To the author’s intention be true

“IN ANY production, they have to be true to the author’s intention and it has to be done with great truth and honesty. If it’s not, if those actors don’t believe they are the characters in the story, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I or the audience will believe it either. They have to be locked into the character and the story and bring us in.”
Anna Walker, who adjudicated at the All-Ireland One Act Finals drama festival held in Ennis at the weekend, outlines the first condition she applies to appraising a drama group’s performance. 
“My role is to be helpful, to be informative, especially when groups are going through the festivals,” said the Dubliner, who is a full-time drama teacher, adjudicator and drama examiner for the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Passionate about acting and articulate about the nuances of drama adjudication, it’s clear that providing constructive feedback is an integral part of her job.
“I don’t have a problem relating to groups the flaws I might find in their production,” she says. “It’s how you do it; how you engage with them. There are two adjudications during festivals. The first is the stage adjudication. That is more of an overview of what the audience and I saw on the night.
“But if someone in the play hasn’t studied their character in detail, I’m not going to say that on the stage. When it comes to the private adjudication, you can say it to the actor and the director. Gentle, creative guidance is the way I see it.”
Ms Walker knows what it’s like to give and receive feedback. She joined the Dublin drama group, the Olivian Players in her late teens and travelled around the country on the amateur drama circuit. Among her favourite roles were the titular heroine in Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and the female parts in Jim Cartwright’s Two, for which she won a best actress All-Ireland title. She remembers those days fondly but not through the haze of nostalgia.
“You’re coming home from a festival after some adjudicator has torn strips out of you,” she laughed. “And you’re wondering to yourself: ‘Why in the name of God do you do this? What are you lacking?’ I remember asking myself that question. You’d be driving home…thinking, ‘There’s something wrong with me that I need this. What do I lack in my life?’ Of course, there’s nothing. It gives so much to your life.”
Ms Walker then began to act professionally with Lane Productions and on screen in Saturday for RTÉ and in the film Work of God. Her love of acting stems from her days at speech and drama. Her parents sent her to class at the age of 10, not because of her thespian tendencies but in the hope that it might boost her confidence.
“I was the eldest of four children and I didn’t speak outside the home,” she explained. “I sat in the class for four years, just taking everything in. And then, one day, a light bulb went on in my brain when I saw that, through becoming somebody else, by taking on another character, I was no longer me and, therefore, no longer embarrassed or too shy to do anything.” 
In 2007, she worked as a drama facilitator with female inmates in Mountjoy for three months. “We did vocal exercises and talked about their lives. I decided we should try to pull a play out of this and we did, through the evaluation and discussion of the different topics that came up.” Together, they devised and wrote a one-act play called Choices.
While teaching drama at dancing feises, Ms Walker became intrigued by the world of “the fake tans, the hair, the make-up”. Sensing a play, she started researching the subject with actress Orla de Burca and encountered a competitor whose mother was a drug addict. It inspired Ms Walker and de Burca to write Rince for Company Feastday, which they are now editing. Set in 1981, the play is “about Irish dancing and drug taking and what happens when the two worlds collide”.
Last year, she adjudicated at the Claremorris three-act drama festival when the Ennis Players performed The Playboy of the Western World. That production is still vivid and underlines the prestige of her role at the recent finals.
“There was one particular scene I’ll never forget in which the director, Geraldine Greene, had all the girls come out in different shades of pastel blues and greens – it was so effective on stage,” she said. “That is one of the high points of all the adjudication I’ve done. So to be asked by a group of such quality to adjudicate at the All-Ireland has been monumental for me.”
Speaking during the festival, it’s clear the experience of the weekend left a deep impression on her. “Maybe it’s to do with being in the west or to do with all the people of Ennis but I’m walking up and down the street and people are saying to me ‘Well done’ or ‘I agreed about this’ or ‘I didn’t agree about that’ and they want to stop and have a chat and, suddenly, for a long weekend, I feel part of something myself. The inclusivity has just been amazing.
“When you go through the town, all the artwork, all the beautiful dark posters, the masks – it just shines out. And it gives such a festive air to the town. The organisation has been amazing. It’s been done with great grace and dignity.”
She leaves Ennis with a sense of being artistically ambushed by the performances. “I think my abiding memories are moments in productions,” Ms Walker said. “There have been moments when I’ve been mugged and assaulted by the clamour on the stage. I think that’s what drama is all about.”