Fionnuala Flanagan

I had the happy opportunity to see a living legend, Fionnuala Flanagan, perform in a play as part of the Kinsale Arts Festival. The Kinsale Arts Festival is a great celebration of culture and the arts, which takes place in a beautiful seaside town south of the city.

The play is called 'White Rabbit, Red Rabbit' and is written by an Iranian playwright named Nassim Soleimanpour. Soleimanpour was a conscientious objector and, as a result, was denied a passport and unable to travel. So he devised this method of touring his work, which is unique.

The script is provided to the producer, who must then identify a local actor brave enough to take on the challenge. The challenge being that the actor does not receive the script until he or she has arrived onstage in front of the audience. The actor must then perform the script, while reading it for the first time.

Kinsale Arts secured the talents of Sinéad Cusack, Mark O'Halloran, and Fionnuala Flanagan to perform the play on three separate nights. A group of us decided that we could not miss the opportunity to see such a fantastic talent perform live.

The play itself was very interesting. Full of absurdist metaphors, rich with meaning, and delicately touching on some very important issues, such as freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement. By asking, at one point, an audience member to take a photograph (which I took just before this photograph) and email it to him (which I am about to do), the playwright gently brings home the impact of illegal travel restrictions on him and his work.

Of course, it made me think of Palestine and my Palestinian friends and colleagues, most of whom are denied the right to travel. They often say they would love to see Ireland and I reply saying 'Ahlan wa sahlan!' meaning 'Welcome'. It makes me sad that I can invite them as many times as I like to visit me in Ireland but, for most of them, that is a sheer impossibility.

During the play, the audience was engaged and challenged to have the bravery to stand out from the crowd. A mirror was also held up to the audience members, requiring us to reflect on the way we often criticise those who do stand out and set themselves apart. It was fascinating.

Flanagan was fantastic. She performed with such ease, humour, presence, self possession, and sensitivity. It was a wonderful experience.