In the last 10 days I went to a concert, attended a play, participated in a live meeting and drank a real pint in a real pub. It was all very tentative, trying to do normal things in an abnormal context where everyone is masked up to the eyes and studiously keeping their distance. All the while the pressing of sanitisers and the energetic rubbing of hands mark the beginning and end of every event. The sanitising station is the new holy water font. My first night out took the current consort and I to the University Concert Hall in Limerick for a performance by the Irish Chamber Orchestra celebrating its 50th birthday. As we arrived we were checked off a list and directed to one side of the foyer, where we waited at socially distanced chairs and tables. Meanwhile the audience from the previous performance was ushered out and the hall cleaned. To comply with restrictions a mere 100 people were allowed in to the 1,200-seat auditorium. Everyone in the audience was masked and seated beside the person or people they came with, while rows of empty seats separated the individuals, couples and groups. It was difficult to recognise people behind their face coverings, and this was exacerbated by the fact that many had changed their hairstyles during the lockdown; some let themselves go grey or white, some grew manes and others had shaved their heads entirely. The concert was great. While I appreciate classical music I am no expert and can just about identify the music of the more prominent composers. However, there is nothing to beat the sound and feel of a live orchestra. After months of electronic reproduction it was uplifting to feel the air around you resound with live sounds fashioned by human genius. The musicians, all masters of their instruments, played as if their lives and ours depended on it, lifting us beyond ourselves, putting us in touch with what we were, what we are and what we will be. We walked on air back to the car. There was no chatting or hanging around afterwards, and you’d miss that. Still, it was great to be out. The following night we took ourselves to Coole Park outside Gort to see the Druid Theatre Company production of a series of plays by Lady Augusta Gregory. These were staged in the open air in the grounds of her ladyship’s estate, where she herself had hosted the great and the good of the Irish artistic community in the first decades of the 20th century. The masked audience moved through the trees and gardens in dusk and darkness, from one staging post to another, encountering musicians and singers along the way. The production included tragedy, comedy and farce, and while the plays themselves are not the best pieces of drama ever written, in the hands of Druid the whole event was magic. In fact it was worth the journey just to hear the powerful and evocative voice of the great Marie Mullen ring out among the trees at Coole. It was great to be out. Closer to home, our own drama group held its AGM in a local church two nights later, where we sat socially distanced and be-masked discussing the truncated year that was and is. We formally accounted to one another for what was done, and let ourselves mourn for what will never be done. Normally, this time of the year would find us in rehearsal preparing a series of one-act plays for our October pub-theatre. I must admit to feeling a sense of great loss during the meeting as we spoke of what might have been: the fun, the discipline, the camaraderie and the adrenalin. The lost opportunity to complete the 2020 festival circuit with this year’s three-act production weighed heavily on all involved. But there were achievements to be honoured and plans to be made, even in the face of the pandemic. A successful radio play was rehearsed, recorded and broadcast during lockdown, while an invitation from glór theatre in Ennis to perform a rehearsed reading in November is something to get excited about. It was great to be out. On the way home two of us adjourned to a local hostelry, where a pint was enjoyed in the now unfamiliar surroundings of a licensed premises. Six customers signed the book and drank quietly, but apart, while the landlord kept watch. The local hurling team had a massive county final win at the weekend, but the national news was full of talk about spikes and second waves, and another shutdown. It was all a bit tentative and nervous, like no man’s land during a lull in the fighting. Still, it was great to be out.
Read more here:: This is a tentative, nervous normality — like no man’s land during a lull in the fighting
