Episode 8 The Arts Show

Hello and welcome to another Arts Show, our monthly guide to

what's being made, seen and talked about in arts and entertainment.

We've a packed show, here's what's coming up.

Cyprus Avenue is the new shockingly violent

black comedy from playwright David Ireland.

Starring Stephen Rea as a disaffected Loyalist,

it has just opened at Dublin's Abbey Theatre.

The Arts Show was there.

His debut feature film, The Survivalist,

was nominated for a BAFTA.

We talk to its writer and director, local man Stephen Fingleton.

The world as we rarely see it.

We visit an exhibition of extraordinary scientific

images as art in Derry/Londonderry.

And there's live jazz from the MAC Theatre's current

Artist in Residence, David Lyttle.

I'm tweeting now...

But first, Secretary of State Theresa Villiers said earlier

this month that she believes that we are closer than ever before

to finding a way forward in dealing with our troubled past.

So it seems timely that today sees the cinema release

of The Truth Commissioner based on David Park's 2008

political thriller, which sees a fictional body set up here

based on the South African Truth and Reconciliation model.

The coming months will tell

whether Northern Ireland is ready to face the truth about its past

or whether the past is too present to contemplate.

The film will be broadcast on BBC One Northern Ireland next month.

We sent three commentators to review and discuss

whether such a commission could really happen here.

No-one's asking anyone to forget.

We try to get at the truth.

After that, people make up their own minds, make their own futures,

hopefully for the better.

Well, I suppose what I was looking at it from

my reporting perspective.

What interested me most in the film

were the plays offstage, if you like.

The big efforts to conceal truth.

Even when people think they have truth, they haven't.

I started watching it thinking, you know, this is a bit far-fetched.

You know? Where are we going here?

But I have to say that it certainly was compulsive viewing.

I had to watch it to the end.

As far as the whole issue of truth, et cetera,

it certainly showed the very dark underbelly.

Nobody came out with their hands clean.

Everyone was tarred with the brush, if you like,

of secrets and conspiracy.

I approach this from two perspectives.

One was, what would a truth commission look like?

What would it achieve? I wanted to see how accurate

or otherwise that might be. The second thing was that

I wanted to see what it was like as a drama.

And I have to confess, I was disappointed in both.

I think if you were going to base a truth commission on what

is in this, you wouldn't go down that road.

I would advise people to do something else.

Still bringing the truth to unbelievers, Henry?

Why am I not surprised to see you here?

I see you've befriended Gunman Of The Year 1990.

They tell me he's travelled a long way since then.

What do you hope an audience to take from The Truth Commissioner?

I think what they'll take from it is the complexity of the situation

up here.

You know, I think that's what drew me to the story, both the book

and then to Eoin's adaptation.

When you read David's book, Eoin,

what was it that grabbed you about it?

It was quite daring in its proposition.

It's as what we know to be a case, which is that, in fact,

it's more complicated than it seems,

people are not as obvious as they seem.

Given a chance,

people might do better than they appear to do in everyday life.

And it got us out of

the whataboutery, which is the curse of this place,

into something more interesting as an argument.

-He was only a kid.

-He was there.

And all his people are dead. He can accept responsibility

and go back to the States as if nothing had happened.

Neither you nor I can do that.

While I don't think the truth commission as set out in this

film is what a truth process will look like,

if it ever comes to that point... I think Park

talked about in the novel -

pre-learned vague statements of regret.

And I think, by and large, that's what we saw in the film.

I was a soldier fighting in a war.

At that time I felt the victim represented a legitimate

target in that war.

The simple, "Tell me the truth or not at all,"

isn't going to happen.

Absolutely, it's so much more and so much more complex,

it isn't just truth, it's about understanding,

it's about justice, it's about so much more.

People sharing futures and all of that.

I think we will not get to further information or further

explanation or truth, if you want to call it that,

while there is still

the possibility within the process of people being investigated.

So until we get over that jump, I think we're

a million miles away from a truth commission.

And who speaks for the victims and the rest?

Well, I think that's the thing, I think

that's the thing that maybe I didn't really

get enough of in this, in a way.

That would be regrettable if those voices weren't heard.

-How are you going to survive these people?

-They don't look so bad.

Don't go lifting stones, unless you know what's underneath them.

-Is that a message?

-Yes.

Unless you still want to be here in 2020, narrow the brief.

Roger, we know you, having played political figures before,

The Thick Of It, you were in Michael Frayn's Democracy...

But when you are bringing it to a process that is still happening,

does that give you an extra charge as an actor?

Well, it's not something that you're necessarily aware of

when you're shooting a scene

but all the time, you're kind of...

I'm aware of it in my head.

I think the telling of this story

and the telling of many stories about Northern Ireland, that may be

one of the ways in which the truth

or the various truths will be aired.

Was this your idea?

I've been instructed to protect you to make sure the right

things are said.

-You mean you're protecting yourself...

-Francis...

Keep your voice down.

It feels that it's a very grown-up, political drama.

As an actor and as someone from here,

is that the kind of Belfast that you want reflected further afield?

I think it's important to remember that it's fiction

and so this is a what-if scenario.

So what if hawks did get in with the peacemakers and the doves?

What if there was someone in there who was deliberately trying

to undermine the whole process?

You're not planning some kind of a putsch, are you, Johnny?

All I'm trying to do is to keep your name out of it.

You cannot appear before that commission.

Just admitting you were there would be the end of you.

The end of all of us.

There are people still alive for whom the Troubles were very real.

Did you feel an added pressure because of this, Eoin?

Yeah, we did.

Because again,

the question as to what closure is is very key to the book.

I mean, is closure a nonsense?

The idea of it, is it an illusion?

Or is it something that we should strive to give people?

And there are people out there who are suffering.

The book isn't about them in particular

but there's no doubt that we try to acknowledge their existence

and answer some of the questions as to...how can we proceed?

I deeply regret the pain and suffering caused to his family.

What's good about this, at the very least, is it shows on screen

what it could look like

and it starts the debate as to what it should or shouldn't look like.

And that's a very, very valuable and very,

very topical point of departure.

I think the big conversation that needs to be had is what is

realistically achievable but also an honesty about what is not doable.

I used the term recently that it's time to stop lying about the truth

and what I mean is it's time to be more honest about what is disclosed.

So I think the film, in all of its drama,

has possibly delivered an ugly truth.

That what people are looking for is just not achievable.

Yeah, and I think

what a commission of this kind will do is open things up in a way

that hasn't been done before,

it is to be hoped, but it certainly won't bring anything to an end.

Have you anything else to add?

No.

Thank you.

You don't usually get science on The Arts Show

but an exhibition of extraordinary images opened in Derry this month,

as part of the Northern Ireland Science Festival.

The Royal Photographic Society's

International Images For Science exhibition

celebrates the interplay between art and science.

Many of these photos provide a fascinating glimpse into our world

as we rarely see it, producing unlikely works of art.

What we're looking at here is actually a section through

the stem of a palm plant

and this is where water is transported up through

the stems towards the leaves.

Science provides a quite astonishing wealth of

subject matter for photography.

What we have here is a photograph of some soap bubbles

and the colours come from interference patterns through

the different thicknesses of the soap bubble

and it forms a beautiful array of colour.

Anyone can look at a great picture and think,

"Wow, I wonder what that is."

Here we have a piece of polystyrene that is seen through

a scanning electron microscope and this was made by freezing

the sample and then breaking it so it forms a very sharp edge.

So you can see all the small pockets of air.

A very wide range of people have taken the pictures that we see here.

They range from schoolchildren through to senior researchers

working with very expensive equipment in very,

very expensive labs.

The only exhibitor from Northern Ireland is bioscientist

Dr Steven Lowry.

This is a thin section of a hen's tongue,

which has been stained to show up blood vessels

and then additional colours added by using polarising and gypsum filters.

I've been collecting old microscope slides for quite a long time now

and this was among the slides which

I've brought in as part of my collection.

I used to take photographs for a living,

I now take them for pleasure.

Some very common household objects can produce amazing photographs.

Substances like sugar, which are in pure crystalline form,

can produce really interesting shapes and structures

when you look at them under the microscope.

When wine is stored,

tiny little crystals of potassium bitartrate form in the wine

and these produce lovely images.

One of the foliage plants which you may have in the garden is

a thing called Elaeagnus.

And if you look closely at the leaves of the plant,

you'll see tiny little silver hairs

and these produce amazing patterns when you look at them

under the microscope.

It's a celebration of the way photography

and science work together...

..as works of art.

They have a beauty, they engage,

they capture your imagination and your sight even without

knowing anything necessarily about why they were created.

Writing a black comedy about a disaffected East Belfast Loyalist

who believes that his five-week old granddaughter is Gerry Adams,

is trademark David Ireland humour.

Stephen Rea plays Eric Miller in Cyprus Avenue

and takes one man's identity crisis to the limits.

Aren't you the best baby in Belfast? Aren't you?

The best wee baby in the whole of Belfast.

Well, we don't know that.

-What?

-It's not very scientific.

-What are you talking about?

We don't know that this is the best baby in Belfast.

There might be better babies.

What way is that talk about your own granddaughter - "better babies"?

The central idea of the play - about this man, Eric Miller,

who thinks that...

He's positive his granddaughter looks like Gerry Adams

and then that she IS Gerry Adams.

It's an incredible kind of potent,

kind of extraordinary, imaginative and mad idea.

This baby is the most gorgeous, cutest baby in the whole wide world.

-I doubt it.

-What?

-Nothing.

I think David is one of the...

Is emerging as one of the finest writers in the English language.

And that's a big thing to say but I think he's extraordinary

and he does this extraordinary mixture of kind of high humour,

very, very black humour that he is becoming known for.

What is wrong with you? What is actually wrong with you?

-Mum, he's just joking.

-I'm not.

-He's not joking.

-I'm really not.

I can't write a normal play.

I've tried to and every time I try to write a normal play

it always blows up in my face, so...

I seem to be drawn to ideas that

other people consider bizarre.

-So in what way did... Her name again?

-Mary Mae.

In what way did Mary Mae, your granddaughter,

in what way did she,

could she closely resemble a man 60 years her senior?

-Round about the eyes.

-Her eyes?

Have you ever heard the expression, "Fenian eyes"?

No.

Very Fenian-looking, especially round the eyes.

There is this fundamental question about what it is like to be

a Protestant in the post-Troubles Northern Ireland.

Is that what you're getting at with this play?

I think in a lot of Irish fiction and drama,

the Loyalist case or the Loyalist identity is something that is

not taken, you know, very seriously.

Not that this play particularly takes it seriously

but it's very complicated, you know,

and I wanted to write a play that would reflect that.

-Are you familiar with the song When Irish Eyes Are Smiling?

-No.

# When Irish eyes are smiling

# Sure, the world smiles with them too... #

They have all the songs. Our songs are pitiful alongside theirs.

Most rebel songs are sentimental and self-serving but not that one,

that one is true.

A Protestant's eyes never smile

unless it's absolutely necessary.

But Irish eyes are forever smiling.

That's how you tell the difference.

The Irish smile as they kill and, as they destroy, they sing.

MUSIC: Cyprus Avenue by Van Morrison

# Well, I'm caught one more time

# Up on Cyprus Avenue... #

People who know Cyprus Avenue know it's a very well-heeled, tree-lined

middle-class boulevard.

It's not the place that you would immediately associate with

dysfunctional Loyalism.

He's taking this relatively middle-class man,

a Protestant, obviously, but a middle-class man who,

at this moment in his life, goes into some kind of psychosis

and as a result of that, the victims of his self-loathing

are his closest family, all of whom are women.

You never had any interest in babies anyway.

-Even when you were born, he didn't care.

-That's not true, is it Dad?

Oh, that is true.

When you were born I didn't understand what all the fuss

was about.

-I didn't really get you.

-Daddy!

-I like you now.

I started liking you from you were about 12.

That is the atrocity, really, that the history and the trauma

of his past and the past around him has turned him in on his own future.

Ten years ago I was in London, so I was.

The centre of the Empire.

And it felt like there were more Irish there than there

were in Ireland.

English voices, Cockney voices calling themselves Irish.

You've no idea what that does to a Unionist mind like mine.

I've been writing this play for four years, I started writing

it four years ago, so it's hard to believe it's actually going ahead.

I thought that it would never actually get produced.

But then The Abbey and The Royal Court take it

and then you get Stephen Rea in the lead role.

Yeah, well, I wrote it for Stephen before I knew him

and I thought, "There's no way he would ever do it."

In line with the government requirements,

Mr Adams' voice is replaced by that of an actor.

Does Stephen's own actual backstory,

including the fact that he voiced

Gerry Adams' words during the broadcasting ban,

add a historical frisson to him playing this part?

I knew he'd understand the depth and the humour of it.

Or he'd find the depth in it, whereas other actors might struggle

because it might seem like a flippant or superficial play.

But it's funny because other people have mentioned the broadcasting ban

and I knew that Stephen had voiced Gerry Adams

but I didn't realise everybody else knew that.

I thought that was a little nugget of information that

only I knew. But he wasn't the only actor, there was

a lot of actors who voiced Gerry Adams.

There's also a reference to Interview With The Vampire as well.

Why aren't there Protestant vampires?

Yeah, where are all the Protestant vampires?

Yeah, when will our stories be told?

# If you're Irish

# Come into the parlour

# There's a welcome there for you

# If your name is Timothy or Pat

# So long as you're not a Protestant

# There's a welcome on the mat... #

-Has Gerry Adams been invited to see the play?

-I don't know.

I think if The Abbey's lawyers were here...

they would instruct me not to answer that question.

I don't think... The fact that it's Gerry Adams...

I think when a lot of people heard I was writing this they think,

"Oh, it's a play about Gerry Adams."

Gerry Adams is just the object of this character's obsession,

it's really got very little to do with the real Gerry Adams.

Because I don't know the real Gerry Adams.

-Not yet.

-Not yet, who knows? Maybe we'll become friends through this.

# We'll sing you a song We'll make a fuss

# We'll blow up a building or maybe a bus

# If you're Irish this is the place for you. #

The Survivalist is the BAFTA-nominated debut feature film

from Northern Irish writer-director Stephen Fingleton.

Starring Belfast actor Martin McCann,

it was shot entirely on location in Northern Ireland and has been

described as Mad Max in the countryside.

Its post-apocalyptic bleakness has garnered international acclaim,

gaining a fan in none other than Robert De Niro,

who screened it at his Tribeca Film Festival

in New York City.

The film was released earlier this month. We met up with its creator.

The world of the film is very unusual.

It's set in a time after society seems to have collapsed

but the natural environment, the ecology,

the forest in which the film is set is thriving.

And this is very unusual. Typically in post-event films,

you're seeing wastelands, desert and things like this.

This is the reverse.

The environment is getting along fine,

there's just a lot less people.

I wanted to show a world where our kind of social norms

no longer applied

and people are essentially depicted almost like animals.

Surely you can spare something.

There's more than enough.

That's what THEY all thought.

The film, essentially, is a suspense movie about these three

characters and, because of the nature of the environment

they're in, you know they've all killed to survive.

They've done whatever it takes. So whatever transactions occur,

whatever conversations or physical encounters,

it's just the surface.

Beneath it, there's a range of violence they're capable of,

which makes it very, very tense.

You never know what a character's going to do next.

FLOORBOARDS CREAK

HEAVY BREATHING

The script made it onto the Hollywood blacklist,

which is a semi-official list of scripts that have been

voted on by executives, producers

and other individuals.

And it's basically an informal way of saying,

"What have you read this year that you really liked?"

And it's quite unusual for a small script written by a Northern Irish

writer to make it onto something like that.

Particularly as it's a very small story.

You've got a lot of very, very, very big films.

The film my script was jointly ranked with was

made into a movie with Johnny Depp.

She likes you.

When I started working with the actors,

I completely changed the script because, ultimately,

I don't tell the story, my actors tell the story

and I need to make sure they're telling the story in their voice

because that's what's going to be believable.

We could clear more land.

-More hands to manage it.

-I've managed so far.

You've been lucky.

It wasn't luck.

I knew from the very beginning that, in the first 15 minutes of

the film, there would be no dialogue because it was a single character.

That kind of set the tone.

If there's no dialogue, it's all about sound.

And we spent a huge amount of time in postproduction

completely recreating the sound.

Almost everything in the film has been re-recorded,

so we can control everything. The wind,

to the creaking of the steps, to the rattle on a handle and, although

you mightn't realise that watching it, it has a great effect on you.

Milja has an interest in music and musical notes and tones.

She plays with glass,

she uses a fork to create kind of a tuning sound.

FORK TWANGS

The reason that came about into the film was,

first of all, my sound designer wanted those elements within

the story to remind the audience of the absence of score.

But secondly, there's a backstory reason.

When I talked to Mia about her character,

we agreed that her father was a composer

and she will never be able to do what he did

but she's interested by the idea of music.

And so that's the reason her character does that.

Now, the audience doesn't need to know that

but you feel she's doing it for a reason.

FORK TWANGS

Well, it's a really exciting time if you're a new director

because there's a lot of opportunities if you make

what is considered to be like one good film, even if it's small,

you'll have a lot of people knocking on your door

and I've been fortunate enough to have one particularly great

company come to me and I'm working on quite a big film to write and

direct for them, which would be for a kind of mainstream audience.

The Survivalist will probably be most seen on VOD platforms

like iTunes and Google Play when it's released.

But this film is something that will be in every cinema.

The thing I love about movies is it's art meets commerce.

If I wanted to have complete control, I would write novels.

So I enjoy that challenge and I love that other people can help

bring expertise and show you new ways of finding stories because

I get very bored stuck in my head

and I love making something that's more collective.

I really get a lot of energy from that.

-HIGH-PITCHED TONE

-Shut the door.

Well, that's almost all we have time for on The Arts Show for this month.

You can keep up-to-date, though,

with arts coverage on BBC Radio Ulster's The Arts Show,

Tuesdays to Fridays at half past six.

We leave you tonight with some local live music. David Lyttle

has built up a high profile in the world of jazz.

He's been nominated for a MOBO award,

Rolling Stone Magazine glowingly reviewed his 2015 album, Faces,

he's currently moving on music's artist in residence at the MAC

and he goes on tour with his trio in April. Here's a sneak preview.

Goodnight.