Last year was the centenary year of Ireland’s National Theatre, the Abbey. In 1903 the Irish National Theatre was founded by WB Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory. On December 27, 1904, the Abbey Theatre, under patronage of Miss Annie Horniman, opened its doors. The proposed plan for 2004 was to re-imagine, re-brand and re-position the Abbey in the minds of the Irish public and politicians alike.
This theatre has spawned such great playwrights as Brian Friel, JM Synge, Hugh Leonard and many others. Through training and patronage the theatre gave a dramatic start to Irish names like Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Rea, Fionnuala Flanagan and Maureen O’Hara. To this day it continues to bring new faces of theatre to the attention of the nation. In 2003 Lisa Lambe graduated from Drama and Theatre Studies in Trinity College. In January of that year she made her first appearance in the Abbey, in The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca. Since then her career has advanced at an amazing speed.
When I asked her to describe the experience of being an actor in our National Theatre she blushed. “It was great, very exciting. During my course we were brought in and put on stage to practice monologues and experience what it is like to speak in a theatre but this was the first time I was in costume. It was amazing.”
Ireland today offers a very different audience to that of a hundred years ago. In a time when people are money-rich but time-poor, leisure time must be used wisely. However, this decline in contemporary society’s interest in theatre does not take away from the status of this historic theatre which is an icon for Irish drama.
It is thanks to a group of prominent figures in Irish literature, such as Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge and George Russell that many of the memorable plays of all are time are still being enjoyed to this day.
The Theatre’s aim has always been to promote and develop new Irish plays and create a new repertoire of Irish dramatic literature, to bring alive the old canon of existing Irish works and to present these shows to the nation and promote the training, employment and development of Irish theatre artist and practitioners.
Lambe is part of that new wave of Irish theatre, and from an early age she dreamed of being an actress in Irish theatre. She is simply stunned that her career has taken off so quickly. “Since the beginning of 2004 it’s been pretty constant and for an actor that’s a brilliant thing,” she said.
In 2004 she appeared in the innovative and award-winning Improbable Frequency by Arthur Riordan and Bell Helicopter and The Shaughran by Dion Boucicault. For her the last year has been electric — to work in the Abbey alongside such successful actors is a dream come true to her.
As a young actor in the Abbey she was overwhelmed. While acting in the hugely successful Shaughran, there was special delight for the actors backstage. She said that on stage, “there’s a red curtain which is translucent but the audience couldn’t see us. Behind that every night we’d look out. We just kind of took for granted that it would be full and it was full every single night. The euphoria of it was amazing being on stage with the audience in front of you. It was truly amazing.”
While the nation may not have the time to attend plays or an interest in Irish literature, the Abbey continues to be a magical symbol of Irish theatre. This year marks the beginning of the theatre’s second century and a new revival of theatre in Ireland. The show must, and will, go on.