By Brian Friel
Wayland Baptist University
January 2001

Based on an Oliver Sacks case study, Molly Sweeney is a touching story of the quest to define reality. Molly is blind. She has been since the age of 10 months. Hers is a tactile world. Frank is Molly's uppity goal-oriented husband. He wants to help Molly regain her sight. She is his new project. Mr. Rice is a washed up, yet world famous, ophthalmologist. Mr. Rice performs surgery on Molly and gives her partial sight. The problem is that she must now learn to see. The play ends darkly as Molly loses her sight once again, but she is unable to live peacefully in her old tactile world. She regresses into herself trying, once again, to define her reality. All three characters are on this same quest.

This is an extremely challenging psychological play. My initial approach was to research as thoroughly as possible with my cast and on my own about eye diseases and how we define our reality. Because the play is set in County Donegal, Ireland, I also researched the culture, dialect, and geography of northwest Ireland.

It became clear that the actor playing Molly would need to work especially hard to become convincingly visually impaired. Luckily, there was a blind mobility school located at nearby Texas Tech University. The center's director, Nora Griffin-Shirley, and her visually impaired husband, Mike, were overjoyed to sit down with the us to answer questions and offer advice.

I also worked closely with Dr. Chris Smith, of Texas Tech's school of music, an Irish music specialist, to select the music for the production. With his help, I was able to find two specific tunes mentioned in the text, "The Lament for Limerick" and "Dick Gossip's Reel." He, with fiddler Emily Watson, arranged and recorded them for the show.

Furthermore, I have always been interested in ways of breaking down the audience/actor barrier. In an attempt to do this, I set up several tables of "demo-goggles" at intermission. These goggles were set to simulate precisely the same eye diseases that Molly had. The audience was able to literally "see through the character's eyes." I only wish there was a way to do this for every show. It is always important to me for the audience to be given as many opportunities to experience the world of the play.

As such, I wanted the audience to begin experiencing the world of the play from the moment they entered the theatre. To accomplish this, I had the three actors on stage from the time the house opened. Traditional Irish music played in the background as the three characters moved around the stage defining their space. Each actor pantomimed characteristic tasks for the 30 minutes between the house opening and the start of the show. For example, Frank mimed the milking of goats, Mr. Rice mimed fly-fishing, and Molly swirled about enjoying her tactile world. These actions changed nightly as the actors became more at ease. The purpose of this quasi-dance was to begin developing the characters for the audience the moment they entered the space. Secondarily, the actors were extremely warmed up and focused at the rise of the show.

Poster image...

Photos and Poster by Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton