Since Maggie Went Away

11/03/2016

I received many messages of support for my play 'Since Maggie Went Away' and for me personally after the film 'Spotlight' won this year's Oscars for best film and best original screenplay. To all those who contacted me, I thank you for thinking of me.

The Academy Awards are unpredictable. It is not for me to judge whether the film deserved the biggest Hollywood prize. But I certainly applaud the accolade bestowed on The Boston Globe journalists who investigated and uncovered systematic abuse in the Catholic Church.

I saw 'Spotlight' in a small town in the west of Ireland last week, where I was taking a short break. "If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them," says one reporter in the film. I walked out of the cinema and realised that without Marty Baron, the then Jewish editor of The Globe, I probably would never have known that I have a brother who was severely abused by Christian Brothers at Artane's Catholic home for boys in Dublin. The Spotlight journalists set the wheels in motion.

In a real-life twist, I discovered my family's secret in 2010 during an investigation of the Dutch Catholic Church while working at the Netherlands' world service radio. One of the award-winning journalists on the case, Robert Chesal (also Jewish), was my colleague.

In an article I wrote in 2013 about my brother and mother (published in the Netherlands and in Ireland), I loved NRC Handelsblad's choice of title: 'Die voetstappen in de nacht', or Those Footsteps in the Night. My brother sleeps each night with the light on, he told me. Sometimes he leaves the TV on, too. "I keep hearing the footsteps, like. The footsteps. The footsteps coming for me in the dark." Some fifty years after the abuse, he relives it night after night.

At the end of the article, I write, "I used to sing traditional Irish music. When I feel like singing now, I can’t sing an Irish song, not for the moment. It seems too big a lie."

One evening during my recent trip to Ireland, I was driving back from the pub and got hopelessly lost in a maze of country lanes. I stepped out of the car to see if I could find any bigger road; but the night was pitch- and pitch-black, and I couldn't see a thing in front of me. I stood there for a while, alone on a country road. The darkness of the night brought me back to my childhood, crossing fields with a flashlight after visiting aunts. I felt intensely happy. Back in the car, I tuned into the Irish-language Raidió na Gaeltachta, and pledged to learn Róisín Dubh, a difficult song to master. It had been a while.

I feel indebted to the Spotlight journalists. Their work is actually the start of my story. As soon as I finish other writing assignments, I will continue looking for a way to bring 'Since Maggie Went Away' to Ireland and the US. The commission of inquiry into Irish mother-and-baby homes – whose terms include high mortality rates, mass graves and illegal adoptions – is underway. The climate is right. Boston here we come.

Spotlight on Maggie...

04/02/2016

Review of Koninklijke Schouwburg performance from Belgian columnist, writer and blogger Kate Events:
https://katevents.wordpress.com/2015/11/25/theatre-review-since-maggie-went-away-by-jacqueline-nolan/

“Since Maggie went away” is written by writer-journalist Jacqueline Nolan. The play is based on personal experiences and recently uncovered family history. Being familiar with press reports on its ...

29/10/2015

A video note from the writer and director on upcoming run with STET Theatre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gipc69OgcOU

29/10/2015

"Lilting with Irish humour...It's emotional, will give you goose pimples from head to toe and weigh on your soul." ★★★★ Broadway Baby – Lydia Novak

Hope to welcome you to Since Maggie Went Away's 3rd and special run at the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague on 23rd and 24th November! On the 24th there will be a discussion with actress and writer Jacqueline Nolan and a local priest. Book now through STET.

The English Theatre promotes and produces preferentially English Theatre, a.o. in the Dutch The Hague area.

04/09/2015

Fresh from Edinburgh, the journey goes on: 'Since Maggie Went Away' is heading to The Hague! Director Lora Mander and myself will be working with STET Theatre to put on two performances in the Koninklijke Schouwburg on 23 and 24 November. Watch this space...

22/08/2015

More Four: The Skinny, Scotland's "Independent Culture Journalism" journal gives 'Since Maggie Went Away' four stars.

In our show, directed by Lora Randolph Mander (Orange Tea Theatre), the character of Eleanor revisits the mother-and-baby home where Maggie gives birth as an u***d mother in 1949; Eleanor points to the grey, grim building and says, "The locals knew this place as the Orphanage." Later, she quotes a headline from the San Franscisco Examiner of 15 Nov 1949: "Irish Orphans Get New Home; True Fairy Story" (this is a real quote, I researched the archives, located at Berkeley University).

I realise – reading the reviews, and, as Maggie gets longlisted for Amnesty's Freedom of Expression Award – that my irony is a bit confusing, or was underplayed. These orphans' mothers were locked up behind the scenes (those who didn't die in childbirth) doing forced labour for several years (even though the nuns received state funding), while their children were part of a baby export trade.

http://www.theskinny.co.uk/festivals/edinburgh-fringe/theatre/echoes-since-maggie-went-away-acts-of-redemption-review

The Skinny reviews monologue-focused theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe 2015, including Henry Naylor's Echoes, Since Maggie Went Away and Acts of Redemption.

18/08/2015

MAGGIE AND THE FLYER-ING SCOTSMAN

"Cannae go to tha'! No way; ach, I'm a Scot!" the tall, black-bearded man bellowed with William Wallace-y, he-man accentuation.

Lora, our director, had tried to hand him a flyer for our show 'Since Maggie Went Away' at the base of the stairs leading to the theatre venue – named Great Scots' Hall – in the Radisson Blu right in the heart of The Royal Mile.

Outside, artists, young and old (I wasn't the only foolish 50-year-old) were accosting passing tourists to lure them into their show – flyering. A new verb, my sister remarked when she came to see us. A Fringe verb.

Inside, where we were waiting to set up – hang the backdrop, put props in place, do a quick sound check – throngs of people rushed around; different queues, different shows.

The proud Scot brushed past us. I don't get it. What did my mother, Maggie, ever do to offend him or any of the descendants of the Kingdom of Alba? Which act, embedded in both our troubled histories, warrants this brusque dismissal? True, there's a bit of academic banter over whether the Irish Celts overran the Picts at Dal Riada, or visa versa, in the ninth century....is that his problem?

Another Scot, who had become irate a day earlier outside on the Mile, comes to mind. I get it!

"No!" I plead with him through the crowd, my voice unintentionally rising to a Scottish higher-register, I'm-one-of-you 'naw', "It's not her! This play is not about Maggie Thatcher."

During a short holiday in July in Deia (old, stone village in Mallorca, and old haunt of artists and writers), friends of mine were discussing Northern Ireland, and Margaret Thatcher's stance on the 1981 hunger strikers, who were demanding political status, came up. The almost-18-year-old son of one of my friends asked me what I thought Thatcher could have done (besides her "Crime is crime is crime" response) in her position? I thought about it afterwards, and about my cousins who grew up in the north under apartheid conditions – how we used to visit them when I was a little girl before the barricades and the soldiers. Already there was a seed for a new play in my head.

There's still a journey left for this Maggie, my mother. Since she went away.

A lot of Maggie-ing to be done.

Edinburgh, I'll be back. Cannae resist...kind of got to like that flyer-ing...in a fringey sort of way.

16/08/2015

4****Review! Have unpacked the bags, back from Edinburgh. Was about to do something about the bags under my eyes...like a long sleep. But had to check if Broadway Baby's review was out yet. After The Scotsman describing Maggie's language as "lyrical humour", a Recommended from The Fringe, now 4 stars from Edinburgh's largest review publication ...
http://www.broadwaybaby.com/shows/since-maggie-went-away/708579

★★★★ Amid the discussion over the Irish Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill this year, Since Maggie Went Away could not come at a more relevant time. Based on true events, one-woman act Jacqueline Nolan narrates the story of abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland between 1952 and modern day.Dir…

03/08/2015

MAGGIE IS BLOWING A TOPICAL WIND....

I'm starting to pack my bags for Edinburgh. Hope I can fit all my props into the checked bag. Hope I can fit my winter wellies into my cabin luggage.

The journey started in February 2013 when an article I wrote about discovering I have a brother who was abused at a Catholic home was published in Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad – just days after Pope Benedict XVI resigned. It appeared later in The Irish Times, and, by chance, the editor chose my mother's birthday as the publication date. My mother had already died; a country cook all her life, she had stopped eating in the kitchen of her self-imposed atonement.

Some time after, I visited the mother-and-baby home at Castlepollard where my brother was born, stood in the little cemetery without gravestones, and the idea came to me that I was standing on a mass grave. I wrote and performed a monologue about this with Orange Tea Theatre; a couple of weeks before performance in June 2014, the story about the mass grass at Tuam (allegedly some 800 babies buried in a septic tank) made international headlines. Following the uproar in Ireland, the government has launched an inquiry into these mother-and-baby homes, and the terms include the high mortality rates.

Over the past year, I have developed the piece into a multi-character play, with dramaturgical wisdom from the director, Lora Mander. Now, as I treat the set backdrop with a fire retardant, push my props into my bag, a new topical peg follows me...

At the end of July, the Irish government announced the details of a new Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill, which will finally give some 50,000 adopted people (will operate retrospectively) a legal right to information about birth parents. Irish legislation and Constitution currently deny adoptees the right to access their birth certs (and medical history).

Many point out the flaws of the proposed legislation changes; but the time is ripe for change no matter what. I feel Maggie is wielding her power from wherever she may be. She was always a force to be reckoned with. The secret is out...Since Maggie Went Away.

29/07/2015

Lora Mander, the director, and I would really like to thank all those who contributed to the crowdfunding campaign, as well as those who came to see the Amsterdam previews at Perdu.
THANK YOU ALL FOR HELPING TO GET MAGGIE TO EDINBURGH!
Crowdfunding contributors: Phil Mander, Nicola Chadwick, Jen Mander, Debbie Hall, Catie and Joe Dargue, Mike Wilcox, Ton Martens, Mariette Mulder, Emma Dingwall, Deb Debby Mulholland, Rob Kievit, Tao Yue Nick Garlick, Diem Wolff, Paul J. Redmond, Helen Donegan, Rod Benzeev, mball31, Carlos Lechner, Sandy Topzand, Wim Jansen and anonymous donors.

26/07/2015

Since Maggie Went Away

Written and performed by Jacqueline Nolan
Directed by Lora Mander

1949: Maggie, an Irish country girl, secretly gives birth to a baby boy and is forced to give him away. 2010: Her journalist daughter discovers a global story on abuse in the Catholic Church is also her family's narrative, and sets out to put flesh on the bones of a past hidden by church, state, media – and shame. A true story of atonement for the sins of others, softened by Irish humour.

Maggie is easing herself into old age. Then one day the letter comes. The letter from the baby who was taken from her 60 years earlier. They put pegs on her baby's head when he was ten. And they r***d him, and beat him senseless, and made him watch in posh rooms while they did it to other boys.

"'Since Maggie Went Away' started as a newspaper article I wrote in 2013 about discovering I have a brother who was abused in a Catholic institution. When I travelled back to the Catholic home where my mother had given birth, I was attracted to the cemetery situated in the grounds, but there on the neatly trimmed lawn – struck by the absence of gravestones – I felt I was standing on a bigger story." (The writer)

Some things you can't forgive....

Venue and dates:
theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall (Venue 53), 11 August, 3.05pm (50 mins)
theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39), 12-15 August, 12.15pm (55 mins)

23/07/2015