On Sunday, Sept. 28, members of the English department faculty will present a staged reading of James Joyce's one surviving play, "Exiles." The reading will take place at 2:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St.
This is the second presentation of what Murray Biggs, director of the readings, hopes will be an annual fall event.
"The idea is to do one play a year" says Mr. Biggs, associate professor (adjunct) of English and theater studies. "And since we're doing it jointly with the Yale Center for British Art, the idea is to have a work by a British author, something that suits the center." For example, Patrick McCaughey, director of the British Art Center, asked that the chosen play for this year's event consist of the work of an Irish author, to complement the center's new exhibit "Irish Paintings from the Collection of Brian P. Burns," explains Professor Biggs. (See related story, page 1.)
The selection of Joyce's "Exiles" also fulfills another requirement, notes Professor Biggs. "We wanted to give some prominence to something that we consider an overlooked work. 'Exiles' has been done in full performance, but not very often. That's partly because nobody thinks of Joyce as a dramatist." The play's relative obscurity also may be due in part to a less-than-enthusiastic reception when it was first presented, because it "didn't quite fit expectations of a conventional play," says Professor Biggs.
"Irish" vs. "European" identity. Written in 1915 and set in Dublin three years earlier, "Exiles" examines issues that arise when a person attempts to retain an individual cultural identity while living in a broader cultural setting -- in this case, being "Irish" vs. being "European." The play also looks at the concept of "free love" in a society of constraint.
The principal figure in the work -- a character modeled after Joyce -- is a man of letters returning from exile. Not only must he face his own ambivalence about his homeland, but he also encounters some animosity from his contemporaries. "There's the feeling that he would have been more truly Irish if he had stayed home," says Professor Biggs, noting that "Joyce had an ambivalent attitude towards his home country. When abroad, he pined for Ireland, but when he was in Ireland, he couldn't stand it. That's not an uncharacteristic feeling for any exile."
The nonconformist relationships in the four-person play also mirror Joyce's own life, says Professor Biggs. Central to the play is the relationship between the protagonist and the character based on Nora Barnacle, Joyce's real-life love. Joyce and Barnacle were not married, although they had children together. But Professor Biggs believes that what might have discomfited audiences in 1915 will engage spectators in 1997. "The moment-by-moment interactions among the characters is somewhat elusive," he observes. "The audience is kept guessing."
The protagonist in "Exiles" will be portrayed by Paul Fry, the William Lampson Professor of English and master of Ezra Stiles College. The character based on Nora Barnacle will be played by Katherine Rowe, assistant professor of English. The roles of the local music teacher and her cousin, a Dublin journalist, will be enacted, respectively, by Laura King and Michael Thurston, both assistant professors of English. Ruth Yeazell, the Chace Family Professor of English, will play both Brigid, the family servant, and a fisherwoman heard (but not seen) as a purveyor of Dublin Bay herrings.
The public is welcome to attend the 90-minute reading, which is being staged without intermission. Admission is free.