Finding roots of Irish stage
Lourenco researched “The Mai” and another one of Carr’s plays and found similarities between them. Lourenco believes that Carr wrote the plays as a means to confront her own mother’s early passing.
With an academic focus on Irish drama, Lourenco has been involved with numerous Irish plays over the years. She asserts that characters and situations have a greater familiarity to her personally in a way that American or British plays do not. Only Irish plays show the “demented” nature of people and the machinations they go through to conceal it.
Lourenco says that Irish plays also rely a lot on imagery from mythology, and they presuppose that the audience will be familiar with various Greek, Roman and Irish gods. In fact, in “The Mai”, Carr invents her own myth about how a particular lake was formed.
Lourenco is almost completely Irish on both sides of her family. Growing up, she participated in all things Irish — including step lessons and Irish festivals in greater Philadelphia. She explained that sometimes she felt somewhat isolated in a very Irish world.
Involvement dates to 2007
In 2007, Lourenco got involved with AFD for the first time as part of the production team for “Dancing at Lughnasa.” Since then, she has worked on a variety of shows and has served on the board.
Although she has performed quite a bit with many different theaters, it was only last year when she made her first appearance on AFD’s stage, in “Oliver.”
She definitely considers AFD her “community-theater home.”
Monologues offer challenges
Lourenco says one of the most challenging aspects of her role as Millie is the fact that she has 11 monologues. Through them, Millie has to share her mother’s story from her own perspective. It is also difficult to be on stage for nearly the duration of the show.
Without a chance to move or stretch backstage, this makes it tricky at times to conjure up the energy for the next monologue. She also has to work with a live cellist on stage during those monologues. This poses the challenge of finding the right timing with the music (which was composed specifically for this production) without affecting the quality of the storytelling.
However, the biggest challenge for Lourenco is moving back and forth between the 16- and 30-year-old versions of her character — and at times she only has but a moment to make the transition.
Lourenco hopes the audience has a grittier appreciation of feminism given that this play takes place at a time when divorce was still not legal in Ireland. The play is set in 1979-1980.
For Lourenco, addressing feminism through theater is more about being realistic towards the real challenges women confront when they are denied their basic civil rights and not about fairytales of the perfect, utopian life that a “princess culture” tends to push.
The director’s view
Nancy Curran Willis is directing and Lourenco loves working with her. She says that Willis pushes the entire group to produce their best stuff. With a play as complex as this, given the difficulty of translating some of the Irish conventions for an American audience, “Nancy’s insight, experience, and devotion to craft make her uniquely qualified” to take this on. Knowing this put Lourenco more at ease even when the rehearsal process would get a bit chaotic.
To prepare for the role, Lourenco watched YouTube videos of Irish bards (seanachies or seanchie) to get a feel for traditional Irish story telling.
She just wanted to be sure she kept the stories fresh while being careful not to telegraph what was to follow. As for the Irish accent she must use for her role, Lourenco says that she is quite accustomed to speaking with the accent. She would put on the accent at home for fun growing up and once in a while, it shone through when family members got angry.
She also worked for a long time honing these skills for a variety of accents throughout her time in college and graduate school. Though she would have accepted the chance to play any of the roles, she says that Millie was the part she wanted to play the most. She does hope to have the chance to tackle some of the other characters should she have the opportunity to participate in future productions of this play.
Don’t miss your chance to see Arlington’s Lourenco in “The Mai.” It runs two weekends between Feb. 28 and March 2 as well as March 7 through 9.
Tickets are available online at www.afdtheatre.org or by calling 781-646-5922.
Please note: strong language is used in this play.
This profile was published Saturday, March 1, 2014.
