Dauntless: Grace O’Malley, Pirate Queen, a new show from storyteller and theatremaker Debs Newbold, is currently on tour. Having sold out her run in Bristol last month, she brings the show to London on 10-14 Nov at the Lion & Unicorn after stopping off in Nottingham on 21 Oct. It presents the story of Grace O’Malley, the head of the Ó Máille dynasty in the west of Ireland, and the daughter of Eóghan Dubhdara Ó Máille, who was a warrior in her country in the 16th century in a role usually reserved for a man.
How did you first become a storyteller?
I’d say I started storytelling around 2008, but I didn’t know that’s what I was starting because I was an actor. I was doing lots of work connected to my background in European theatre styles—lots of physical theatre, lots of ensemble work. I also worked at Shakespeare’s Globe, so I got bitten by the Shakespeare bug, which was an extraordinary experience.
But I got quite frustrated with the life of a jobbing actor, so I stepped away for a while. I travelled on a narrowboat for seven months and picked up loads of interesting stories along the way. There weren’t many libraries or books, but there were pubs, and in these tiny pubs you’d find sessions going on; they were like sessions that I had experienced with my Irish family, but I’d never heard storytelling at one.
While I was on the boat, I was doing bits of commission and writing work, so I thought: I could write a little show about this journey, bringing in some of the folk stories I was becoming interested in. I performed it at Cecil Sharp House, and afterwards several people said, “You’re a storyteller.” And I thought, “Yes, probably I am.”
That opened a window onto all these different applications of solo performance that I hadn’t thought about before. A lot of it was traditional storytelling, which I find fascinating and beautiful, but because I bring something else to the table, I started finding my own physicality and visual imagination within it. I began making work that was bigger and more epic.
What about the role of the audience?
One thing I love about storytelling is that you can invite an audience to imagine and play with the space in the room, the air in the room, the energy in the room. If you use that in a really meaningful, mindful way, you can get people to imagine landscapes and deep emotional moments without having to act them yourself.
As a solo performer, I’m never leaving the audience entirely. I’ve always got one eye on them, even if I embody a character. That’s fascinating to me.
The Globe eventually asked me to adapt King Lear for a family audience as a short solo performance. I said yes with the energy of somebody who needed to work and liked a challenge. That became my first big calling card internationally. It grew and grew into a 90-minute solo epic journey, and that’s really how the storytelling work took off.
What made you focus on Grace O’Malley as a subject?
Grace O’Malley – or to use her real, Irish name, Gráinne – had been somewhere in the back of my mind. I knew she existed, but I didn’t really think about her until the Royal Armouries commissioned me to make a performance about a female warrior.
The more I learned about her, the more I thought: I can’t actually believe this story isn’t front and centre in our mythology. It’s incredible. She used violence, but she was using violence at a time when violence had been used against her. She took the violent literacy of the time, particularly in relation to the English, and turned the tables. She stepped in at a time when women weren’t doing that.
The more I learn about her, the more I think about how history is written by the victors – and usually by the fellas. I’ve got lots of friends who are working really hard on digging up fragments of mythology, and I think: it’s not just the men who fought. It’s not just the men who did these things. I’d love more people to know about that.
How do you go about telling her story?
It’s important to me that it’s her voice. She’s a woman, for one thing, and most of the information we have about Grace/Gráinne comes from an extraordinary source: Elizabeth I had questions written to her because Gráinne wanted to meet her. Gráinne answered 18 questions in huge detail, and those letters actually exist.
So the story must come through her information and her voice. I stay very much as me, but the source material comes through her.
It’s also important because she’s Irish. I’m the product of English and Irish heritage, and that’s a nice tension to be under as an artist looking at this period. The English side has had its say, and continues to have its say. It’s important to me that Gráinne is looked at through a lens she might have been looking through, as best I can, and then I let my imagination feed it.
Can you talk about your creative process?
The process is actually very similar to the way I make Shakespeare shows. You have to absorb the story itself, and everything it means to you, and that takes ages. You read, you watch, you dive into the history, and then you have to do a big editing job before you even start.
You can’t get in the way of it. I’m not going to act all the parts. I can’t let my emotions about a scene rule the stage. I have to suggest and leave lots of space. There are deep emotional moments in Gráinne’s story, but you have to allow them in without getting in their way.
With Shakespeare, I have the text to rely on. With Gráinne, I had to create dialogue and inner monologue, so there’s more creating going on. But the level of absorption is the same.
My clowning background is important too. For me, clowning is about being completely open to the moment and utterly able to improvise. If somebody’s phone goes off, or somebody has to leave because they’ve forgotten about their last train, or there’s a ladder fixed to the wall in the theatre, I might find a way to use it. It’s about being playful and very physical.
There’s always something to watch, but you could also close your eyes and imagine. That playfulness is part of it. We need that. If we’re going to spend 90 minutes travelling somewhere, we need to know we’re going to have a bit of fun as well.
Do you tend to collaborate with a team, or work alone?
A lot of my work I make by myself. I’ve booked the tour, made the show, directed myself, done the marketing. I’m nearly 20 years in, and this is how I make my living.
I think I’ve learned, especially as a working-class performer, that you can be a bit shy of the idea that you’re making it yourself. I really want to refute that. There are loads of performers who couldn’t afford drama school, like me, who have creative energy and want to move forward, but think they need somebody else to tell them it’s okay.
Back yourself. If you can do it, you can do it. You make the work, you find an audience, and eventually the critics come and tell you whether they think you’re doing a good job.
What do you think about critics?
I do listen to critics, but I use them as a provocation rather than an instruction. Sometimes something stings, and you think, “Actually, I know what they mean.” Other times you think, “That wasn’t my intention. I’m going to double down on what I wanted to do.”
What I don’t want is to invite critics to start directing my shows from outside. But when somebody responds with real enthusiasm, that is rocket fuel. Especially for independent artists who have put their heart and soul into something. It doesn’t make you complacent; it makes you want to go out and do it again the next night.
And that’s what I want people to experience with Dauntless: a cracking night out. You’ll laugh, you’ll learn something, you’ll be moved, and you’ll find yourself imagining a whole world. I’m just there to provoke those images. The audience does the rest.