When the phone rings, the fight is on

Michael Collins pictured with the Kilcullen Drama Group cast of 'Two for a Girl'.

When the mobile phone that is the other 'performer' in Michael Collins's presentation of his one-man play 'Mobile' rings for the second time, he doesn't answer it, writes Brian Byrne. When it stops ringing, he lets the silence hang for several seconds.

"If I can hear nothing but perhaps a chair scraping, then I know I have my audience," he says.

And he did have them during the recent Kilcullen performance of his play about traveller feud fighting. In the short few minutes he had been on stage, those watching and listening had become totally absorbed in his story.

That's what Michael, who became nationally famous during the '90s for his portrayal of the traveller Blackie Connors in 'Glenroe', is: a storyteller.



And in the telling of the story about a traveller being pulled into a family 'honour' fight over something in which he'd had no involvement, he also weaves many other elements of traveller life and culture. At the end, we not only have a very clear understanding of what the lone man on the stage is feeling, but we also feel we know the rest of his family, close and extended. And what makes him, and them, tick.

'Mobile' is the middle play of a trilogy of one-acts which Michael Collins has written, based on his own experiences of growing up in the travelling community. The first, 'A Culture Thing, or Is It?', is portrayed from a child's view, offering a history of travellers from the 1960s up to today.

"When I was young, the traditional trades like tinsmithing were still there, and we used to live in the wagons," he remembers. "We went from there to the trailers, from the trailers to the huts, and from the hut to the house. Because it is seen through the eyes of a child, it is a lovely way of presenting a very emotional story, through comedy."

'Mobile' has comedy, too. But it is gritty, and tough, and sad as the storyteller deals with his angst after being told to fight his first cousin, his best friend, his brother-in-law.

"I wrote it because I've always been worried about the whole feud fighting thing, and the way it is portrayed by the media. Settled people believe that it is simply a cultural thing, but I wanted to show how it affects travellers themselves, that it tears families apart."

In the show, Michael doesn't let anyone off the hook: the travellers themselves, the settled people and their beliefs, and the gardai who just don't want to get involved. His character has a real passion about the fighting being wrong, and yet he's torn by the tradition that binds him to it.

"I'm always passionate about my work. But I do remember those kind of incidents. And I base the other character, the one that I'm supposed to fight, on my best friend Jimmy. We're married to two sisters, I'm his son's godfather, we're drinking buddies and work mates. In order to get the realism I think of him. And, of course, I'd never go out to fight him; he's my best friend."

But in that real life from which he draws his writing and his performances, the pressure is still on, now with modern day additions like making movies of the fights and putting them on YouTube. Michael believes the situation is changing, but not fast enough. And sometimes, not for the right reasons.

"There are some travellers who just won't get involved, and that will grow. But then there's the fact that, in these times, it doesn't take a big man to pull a trigger, and feuding can mean someone coming to your home and shooting you. So that's helping to put a stop to the fighting, but in the wrong way."

The reaction of his own people to 'Mobile' has always been positive, he says. "The first time I did it in front of travellers I was terrified. Not because I was afraid anyone would come up and give me a box, but because I was performing it in front of my family, my cousins, my friends.

"But what they say always is that I'm showing things right. That's how it is. And though they sometimes laugh at the parts when I'm talking about the fighting, I know that that is a nervous reaction to the truth."

His third piece, 'Worlds Apart, Same Difference', is with another actor, and reflects on what can happen when traveller and black cultures meet, in compounding confusion. After last week's performance in Kilcullen, there's an immediate audience waiting for that particular show to come to the boards of the Town Hall Theatre.

(This article was originally published on the Kilcullen page of the Kildare Nationalist.)