s another thing people liked about this production—they weren’t told what they were supposed to think or even who they were supposed to follow. A friend of mine said he wanted to come back several times because you could follow Aunt Julia for one scene, and then you think, well, what was Freddy doing? You want to trail different characters in the piece. You could almost make up your own version.

Blair Brown played Gretta Conroy in the New York production of JAMES JOYCE’S THE DEAD. This article originally appeared in the September 2000 issue of American Theatre Magazine. Used with permission of Theatre Communications Group.
###

The Legacy of Dubliners
by Jocelyn Prince

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce is considered one of the most radical innovators of twentieth-century writing. His distinctive narrative style epitomizes the Anglo-American modernist movement. Joyce writes on subjects both universal and specific to his Dublin including the strains of family life in Catholic Ireland, the formation of artistic consciousness, the separation anxieties from local and familiar places, and the nature of marital love.

In the early 1900s, Joyce completed a collection of eight stories, entitled Dubliners, a series of short, interrelated tales that deal with the lives of ordinary people whose actions contain symbolic implications. In Dubliners, Joyce begins to explore what would become central themes in his work: youth, adolescence, adulthood and maturity, and how identity is affected by these different stages in life.

“The Dead” is the most famous story in Dubliners, and is widely hailed as one of the finest short stories in the English language. Joyce placed this piece last in his work, and made it three times as long as the average Dubliners tale. The story contains many elements of joy as friends and family of various generations celebrate during the holiday season. In “The Dead,” however, Joyce addresses issues of poverty, the historic political divisions in Ireland, and sexism in the Catholic Church. He symbolically tackles themes of morality and isolation through setting, character interactions, and remembrances.

Of all the stories in Dubliners, “The Dead,” which tells the stories of a handful of individuals at a Christmastime party using pared-down language and using a minimal palette of words, images, and emotions, remains one of Joyce’s most accessible and popular stories. “The Dead” is often enjoyed as a separate work and concludes with one of the most famous passages in English literature:

The musical, James Joyce’s “The Dead,” conceived and created by Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey, is based on Joyce’s Dubliners. It opened off-Broadway in 1999 to mixed reviews but popular success. After it closed an extended run at Playwright’s Horizon, it moved to a successful run on Broadway, winning a Tony in 2000 for Best Book, and then went on for successful runs in Los Angeles, Washington DC, and here at Court Theatre.

Dubliners, along with Joyce’s other work, continues to remain relevant to contemporary readers and his themes and ideas continue to resurface in the later works of major artists and writers such as Phillip Roth, Umberto Eco, Arthur Miller, Anthony Burgess, Salman Rushdie and Tom Stoppard to name only a few, and he is mentioned in more works than any other writer except Shakespeare. Joyce’s influence is also found in the popular culture of film, most notably with filmmaker Richard Linklater’s Slackers and Before Sunrise. Joyce’s emphasis on the structure, texture, sound, and shape of words in his prose has delighted readers for nearly a century. Mainstream readers still curl up with Joyce and relish in his vivid narrative, compelling characters, and shared humanistic themes. The musical James Joyce’s “The Dead” has introduced a new generation of theatre-goers to the world of Joyce.
###

Synopsis
by Celise Kalke

The setting: January 6, 1914, Dublin, Ireland.

Gabriel Conroy, a University Professor in the prime of his life, introduces the Misses Morkans’ annual party. Gabriel describes a Christmas party, though technically it falls on the Feast of the Epiphany or Twelfth Night—the traditional Christian celebration of the Three Wise Men presenting their gifts to the baby Jesus.

The hostesses of this annual gathering are Gabriel’s Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia, and his cousin Mary Jane. Aunt Julia sang professionally in one of Dublin’s church choirs, while Aunt Kate and now Mary Jane support themselves by giving music lessons. The other party guests are: Mary Jane’s students, Rita and Michael; a music presenter, Mr. Browne; a famous tenor, Bartell D’Arcy; a colleague of Gabriel’s from the University, Molly Ivors; and an old family friend, Mrs. Malins.

Gabriel describes the singing and dancing and celebration of Dublin’s musical life. With him is his wife Gretta, who jokes with the aunts about Gabriel’s over-protectiveness, including his insistence that Gretta wear galoshes. Gabriel and Gretta explain that to avoid a late and chilly ride home, they’ve booked a room in a up-scale hotel for the night. The aunts worry about Mrs. Malin’s son Freddy, who is late and therefore probably quite drunk (and who that afternoon broke a New Year’s pledge to give up drinking).

The party gets properly underway with traditional Irish folk songs. Freddy Malins arrives, drunk as his mother feared. Miss Ivors provokes Gabriel into an argument of Irish Nationalism by identifying him as the author of book reviews in a conservative English-sympathizing newspaper, the Daily Express. The political argument inspires singing a song, “Parnell’s Plight” inspired by Charles Stuart Parnell, a member of Irish Parliament.

When Molly Ivors takes over the song, and Gabriel challenges her with words of his own, the room must take sides in terms of how they express their Nationalism. But in the end, Molly and Gabriel agree on owing duty to Ireland.

Gretta becomes fascinated with Michael, one of Mary Jane’s young students. She volunteers to sing a song on her own. “Goldenhair” is a sensual song of love and courtship from the West of Ireland, where Gretta lived as a girl. Gabriel surprises himself by becoming attracted to his wife in the manner of their youth, and begins to look longingly to the hotel room at the evening’s end.

The party continues with a lively dinner, filled with excellent food and music-world gossip. Gabriel stands up to make his speech, but Aunt Julia drops a glass interrupting him. She feels faint, and briefly leaves the table. Freddy and Mrs. Malins tell the remaining guests that Freddy will soon leave for a monastery with strict rules of abstinence.

Aunt Julia returns, and Gabriel praises the hostesses with renewed vigor, toasting them as the Three Graces of Dublin’s musical world. Aunt Julia then volunteers to perform a song, “Naughty Girl,” and surprises the company with a slightly scandalous number from an operetta. Dancing erupts, only to be interrupted by Aunt Julia’s frailty and the irate tapping of the landlord, Mr. Fulham, on the floor below. Freddy Malins, not one to be easily intimidated, leads the company in a riotous song and dance, “Wake the Dead.”

Afterwards, Mary Jane plays her Academy Piece exhibiting her technical prowess. Aunt Julia retires to her bedroom. Most of the company come up to say goodbye. The professional tenor, Mr. D’Arcy, sneaks into Aunt Julia’s room and tenderly sings an Italian aria full of the pathos of unrequited love. Freddy and Michael invade Aunt Julia’s room, and all the men sing her to sleep.

Cabs are caught and future plans are made. Aunt Julia, alone, dreams of her youth as a talented young singer. Near death, she sings with a young woman who represents the memory of her own musical prowess.

In their hotel room, Gabriel eagerly awaits the night feeling like a young man on the first night of a honeymoon. Gretta, however, fails to share Gabriel’s mood. Instead, she shares a story of love and loss, a secret from her youth. Gabriel’s confidence shatters. “What more lies hidden from him,” he wonders. As Gretta cries herself to sleep, Gabriel stares out at the winter snow. He feels utterly alone, and then suddenly at one with the snow, the living and the dead.
###