The creators of the powerful and deeply affecting theatre piece, Faultline, share with Peter Dunne the electric thrill, and the weight of responsibility which come along with making a show based around true, and emotionally affecting, events.

Photograph by Pat Redmond.

We are standing in the hallway of a building on Parnell Square. It’s a chilly night. There is the palpable buzz of excitement that usually accompanies being an audience member for a show created by ANU. The smiling woman on the ticket desk receives a notification on her phone. It’s time.

Our already small group is divided. My group is directed to make our way down the staircase leading off from the hallway and down into the basement. As we do so, an out-of-breath, excited young man apologises as he pushes through our group to run ahead. It takes a second to notice he is dressed differently to us, his fashion decidedly ‘80s. He knocks rapidly on the big metal door at the end of the staircase. It swings open. Then he, and we, are ushered into Faultline.

Faultline is based on a tumultuous period in time for the LGBT+ community. 1982 saw high profile investigations into the murders of gay men where the police used hurtful and controversial tactics to interview/interrogate over 1,500 people in our community, spreading a noxious cloud of fear from which people fled the country to escape - an exodus out of Ireland to London and other big cities where anonymity could be regained.

Faultline plunges audience members into deep wells of character and story in quick succession; one moment we are standing outside a nightclub as a young woman offers us a swig from her hip flask, next we witness a dance/fight/flirtation between two men in a public bathroom before finding ourselves sitting in the offices of Tel-A-Friend while the men who answer the phones argue. It’s a whirlwind, but with a calmness in the centre. It is also deeply affecting.

ANU are well known for their intricate and immersive theatrical pieces which feature performers in close proximity to their audiences, sometimes interacting with them, addressing them directly. The experience can be at times intimidating, at times beautiful and sometimes hilarious, what it’s not is forgettable.

Now for Faultline’s origin story – a few years ago, Louise Lowe, the show’s director, had been working with the second year students of The Lir Academy, helping them to devise short theatrical pieces. For this particular performance, the students had to develop a piece based around 50 years of change in Dublin. Two of the students, Matthew Malone and Domhnall Herdman, decided to focus on the progress of the LGBT+ community. As Matthew explains, “We landed on the tense toxic situation for gay people in the ‘70s and ‘80s, coming up to the ‘90s.” They researched the topic intensely in order to create an affecting ten-minute piece about two characters who worked in Tel-A-Friend in 1982.

Watching the piece, Louise became enamoured with the level of compassion and the detail involved. Feeling that it was the seed for a larger show, she spoke with ANU’s creative producer, Lynnette Moran.

Over the next few years, the creatives met with people such as Tonie Walsh, the curator of the Irish Queer Archive (and co-founder of GCN) and Sandra Collins in the National Library. Louise shared, “We spoke to people who had been change-makers or who were instrumental in the gay rights movement at the time. One thing that discovered in the middle of it was that Ireland still has no hate crime legislation. It’s one of those things where you think we’ve arrived as a nation and as a culture, that we’re on the right track, but then you realise we’re not as far as we need to be in terms of human rights and the care we should be giving each other.”

With such a wealth of possible story, is there concern about what is omitted as much as included. “Yes,” Louise responds, “You ask yourself - ‘are we telling the right part, are we honouring the right people’”. The overwhelming response from audience members is - “Yes”. Many have shared how deeply affected they have been by the experience. Louise told about one of the performers having a one-to-one moment with an audience member where his character spoke about being taken in by the police in the aftermath of the murder of Charles Self, one of the multitude of gay men coldly and callously harassed by the authorities.

“Which station were you taken to?” asked the audience member.

“Bridewell,” the performer replied.

“I was taken to Pearse Street,” said the audience member, before telling his own experience.

“That conversation”, Louise expressed, “that communion between the performer and the audience member, becomes so much more important than any play ever could be. Similarly, in another moment, a much older woman just rubbed the performer’s back the whole time he was speaking.”

Louise remained centred during the process - “I had to remind myself in the making of it that this isn’t a documentary, it’s a piece of art. But in making that art you want to stay as close to the forensic findings that you have access to that provides so much information and so much texture about those people and their lives. Creating this show,” she said, (you could hear the smile in her voice), “has been an honour.”

The folk who planted the seed, Matthew and Domhnall, are in the show, their terrific performances in the scene set in the Tel-A-Friend offices can be attributed to the years these characters have lived inside their heads. Matthew described how strange yet invigorating it is to perform in such an up-close-and-personal style with audiences. At the show attended, one woman helped man the phone lines, listening to hear if the caller would find the heart to speak. “The audience keeps it fresh because they are so different. They really forget that you’re an actor.”

I asked Matthew if he had spoken to anyone who had a personal experience of those times. “We had a brunch meeting with a lot of people who lived through that era who would have been involved in The Phoenix and the Hirschfeld Centre.” Katherine O’Donnell was one of those change-makers in attendance. Although Katherine is much younger than the time the show was set in, she was very involved in essential activism throughout the years. Matthew continued, “I had this amazing conversation with her. She shared fabulous stories, stories about the lesbian perspective and about those times. It wasn’t lost on me what all those activists had done for us. As we were saying goodbye, said, ‘I just wanted to say thank you for what you and your peers have done. I was born in 1993 when homosexuality was decriminalised.

“‘You were born in 1993? Wow,’ she said. She just paused. And said, ‘We dreamed of you.’

I started to well up.

She said, ‘We had such fun dreaming of you.’”

‘Faultline’ is an ANU and Gate Theatre Co-Production. The show runs until December 1. Tickets are limited but available. Visit www.gatetheatre.ie for more details.