Wonderland journey for Dorian Gray

ALICE Coughlan’s desire to direct goes all the way back.

“I started when I was about five-years-old, playing an angel in a school nativity play,” she says. “I was mentally directing from a corner thinking ‘it could be better that way’. I was fascinated by drama and thought I wanted to be an actor until I was 17. Then I went to the Oxford School of Drama and discovered I was a director, that I was much more content on the other side.” 
Audiences can see the fruits of this decision for themselves when Ms Coughlan directs her own adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in a performance by Wonderland Productions at the Old Ground Hotel as part of the Ennis Book Club Festival next month.
Published in 1890, Dorian Gray explores the search for perpetual youth in a comedy of manners tinged with gothic overtones. In 2010, Dublin City Council selected Dorian Gray for Dublin: One City, One Book, a project encouraging everyone in the city to read the same book during the month of April, and the organisers approached Ms Coughlan about dramatising the novel. 
“It wasn’t that difficult,” she says of the experience. “It’s the only novel that Wilde wrote and he was really on his way to writing plays. He always thought that he was best at sitting characters down and getting them to talk to each other.
“Lots of the book is written in dialogue…it was a very straightforward idea, which was to take around 80% of the text out and make a play with what was left.”
The real challenge was how to stage Dorian Gray in a style that would engage the audience.
“You’ve failed if you just stand and tell the story because you haven’t made theatre,” Ms Coughlan insists.
“So, we do the narrative in all sorts of different ways. A good part of the show takes place in the audience. The actors wind through the audience as they go up to the corridors of Dorian’s house to the nasty attic. The opium quarter of London is all in the audience.”
This will be the company’s fourth national tour of the production and it’s no accident that, along the way, Wonderland has performed Dorian Gray in castles, country houses and restaurants or that it premiered this show in Bewley’s Tearooms.
Founded in 2003 by Ms Coughlan, taking theatre to the audience is a defining feature of the company, which balances classics like Gulliver’s Travels with new writing, including the director’s own script Life Shop Till You Drop and is resident at the Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray.
“This is something of a holy grail for me; how to get the best possible experience for an audience, to really involve them,” Ms Coughlan says. “I’ve always been interested in why I get bored. Sometimes, in more traditional staging, I don’t feel I’m being engaged or talked to; it’s happening in spite of me being there.”
The Spook Show set the tone for future productions. “Our first show was upstairs in a pub. Actors were crawling under the audience’s feet and tickling their toes because it was a black comedy-horror,” she explains.
“The actors say they can tell if the audience is bored by what they’re doing, so they up their game. Alan Stanford, stage and TV actor, came in when we started and told us that our nearest audience member might be nearer to you than your fellow actors.”
Ms Coughlan sees her director role as viewing the production from the audience’s perspective.
“My job is to be in the place of the audience and trying to work out for them what’s the best story or way of telling it. And, when they find it boring, to get right to the heart of the problem and change things.”
It’s a principle that Wonderland doesn’t just apply to its stage productions. Ms Coughlan is in the middle of directing her adaptation of James Joyce’s Dubliners for the 2012 Dublin: One City, One Book festival. Employing 21 actors, the aim is to create a self-guided audio walk – you listen on an MP3 player – of the historical locations featured in the classic short story collection.
“I’m living and breathing Dubliners at the moment,” Ms Coughlan laughs, adding that she is also one of the actors on the recording. “We’re trying to de-mystify James Joyce and rescue him from the academic world. I’ve slimmed the book right down to its central spine, to focus on the accessible parts of the story: the parts that work when someone is standing on a grey day with the wind blowing, still wanting to hear Joyce’s story in the right location.”
Apart from writing, adapting and directing for the stage, the 33-year-old has theatre qualifications from universities in the UK, US and Trinity College Dublin, is a script reader for the Abbey Theatre, teaches drama, translates texts from French and Italian, is artistic and company director of Wonderland and has worked extensively in opera, both in Ireland and internationally.
“My work in opera really informs my other work – Puccini and Mozart are amongst my biggest influences rather than writers,” she says and can point to directing Madama Butterfly and The Marriage of Figaro as evidence.
“I’ve learned far more about writing in theatre from them than I have from books. Because when you work in opera, your day involves rhythm, tempo, dynamics – all these things you find in music that you wouldn’t find in a theatre text.”
Wonderland’s performance at the Ennis Book Club Festival will mark new territory for the company.
“We’ve never actually done a lunchtime show before,” says Ms Coughlan. “People will be tune with literature at the festival so when they come to us they’ll be very warmed up for what we’re offering. I think Dorian Gray has very naturally found its place there.
“It’s the first time we’ve played County Clare. I hope that people come, that they really enjoy the story and that they go on a journey with us.”
Wonderland Productions perform The Picture of Dorian Gray on Sunday, March 4 in the Old Ground Hotel.