INTERVIEW: You’re invited to Granny Jackson’s wake
Photo: Granny Jackson’s Dead is the latest work from the Big Telly Theatre Company. Photo courtesy of Big Telly / Provided by official site.
The new show Granny Jackson’s Dead has a title that is quite blunt, and, yes, the play definitely features themes of death and memorialization. But it’s also a comedy and celebration, an Irish wake that comes to life and offers audience members the chance to enjoy songs, jokes and general revelry. Created by Zoë Seaton and the Big Telly Theatre Company, Granny Jackson’s Dead will play the American Irish Historical Society on Fifth Avenue, April 24-26, as part of Origin’s 1st Irish Theatre Festival in New York City.
Seaton, who is based on the very northern tip of Northern Ireland, is quite excited to bring her creation to audiences in Manhattan. Here’s how she explained the unique show: “It’s called Granny Jackson’s Dead, and the audience are all dearly beloved friends of the family. And when they arrive, they are welcomed right into the heart of the family. They are brought into the kitchen where they help make sandwiches. They’re brought into the room where there’s the coffin where Granny lies in repose. They share stories about her. They are also brought to a fire pit, although there may not be a fire in NYC, where there is a vegan pagan who wants to give Granny a Viking funeral where you set her alight on a raft. They also go into a room where her grandson has started a grief tech company, and he is digitally memorializing Granny. So there is an AI version of Granny. There is a hologram in a jar. There is a VR version of her, so he is trying to remember her in his own way, which is digitally.”
Obviously from that description, the show offers a commentary on the grieving process, and how old and new can clash when a family is at its most vulnerable. The older generation sometimes leands toward tradition, while the younger generation are more forward-thinking.
“We’re looking at the concept of grief, how the digital world has changed our perception of how we keep somebody alive, or how we let them go, how we process grief and what closure looks like and what it doesn’t,” Seaton said. “Obviously the family are kind of divided about that, so there’s a lot of conflict about how to remember and how to honor her. That’s what the play is about really, and the audience are kind of caught in the crossfire of that, which is a lot of fun.”
The first part of the show finds theatergoers exploring each room of the American Irish Historical Society, which is a stately townhouse across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During the holidays, it played host to the Irish Repertory Theatre’s The Dead, 1904. During these initial scenes of Granny Jackson’s Dead, dialogue and encounters are largely improvised.
“The audience begin by going round all of the rooms, and they meet all of the characters,” she said. “And that part of the show is quite improvised, and then the final scene, which is where all the audience will assemble for the eulogies, is more scripted. And that was devised with the company. We had a really interesting way of developing it because we had three writers who were commissioned to write the backstories of the characters and to create digital assets, so they created a family WhatsApp group. They created some email exchanges, some kind of digital assets, which kind of led an evidence trail to what these characters were like. And then we devised the show based on those, which was a really interesting way to work because sometimes with a play you start with dialogue, and then you’ve got to work backwards and kind of see what these characters were like. We kind of started the other way around, and we kind of built the world first. The second half is more scripted and more structured.”
Seaton accepted this theatrical offer sight unseen, having never been to the American Irish Historical Society. That speaks to the trust she has in Origin’s 1st Irish Theatre Festival, but also the versatility of the show, which can fit in many different spaces. In fact, it finishes up a run in Philadelphia today, April 20.
“What’s been interesting about this show is we played it in a number of locations, and it wraps around the community that it’s in,” Seaton said. “So the backstory was written in such a way that it can accommodate any location, which is why we work with local actors. We’ll be working with some American actors, so we’ll be bringing our own family, the Jackson family, to tour with the show. And then in each location, we work with local actors who are the neighbors and the kind of community that surround the play.”
Seaton added: “It’s full on an Irish wake. The framework is an Irish wake. There is singing, and there is all the joy of an Irish wake that any Irish American or Irish will recognize. But within that there is conflict over the digital legacy. It feels like a wake. There are sandwiches, and there are jokes, and there’s singing and there’s music.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Granny Jackson’s Dead, created by Zoë Seaton, plays April 24-26 at the American Irish Historical Society as part of Origin’s 1st Irish Theatre Festival. Click here for more information and tickets.
