A Display Of Grief

Brokentalkers is a Dublin-based theatre company with a reputation for creating work that challenges traditional ideologies of text-based theatre.

The upcoming Sydney Festival show, Have I No Mouth, is a return to their earlier style of lo-fi performance that is very much about the story and the emotional connection that the performers have to the material.

Co-directed by Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan, it is a story dealing with the process of reconciling death and loss in the context of the relationship between a mother and her son. This is the true story of the years following the death of Cannon’s father as a result of medical negligence, and both Cannon and Ann (his mother) perform this piece in a gentle, quietly painful journey that evolves with every performance. As Cannon explained: “I always intended to make a piece about my dad – it couldn’t happen because we were still going through a court case to find out how he died. That took eight-nine years and in that period it was us as a family living with the case every day and it wasn’t until after that we were able to begin to grieve.”

And, as a family, they are still grieving. Every night that the show is performed is a new, honest and unique step in the process. And although Cannon is a trained actor he presents himself as he truly is in this autobiographical piece, laying his faults, struggles and emotions bare for the audience to witness. But this is nothing compared to his non-actor mother courageously taking to the stage every night. “My mother’s a brave kind of soul,” Cannon says. “It’s easy for me, but my mother had never been on stage before – and it’s not just being on stage, it’s being herself and telling a story that is very close to her. She is very brave and very honest, and it’s difficult. But it’s also a positive thing.”

The show was created using a devising process whereby Cannon and his mother worked alongside their psychotherapist Erich Keller to explore elements of their relationship and engagement with grief. Initially only brought on as a psychological consultant, the sessions that were worked on with Keller became more and more intrinsic to the narrative, and eventually the idea of him joining the other two on stage was struck upon. This external point of view grounds the piece in a thoroughly unique style that engages emotion head-on while avoiding self-indulgence or sentimentality. The transcripts are all real, the ‘characters’ are the three people you see before you, and the pain and difficulty of dealing with this situation is present and honest. It is a show concerned with family life, causality and chance, good and bad dreams, broken promises an unanswered questions. “The piece can be difficult – particularly for people who have gone through similar things – but although the death of my father was the biggest earthquake in our lives this show is also a celebration of who he was and who he is.”