Annie Ryan
Corn Exchange’s A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing
When did you first come across A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing?
I first came across it this winter, my husband Michael West had bought the book [by Eimear McBride]. I picked it up and couldn’t put it down. I finished it and felt, “That’s performable!” So I contacted her to get the rights to perform it then and then.
That’s quite a short turn over for a theatre adaptation and show. How did you find having to stage a work of stream-of-consciousness?
That’s right. When I put the book down I felt it was crying out to be heard as a voice. The first pages are very difficult stylistically, and as the book progresses it stops having quite that amount of stream-of-consciousness. She, the girl, matures and the style gets more normal maybe. When I first started reading it I was almost reading it out loud in my head – the clarity of dialogue in it and the kind of inner monologue that goes into each scene is performable. But I still didn’t know if it was stage-able! There is something about the voice and the story – it’s incredibly dark, but throughout it she keeps a very clear view of things. You cut from her inner mind and straight into dialogue, and you continue to be in the scene.
What made it seem so performable to you?
Reviews have called her a literary genius, which may be true, but what really struck me about her is that she’s an actress too! She trained as an actor, she was in college a year ahead or below Neil Watkins, whose work has similar themes to Girl, with highly charged and difficult material like in The Year Of Magical Wanking. So I was wondering who this teacher they must’ve all had was, and it turned out it was this old American guy who’d trained at the Actor’s Studio in the 1960s. He was coming from a very strong method acting training, which is really about digging into what’s happening in each moment – what’s it taste like, what’s it smell like, what are the sounds, what does a person see now, and now, and now. It doesn’t seem abstract to me, it’s a straight story.
How did you settle on the one-woman show format?
When it came to adapting it I felt instinctually that it should be a one-person show. I felt it should contain the purity of that one voice. I thought about doing it with an ensemble, but it’s all through her point of view, her experience of it. All we need is the girl speaking. It should be almost like a Beckett play.
How did you decide on Aoife Duffin for the part of Girl?
Aoife was my first choice by a mile very early on. There’s something about the character that sort of requires a distance. Aoife is going to play her, but in a way there’s almost no character. Almost as though this consciousness, this voice, is channelling through Aoife. But I needed someone who had a lot of experience and could feel really young. There’s a real honesty in Aoife that is right for this – her approach is to not go fully into character. I think it’s right, there should be a distance between the performer and the character. She’s also a real female lead.
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing runs from September 25th to October 5th at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2. Tickets cost €20 to €30.
Words: Roisin Agnew
