Margaretta D’Arcy and her husband, John Arden, were prominent members of the Society of Irish Playwrights (now the Writers’ Guild of Ireland) from its beginnings to the 1990s. To the conventional among us they were ‘a nuisance’ but there was no doubt that they were ‘truth tellers’ and quality people who helped writers in Ireland become organised, to gain recognition and respect for their craft.  They were radical thinkers with no price tag attached.  John died in 2012 and Margaretta sadly left us on Sunday November 23^rd last. 

It has been wonderful to hear and read the many heartful tributes paid to the radical voice of the writer Margaretta d’Arcy, who used the slogan “Mad, Bad and Dangerous” in her local election campaign in Galway when she campaigned against the use of Shannon Airport for U.S military transit flights and for making Galway city, where she lived from the 1970s, “a beacon of peace”.  She told truth to power, as she uncompromisingly campaigned for peace and justice to the very end, in her writing and public statements, at no small cost to her own health and freedom. While receiving treatment for cancer she served many prison sentences for her opposition to the military use by the Americans of Shannon Airport and was held in solitary confinement in Armagh Jail for her stance on the treatment of women in prison.  She was involved in the Greenham Common campaign against cruise missiles, on the British anti-war Committee of 100, and a supporter of the Shell to Sea campaign against the onshore location of the Corrib gas project in north Mayo.  While in poor health, and with considerable disability in the last two years, she was an unmistakable presence, on her walker, at protests in support of the people of Palestine. She campaigned vigorously for Catherine Connolly too and the President visited her in hospital where she had been admitted only a few weeks ago. 

Margaretta’s large body of work as writer and as director and producer is perhaps overshadowed by her political activism which tended to have her portrayed in the media as a sort of ‘crazy lady’ which she certainly was not.  Her measured attention to the facts in her arguments always affirmed this. Difficult and different, yes. On the occasion of her death the Aosdána website expressed “great sadness at the death of fellow member and pioneer Margaretta D’Arcy at the age of 91”, and referenced her body of work as follows: “Amongst her many published works are her memoir Tell Them Everything: A sojourn in the prison of Her Majesty Elizabeth II at Ard Macha (Armagh) (2017), her novel Awkward Corners in 1988. Her plays most of which have been broadcast by RTÉ and the BBC, include The Pinprick of History, Vandaleur’s Folly, Women’s Voices from West of Ireland, Prison-voice of Countess Markievicz, and A Suburban Suicide (1994).  Loose Theatre: Memoirs of a Guerrilla Theatre Activist, was published in (2005). She co-ordinated many plays devised as group productions.

Margaretta D’Arcy’s contribution to theatre was inspiring. In collaboration with her partner, John Arden, also a member of Aosdána, she co-wrote a number of ground-breaking plays, most notably The Non-Stop Connolly Show performed in Liberty Hall, Dublin, in 1975, a unique experience in Dublin at the time, telling the story of James Connolly’s life from his boyhood in the Irish community in Edinburgh to his execution by firing squad days after the Rising was put down by British troops”.

Early in 1975, when I had written my first play, but was not yet a member of the Society of Irish playwrights, I got a call, out of the blue, from Margaretta D’Arcy to ask if I would help her stage a play called The Non-Stop Connolly Show in Liberty Hall. I had heard of Margaretta but never met her or her husband but had played the leading role in John Arden’s play Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance at the R.A.D.A, London, and directed it for RTE with the late Colin Blakely as Musgrave. A friend of theirs, the English writer Ian Rodger, had seen me in London and suggested to them that I might be able to help with getting the play on, as what I don’t know, actor, director, producer or general go-for?  It turned out to be all of those and there would be no payment at all for my services. I met Margaretta in the freezing Sinn Fein offices in Gardiner Street where she intended to work-shop her play which John would re-write as it was rehearsed.  She was irresistible.  I couldn’t say ‘no’ to her even though I’d no idea what I might be getting into. As there was no script yet I asked what the play was about. “It’s about James Connolly”, she said, not giving much away. “Is it a one man show, a monologue, sort of thing?”, I asked.  “Oh no!”, she said and laughed.  “It has a cast of thousands”.  She had me laughing now.  “And how long is it?”. “Twenty-four hours”, she said. End of conversation. Most of what she said was true. 

Margaretta persuaded me to join the workshopping when I could as I was then working full-time, writing/directing radio drama as well as making tentative steps into television.  She worked a twelve-hour shift for months in that freezing room with the help of many volunteers, like myself, who read the pages of the emerging script, playing different characters, when asked, and improvising when the script wasn’t working. John would then vanish and return the following day with the re-writes which might engage us for an hour or the whole day. One day Margaretta said to me: “I’d like you to play Matt Talbot, the revered ascetic of the period.  He was loved by Irish Catholics for his charity, piety and mortification of the flesh.  We don’t have his page of script because John doesn’t like what I’ve written and is re-writing, so go away and practice flagellation for a while, here’s a whip”.  When I came back from doing a bit of method acting prep with the whip I was asked to read James Connolly and, alas, the holy man was never mentioned again.  That’s the way the ‘non-stop rehearsing’ was conducted.  It seemed chaotic with actors coming and going, and some never seen again having given it a go for a few days, but to Margareta it was all worthwhile as she and John drove on and on, hammering the script into shape.  That was their priority, regardless of who or what fell by the wayside.  After many weeks my own work began to demand more and more of my time and, with regret, I too had to bow out. I did what I could to help from the side-lines but as the production date got closer it seemed to me that The Non-Stop Connolly Show would never see the light of day as the goodwill of many helpers seemed stretched beyond limits.  I was completely wrong and to my great surprise I received a personal invitation from Margaretta to the performance, as intended, on March 29 Easter Week 1975 from Noon, running time 24 hours. Please click on the link below to hear Margaretta promoting the show on Television.

The Non-Stop Connolly Show – RTÉ Archives

RTE.ie

https://www.rte.ie › archives › 689284-the-non-stop-co…

Andy O Mahony, reporter for ‘Over the Barricades‘, goes to the rehearsal of ‘The Non-Stop Connolly Show’ at Liberty Hall and talks to the co-authors. This is …

I went along with a good friend to the opening performance. We promised that we’d wake each other up if either of us fell asleep and we agreed to suffer the 24-hour ordeal for as long as we could.  Liberty Hall was packed to the roof by 12 Noon.  There was a great sense of expectation.  Some had gone expecting disaster as the word around town about the chaotic rehearsals and completely untrue funny stories had circulated for weeks before the opening.  The prophets of doom were disappointed as the production was professionally organised with a very good cast, none of whom had been in the rehearsals that I attended, and all went well for a few hours.  Then people became restless, coming and going and some returning.  Yet, it all continued beyond midnight reasonably well but clearly many in the audience had fallen asleep, some snoring.  From then on John Arden, choosing his moment, appeared on the side of the stage at regular intervals with dozens of toilet rolls which he threw out into the auditorium and as the trails of white paper fell gently over the audience he shouted politely “Wake up you Bastards”. This was always greeted with loud laughter and rounds of applause.  I’m ashamed to say that is my abiding memory of The Non-Stop Connolly Show, a very serious radical commentary on Ireland’s troubled history – a triumph in its own way.  By 5 A.M. my friend and I woke to realise that we had both been asleep and crept quietly out of Liberty Hall, leaving the diminished audience in various stages of consciousness as the actors got on with the Show.  I believe many stayed to the end and lived to tell the tale.

Margaretta D’Arcy (and John) never involved the Society/Guild in their political activism or embarrassed us in any way.  They were polite and measured in their approach at meetings as they believed that the survival of an organised representative group for writers was essential.  Sometimes they would ask for help as when in 1996, during my time as Chair, they wanted our support to set up an event in the Irish Writers’ Centre.  Here is a short excerpt from our AGM report:

Tribute to a Playwright: Commemoration of Abdelkader Alloula, the Algerian Playwright, assassinated in 1994. To be held at the Irish Writers’ Centre on May 25^th 1996. 

The Society of Irish Playwrights and The Irish Writers Union have agreed to join with The Irish Writers’ Centre in organising this event. The Cultural Committee of SIPTU has offered £500 towards the costs and this combined with contributions from the three organising groups should make the staging of this unique event possible.  The real organisers are Society of Irish Playwrights members, Margaretta D’Arcy and John Arden, who staged the tribute in London last Autumn.  It will involve readings from the works of the playwright read by Irish actors, who also performed in London, and it is hoped to include at least one Algerian expert on the works of Abdelkader Alloula. 

Margaretta and John wrote to me about the event in London: Dear John … we had a translation made of Alloula’s best known play, The Good People, made by Dr. Lamice El-Amari, who was a professor of English and theatre at Oran University, Algeria, and a personal friend of Alloula.  We adapted the translation for a public reading to last one hour, with a cast of three.  We obtained the voluntary services of three Irish actors living in London (who did a magnificent job), because we felt the style of the translation came closest to the style and idiom of Irish theatre.  We had two Algerian friends/colleagues of Alloula to speak about him, the co-chair of the Writers’ Guild, as sponsors of the event, and John Elsom, a British critic who had known Alloula.  We used tapes of Algerian music.  The whole event lasted two hours and everyone found it a most moving occasion”.  Margaretta and John. 

Margaretta D’Arcy promoted events like this, in support of the writer, all of her working life. The tribute to the Algerian Playwright Abdelkader Alloula in Dublin was a very moving occasion, much appreciated by the large audience who attended.

And to conclude:

Chair of the Arts Council, Maura McGrath, when she learned of Margaretta’s death said: “Margaretta D’Arcy’s creative work is characterised by her dedication to her craft and diversity of form. Bold and uncompromising, D’Arcy possessed a relentless energy and curiosity. She leaves behind a rich artistic legacy which includes memoirs, essays, plays and film. Perhaps best known for her frank and fearless memoir Tell Them Everything, D’Arcy will no doubt be read and admired for generations to come”.

Writer Neil Donnelly said in his review of Loose Theatre: Memoirs of a Guerrilla Theatre Activist by Margaretta D’Arcy: 

“There is much joy and pain, and great creative output. Her account of the extraordinary odyssey of her life is by turns, moving, irritating, funny, infuriating, and poignant. A self-mythologizer and a bit of a protest junkie: Greenham Common, Grunwick, SAS/Troops Out/H-Blocks (for which she ended up in Armagh prison, she goes to jail a lot), US planes refuelling at Shannon. That’s only to mention a few. She’s indefatigable. If you wondered what her two-month protest on the steps of the Arts Council in 1986 was all about then she explains it here. But I’m none the wiser. One can’t help but admire and admit to liking her”. (Irish Independent 13/08/2005)

Margaretta’s funeral in the Victorian Chapel, Mount Jerome, Dublin which was attended by writer Joe O’Byrne and myself, on behalf of the Guild, was a light and joyous occasion.  Relatives and friends shared many amusing reflections about Margaretta and only mentioned some they couldn’t tell in public, ever. Apart from an invitation for us all to go to Shannon Airport, the service ended with a reading of a short poem by Margaretta called, Hymn, which, perhaps, explains everything

Hymn

We’re wild and we’re wicked, we’re wanton and wilful,
As we spin through the city proclaiming our madness,
We will not be quiet, we’ve discovered our wildness
And our leapings and lurchings and lustings unending.

We’ll lustily slash as we wander and wonder:
We will not be controlled in our roving and raging,
Our passion, compassion, fanatic obsession,
Eyes open reviling our being unyielding.

We’re wild and we’re wicked, we’re wanton and wilful,
As we spin through the city acclaiming our madness.
We will not be quiet, we’ve discovered our wildness,
Our lurchings and lustings, our hurlings and whirlings.

 (The Galway Review 2012)

To me, Margaretta, was a clever lady with a beautiful innocence.

John Lynch