Man Of Aran

Actress Clare makes waves as Druid sets sail for Inis Meáin

Clare is playing Slippy Helen in The Cripple which began its American tour in February and will wrap up the visit with a trip in New Haven on June 19.

Then the play – which was inspired by Robert O’Flaherty’s visit to Aran in 1934 to make the famous film Man of Aran – returns to Ireland, where its destinations include Galway city and Inis Meáin.

The Inis Meáin visit marks the final stop on the company’s five-month tour of the dark comedy with its central character of Cripple Billy, a disabled boy whose aim in life is to reach Inis Mór and take part in O’Flaherty’s film.

As is common in McDonagh’s plays, there is a cast of comic characters, including local gossip Johnny Pateen Mike, and of course Slippy Helen, the sadistic girl next door who torments Billy when she isn’t ‘pegging eggs’ at people who annoy her.

These characters are capable of seemingly meaningless acts of small cruelty, which is what gives McDonagh’s work such an edge. The Cripple of Inishmaan is Clare’s third play with Druid – not a bad achievement given that the Dublin actress has only been working professionally for two years, since graduating from the Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff.

“Druid gave me my professional debut, she says, explaining that the company’s casting director Maureen Hughes auditioned her in 2009 and immediately said “you’d be a great Pegeen Mike”.

Druid’s Artistic Director Garry Hynes agreed, casting her in a revival of The Playboy of the Western World after hearing Clare read the role for a few minutes. Straight out of college, Clare appeared in Playboy, touring Ireland and the UK in 2009

Taking on such a major role with a company of Druid’s stature might have been daunting, especially since the rehearsal period was very short, but it was also a great opportunity for Clare.

“It was a bit mental,” she laughs.”I didn’t have an agent then, but I got one out of that.”

And although she has had short periods of unemployment for a few months here and there since, she has also worked with Druid on The Silver Tassie (playing Susie Monican) as well as with the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, London on several productions including Chekov’s The Three Sisters and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Arsenevich: Robert J. Flaherty - Man of Aran (1934)

Este film es considerado uno de los grandes documentales de ficción de todos los tiempos. Flaherty se basó para ello en la historia de un núcleo familiar concreto para transmitir al espectador la dureza del trabajo en el mar. Su mirada no es etnográfica ni analítica, sino fundamentalmente artística. Así, no plasma la vida cotidiana de esos hombres y mujeres, sino una lucha épica entre el hombre y el mar. Por otro lado, las islas Aran tenían en ese momento, como siguen todavía en parte teniendo, una veta de primitivismo, de lo que queda de un tiempo más duro pero quizás también más puro. De ahí la fascinación que su filme ejerció en un Occidente cada vez más industralizado. Nonfiction filmmaking pioneer Robert Flaherty's first sound feature elaborates on themes presented in his two previous major works, Nanook of the North and Moana. In all four of his major features, including Louisiana Story, Flaherty explored the relationship of man to his natural environment. This film was shot between 1931 and 1933 on the Aran Islands, west of Ireland's Galway Bay. Flaherty's screen "family" was actually composed of three unrelated islanders chosen for their photogenic appeal: Colman "Tiger" King is the title character, a no-nonsense fisherman, Maggie Dirrane plays his wife, and Michael Dillane his young son. Flaherty is more interested in recording the natural beauty of the islands, which are largely rock, and the surrounding sea than in presenting any formal information on the lives of the islanders. Life here is as elemental as it was for the Eskimos in Nanook and the South Seas islanders in Moana. Though the film came under fire from some critics at the time of its release for not presenting the social conditions that hampered the lives of the islanders -- many of them renting from absentee landlords indifferent to their economic well-being -- it has come to be accepted as work of film poetry rather than a social document. Cierto es que el deseo de Flaherty por hacer un producto comercial conllevó trampas para el espectador, como el elegir a los personajes por su fotogenia y no por ser una familia real de Aran, o la recreación de ciertas escenas como la espectacular caza del tiburón, etc.

Man of Aran

Man of Aran

Man of Aran

Nonfiction film, a critical history

Film essays and criticism