By Cal
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdUycGf_uJk
Available until: the end of Sunday 22nd November
14 Voices from the Bloodied Fields has been created
to commemorate the centenary of a tragedy which has come to be known as Bloody
Sunday. I have not given a star rating and this is not so much a review as a
description as it feels wrong to give a rating of this sort of performance. But
I wanted to write something to acknowledge the piece and maybe draw other
people’s attention to it and possibly even encourage them to watch something
they might not have watched otherwise.
One hundred years ago, on 21st November 1920, there was a Gaelic football match at Croke Park, between home side Dublin and Tipperary. This is also the location where these pieces were filmed. The IRA ensured in just ninety seconds that fourteen fans didn’t come home. Their stories were lost. There were many other deaths on the day now known as Bloody Sunday and they matter too, but this piece focuses on the people who died at the match - on fourteen fans who went out to have fun. And probably thought the worst thing that could happen was being heavily beaten by the other team.
Instead, they were killed. By British soldiers, who started
shooting at spectators and players. Some of the police said some of the
spectators fired on them first. Other members of the police and other witnesses
said differently.
14 Voices brings together fourteen writers, fourteen
directors and fourteen performers, in fourteen pieces which are fourteen
minutes long. The writers have each created a story for one victim. Each has
been staged by an actor and a director and all fourteen works are shared with
us in this video.
It is very easy to have mixed feelings about this. I don’t
think the writers, directors and performers have a personal connection to the
person they’re writing about. It’s an imaginative exercise which is intended as
a commemoration and a tribute, not as any kind of fanfiction (no offence
intended to fanfiction, but it is almost always written for the entertainment
of others. 14 Voices isn’t about entertainment). But if anyone is
uncomfortable with the idea, that is understandable. Real people died on that
day. But I do think 14 Voices was created with kindness and from a
genuine desire to do something in order to remember that terrible event and the
project has had the support of at least some of the families who were affected
by the tragedy.
I think fiction has a big role to play in teaching people
about the real world. Whether it’s an accurate description of whether it
inspires us to research a topic more and learn about what really happened, it
can lead to our knowing more about a subject than we might have learned
otherwise.
There have, of course, been tragedies with a greater number
of victims. I don’t think that matters. For those of us on the outside, the
more deaths there are, the worse the tragedy can seem to be, but for each
individual with their own individual tragedy, they will be feeling that tragedy
whether there was one victim or a billion.
It’s a difficult time for everyone in the world right now,
but I do think it’s important that we don’t focus entirely on the pandemic.
Existing problems will go on existing. Existing pain will go on hurting. 14
Voices acknowledges this.
It won’t be for everyone – I doubt there’s any production in
the world which everyone likes – but it’s very sensitively and carefully done.
As I’m not Irish, I’m not really sure if it’s my place to say if it’s good or
bad, but I really did like it. I hope it will provide something for the people
who are affected by this tragedy and that it will inspire people like me to
learn more about the tragedy – or as much as the limited information and
conflicting reports allow us to learn. It’s terrible what happened, but there
are some terrible things we need to know.
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