Eclipsed

by Patricia Burke-Brogan

Sounds stereotypical? It isn't, because Eclipsed subverts these well-known Irish plots and themes and tiresome feminist tirades by presenting them with a sheen of absurdity.
The strength of this sketch with its eight strange characters, skilfully set in the eclipsed 60's Catholic church state-of-mind, is not so much the quality of its message, but its bubbling dramatic form .

"Eclipsed" made its first official appearance at a reading in Galway in 1988, and was first performed (again in Galway) in 1992.
The piece deals with a subject which has since made it into the mainstream media and has resulted in heated debate, involving lay-people from all walks of life and the Catholic church. The piece is notable, not because it offers any solution (it doesn't), but because Patricia Burke Brogan (the author) was among the first to tackle this tricky topic: The illegal dealing in babies by the Catholic church in the 50s and 60s.

About the Author

Voltaire said tragedy could not be written without testicles. You have proved him wrong. Congratulations!

M.J.Molloy, Irish Playwright, in a letter to Patricial Burke Brogan, August 1992

About the Play

A compelling Irish play called 'Eclipsed' brims over with darkness and light, rising from Ireland's boggy soil like a wailing banshee . . .

Ray Loynd, Los Angeles Times, 21 April 1995

Eclipsed deals with penitential-home laundries attached to some Irish convents, where, from the time of the potato famine to the early nineteen-seventies, mothers were locked away, often for a lifetime, to cleanse their terrible sin of having become pregnant outside wedlock. For these young girls and women, the laundries were at once their refuge and their prison. Separated from their children, they lived a spartan and loveless existence.

The major part of the two acts of "Eclipsed" takes place in a cloister in Galway in the 1960s, among fallen women who are allowed to live their unworthy lives, separated completely from their illegitimate children, working in the laundry. The framework for the piece is provided by a result of this treatment in the present day: a woman, sent to America as an orphan, who has returned to the cloister (now closed) to search for traces of her mother.

"Eclipsed" concentrates on the lives of the "imprisoned" women, their struggle for a little freedom, and their longing to see their children again.
It is in the very nature of the story that the Catholic church does not come out of it well. But what is interesting are the scenes, alternating between the chapel and the steam of the laundry, where the mothers emerge as rather less than the ideal of mature womanhood. The characters are consciously constructed to be two-dimensional, and combine to make a picture of women kept immature by the spoon-feeding of the church, as often seems to have been the case in Irish society in the 60s.
It is in this atmosphere that Brigit, bitter and joyless, Mandy, immature and infatuated with Elvis, Nellie-Nora, naïve and nervous, and Cathy, strangled by asthma and a broken heart, unite to confront the diabolical principal of the cloister, Mother Victoria, and the weak and doubt-wracked Sister Virginia.

Two acts, that ask nothing more of the audience than an appreciation of biting humor.

There comes a point at which all of Ireland's repression seems to be fermenting in this room - but the effect is not so much to depress as to shellshock. It's worth the experience.

The Scotsman, Edinburgh Theatre Festival, 22 August 1992

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The play picks away at a scab to reveal the vicious subcutaneous reality beneath the hypocrisies that were spread across Irish society not too many years ago. The poisonous afterglow of those times still lingers on. - It would not be a bad idea to frog-march every one of our T.D.'s, particularly the male majority, into the theatre to see it.

Micheal Finlan, The Irish Times, 21 February 1992

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Audiences walk away from 'Eclipsed' with a communal knot in their stomach - a sour feeling from having seen a piece of Irish history that people rarely talk about and a slice of Irish culture many would rather not remember. - This is a story about women, it is a story about religion, it is a story about judgement and it is a story about Ireland. But it is for anyone with compassion in their hearts and the condition of women in their minds.

Azell Murphy, Southbridge News, Worcester Mass., USA, March 1994

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['Eclipsed'] contains a great dramatic force, a cry of horror for a life that slips away without a chance of being lived.

Mauro Martinelli of 'Sipario', Firenze (translation)

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The impact of 'Eclipsed' outside of purely theatrical consideration has been considerable. As a result of her sensitive handling of a controversial issue, Patricia Burke Brogan's fine play has led to reports and studies being done on the subject of the Magdalen Laundries and the situation then and now of unmarried mothers. These include a series of articles in the Irish Times, two documentaries on RTE Radio 1 and at the moment BBC2 is putting together a documentary for television on the Magdalen Homes in Ireland and Scotland.

Judy Murphy, The Galway Advertiser, 26 November 1992;
the documentary went out in 1993.

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Its subject matter is timeless - how society treats its unwanted members, those who have behaved differently.

Tina Neylon, The Cork Examiner, 8 November 1995

The Author About the Play
Resonances from History

Killmacha:

This is a fictitious name for the area in which I placed my Penitent Laundry. It is a combination of pagan and Christian words - kill (cill) is the anglicisation of Gaelic for church or cell/oratory of the early church; Macha , a sun goddess, a life-giving image, a fertility goddess, one one of the most important goddesses in ancient Ireland. Tradition holds that when pregnant, Macha, in order to save the life of her husband, had to compete in a race against two of the king's horses, she turned to the assembled people in a wrenching plea that would echo down centuries of Irish history: Help me , she cried, for a mother bore each one of you! Give me, O King, but a short delay until I am delivered. Childbirth was a sacred activity in pagan Celtic times. Because the King refused her request, Macha put a curse on Ulster. [Since then] there has been much bloodshed in Ulster.

In Act 1, Scene 5 Sister Virginia repeats the cry of Macha, when she prays and begs help for the mothers locked away in the laundry: Christ crucified, help them! For a woman bore you, carried you for nine months! Mother of Jesus, do something about Cathy, Mandy, Nellie-Nora and the others!

Brigit Murphy.

One of the characters in Eclipsed is called after St. Brigit, but there was also a pagan Celtic goddess called Brigit, a fertility goddess, a triple goddess. When Christianity arrived in Ireland it had to contend with the most powerful female figure in all of Irish history, Brigit, a folk image, whose shadowy cloak still moves over Ireland. She eventually evolved into St. Brigit, Mary of the Gael, also Patroness of he Poets. St. Brigit was ordained Bishop of Kildare by St. Mel. She was the first Irish woman to be a Bishop!. Brigit's cross is a Christian symbol superimposed on the sun-goddess symbol.

Eclipsed:

There are different levels of meaning apart from the natural phenomena - eclipse of sun and moon.

1. The Roman Catholic Church represents an eclipse of the older pagan meaning of motherhood and fertility.
2. Women have been eclipsed in their lives and in their experiences. Women's lives have been invisible. The real history of women has not been written. In particular, the history of Magdalenes ahs been eclipse. In Church history and in art history, few women are mentioned.
3. Nuns, by virtue of their bodes and their feminine attributes have been eclipsed.. Medieval clothing, starched coifs and veils.
4. We are eclipsed , as Mother Victoria says in Act 2, Scene 1 - our understanding is darkened.

In reality, the women disappeared. Betrayed by lovers, signed in by their families or employers, forgotten and disowned by society, they lived out their lives in penitential laundries. Most of them became institutionalised and were buried in nameless graves.
Because of the attitudes of society and the tendency to regard sezual behaviour or misbehaviour as what was meant by 'morality', the attitude of many of those who looked after the victims tended to be harsh and condemnatory.

Four of the characters in Eclipsed , Cathy, Brigit, Mandy and Nellie-Nora, are mothers whose children are either dead, have been taken away for adoption or are enclosed in orpahages.
Their lovers, the fathers of their children, were not locked away, not held responsible. "Some of the major Social Theorists (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and Marx) have agreed that the subordination of women is 'regrettable but necessary.' - Only men could act on behalf of the Common Good, because only men had objectivity, only men were dispassionat; only men were logical and fair minded" [Mary Condron]

" Eclipsed is a social document as well as a powerful dramatic piece, this hitherto unwritten story must be told to men and women of all cultures and must be remembered as part of human history" [programme note]

Patricia Burke Brogan

Thanks to:

All the others of the Anglo-Irish Theatre Group (Front of house), Paddy for hinting at the play, JP for additional help, the Hausmeisters for their patience.

Many Thanks to:

Ann-Kathrin Leist for her sewing machine, the Lichtenstein-Haus for the fabric

Special Thanks to:

The "Deutsch Irischer Freundeskreis" for kindly offering us financial help and thus making this programme possible; Patricia Burke Brogan for her extensive material on the play, its social and political background and its reception.

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