How a disability activist inspired an award-winning Irish play

Director Raymond Keane introduces his production of Christian O'Reilly’s award-winning play No Magic Pill, a heartfelt and irreverent story of a disability rights activist described as 'a celebration of love, friendship and the enduring pursuit of freedom'.

It is a privilege to be an artist. It is not an easy role but its rewards are fathomless. Our job is to study what it is to be human in order, and in the hope, to be able to reflect back something of value to our audiences. We are mirrors of a sort. Theatre is not real life. It is makey uppy. It is just a story. The power of story of course is that it presents life more vividly. It is the mask behind and through which is revealed the very essence of our greatness and fragility.

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The team behind No Magic Pill talk to Oliver Callan

Now with over forty years' experience in theatre as an actor, clown, director and teacher I am supposed to know stuff. I do. But I am forever learning, forever starting over again. It is the beauty of the job but no other job compares to the challenges No Magic Pill has thrown at me. It has literally shifted the ground beneath me. Every aesthetic I ever adhered to has been shattered. In essence, what I’m interested in is termed 'physical theatre’. I believe all truth is in the body, as in, "the body keeps the score". It is often said "you can’t really understand another person’s experience until you walk a mile in their shoes’. See where I’m going here?

Humour me. I say I am a clown who aspires to being a fool. My extended family includes tricksters, boufons, jesters, eejits, idiots, outcasts and angels. I have a daily reflection on an ancient image where the fool is depicted naked from the waist down, their nakedness a sign that the true fool is prepared to show what others prefer to hide. In other traditions it is said, clowns are like angels, sometimes they bring the message and sometimes they are the message, or, if clowns are the children of the gods then boufons are children of the devil. In the circus the clown is the only player allowed to step outside the ring. They are, at once, outsider and insider. They are disrupters, rule breakers, havoc makers, contrariwise, laughers and criers, truth sayers and liars. Visual artists often paint the image of the clown symbolically denoting their role in society.

Sometimes the clown gods play trickster and sometimes they bestow upon us gifts. More often they do both at the same time. Christian O’Reilly’s No Magic Pill is one and both. It has turned my world upside down. The play is formed by Christian’s close relationship with Martin Naughton and our disabled community. If I have learned anything from this disabled community it is that they have little respect for the rules society imposes. They are by nature, rule breakers, disruptors, havoc makers, fun makers, truth sayers, confounders as well as sewers and growers of love and humanity.

This project has made me a better person, artist, clown and fool. I have found a new tribe. Come join us.

No Magic Pill is a magic pill for the heart mind and soul.

No Magic Pill tours venues across Ireland from 7th - 23rd November, 2024, with dates in Galway, Longford, Ennis and Dublin - find out more here.