Teresa Deevy

Nolanger

Anyone know of this deceased Waterford writer? Seems to be highly rated in America but never heard of her in this country?

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/culture.cfm?cultureid=222

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/theater/08deevy.html

WonderWoman!

Nolanger wrote: »

Anyone know of this deceased Waterford writer? Seems to be highly rated in America but never heard of her in this country?

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/culture.cfm?cultureid=222

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/theater/08deevy.html

ever heard of or saw her before shes probably just born here and emigrated when she was a nipper

chelloveks

 
 

 
About the Playwright:
Teresa Deevy
 
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Temporal Powers
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Now Extended through
October. 9th!
 
Teresa Deevy (1894-1963)
by Heather J. Violanti

Teresa Deevy was born on January 21, 1894 at Landscape, her family’s home in Waterford. Nicknamed Tessa, she was the youngest of 13 children. Her father died when she was two, so Tessa formed an especially close bond with her mother. Mrs. Deevy fostered young Tessa’s imagination, encouraging her to make up stories about the people and things she saw about the house. Details were important--the way light fell across a door frame, the difference between an August morning and an October afternoon—all these made a difference. This stayed with Tessa throughout her writing life.

In 1913, Tessa enrolled at University College, Dublin. She wanted to become a teacher, but after a few months, she was struck by a mysterious illness. Her ears rang; she would suddenly get so dizzy so she couldn’t stand up; her head throbbed. Doctors eventually diagnosed her with Meniere’s disease, an incurable condition caused by fluid imbalance in the inner ear. Meniere’s can cause deafness, and by 1914, at the age of 20, Tessa had completely lost her hearing.

She was sent to London to study lip-reading. To practice, she went to the theater. Night after night, she sat in the front row, entranced. The plays of Shaw and Chekhov were her favorite. She admired their richly drawn characters, finely crafted dialogue, and serious themes. Long ago, her mother had encouraged her to write stories. Now Tessa knew how she wanted to tell them. She decided to become a playwright.

It was an unusual ambition. Tessa had no theatrical connections. As a woman and as a person who was deaf, she didn’t fit the then-typical image of a playwright. But she was undaunted. Tessa had a quiet genius for understanding the intricacies of the human heart. Her plays would show not only a distinct gift for dialogue, but an uncanny appreciation for meaning hidden between the lines. Years after her death, Tessa’s nephew Jack would recall her striking ability to read people’s thoughts even before they spoke them—a sixth sense perhaps heightened by her deafness.
In 1925, at age 31, Tessa finally felt ready to send her plays to the Abbey, Ireland’s national theater. They were rejected, but one reader had been particularly impressed. This was Lennox Robinson, the Abbey’s managing director and a playwright himself. (Mint audiences may remember his Is Life Worth Living? from 2009). He encouraged Tessa to keep writing.

In 1930, at Robinson’s urging, the Abbey accepted Tessa’s Reapers, a sweeping family epic set in a rural “big house.” In 1932, Tessa won first prize in the Abbey’s new play contest with Temporal Powers. After seeing Temporal Powers, author Frank O’Connor sent Tessa this note: “When I saw Reapers, I knew something was happening. When I saw your new play, I realized it had happened with a vengeance.”
The years from 1930 to 1936 were among the happiest in Tessa’s life. She moved to Dublin with her sister, Nell, who served as a companion and interpreter. She had six plays produced at the Abbey and was considered one of Ireland’s most promising playwrights. Her most popular play, Katie Roche (1936), about a servant girl who longs for adventure, was produced in Dublin and London and was included in the Abbey’s 1937 American tour. It was also published in Victor Gollancz’s influential anthology “Famous Plays.”

Then, in the 1940’s, the Abbey mysteriously turned down Tessa’s next play, Wife to James Whelan (seen at the Mint in 2010). Tessa’s career at the Abbey was effectively over, though they continued to revive some of her older work (Katie Roche was revived five times during her lifetime) and they produced her one act Light Falling at their experimental space, the Peacock, in 1948. (Light Falling was read at the Mint’s benefit in 2010). Deevy eventually managed to find other venues for her new work: Wife to James Whelan was produced at Dublin’s tiny Studio Theatre in 1956, Light Falling was the curtain-raiser for Jack McGowran’s production of Shadow of A Gunman at London’s Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in 1957. Meanwhile, to support herself, Tessa turned her attention to the burgeoning field of radio. Between 1938 and 1946, she wrote over a dozen plays for the B.B.C. and Radio Eireann, as well as adapted her stage plays for broadcast. She supervised rehearsals by reading the actors’ lips and amazed everyone with her precise orchestration of sound.

Teresa’s beloved sister Nell died in February 1954. Without Nell as her interpreter, Tessa could not survive in Dublin. Heartbroken, she returned home to Landscape. Tessa was now removed from the center of Ireland’s artistic life, but she was not yet forgotten. In October 1954, she was elected to the Irish Academy of Letters, Ireland’s highest literary honor, though without Nell, the triumph was bittersweet.

Gradually, as the years passed, people forgot Tessa. Many Waterford townsfolk weren’t aware she was a playwright.To them, she was a sweet old lady on a bicycle who wore mismatched socks. Poet Sean Dunn recalled her eccentric reputation:

In the Fifties, she was a thin woman on a bicycle, her gray hair tucked under one of an assortment of strange hats. She rode through the streets of Waterford and those who knew her tensed as she passed in case a car might hit her. She heard nothing and just cycled on with the nonchalance of a girl cycling along a country lane. Her clothes never seemed to match. She was seen wearing sandals or runners even in the middle of winter. Some people thought she’d once written plays. Others knew it, but it was a long time ago.

In her final years, Tessa’s vertigo—a recurrent symptom of Meniere’s—worsened. Hardly able to stand on her own, and losing her eyesight, she was moved to May Park Nursing Home. She died there on January 19, 1963. James Cheasty, a poet and one of Tessa’s protégés, wrote in her obituary for the Irish Independent:

Teresa Deevy is dead, but she will not be forgotten. Those of us who were her friends can never forget her kindness and her great humanity. For remembrance among the general public she has left behind her work, which is monumental.

RoyMcC

Thanks chelloveks. It's a lesson I'm starting to learn. We sometimes tend to dismiss old fellas or old gals as of no consequence or relevance. But they were all young once and sometimes did amazing things.

chelloveks

Can't always judge a book by it's cover...only sometimes! Lmao

merlante

chelloveks wrote: »

Teresa Deevy is dead, but she will not be forgotten.

Yeah, this is Waterford, mate. If you killed someone over a battered sausage you wouldn't be forgotten. Or if you were a union man who took down the docks with a 13 year strike. But for writing plays... not so much.

After all, we just need more science grads in Waterford and everything will be fine...