“I’VE BEEN TRYING to tell this story for 27 years.” Writer Christian O’Reilly has long wanted to share the story of his friend Martin Naughton, an incomparable disability activist, a man who O’Reilly likens to Michael Collins.
Naughton was tenacious, determined; he knew his own worth even when the world around him claimed not to. Born with muscular dystrophy, he – and his younger sister Barbara – was sent to a residential hospital in his early years. This practice of moving people away from their home (he was from An Spidéal, the hospital was in Dublin), was common at the time.
As an adult, he travelled to America. There he learned about the disability rights movement, and disability activism, said O’Reilly. He returned to Ireland determined to bring about change – to show that there was more that society should be doing to include, rather than exclude, patronise or ignore, people with disabilities. To show the huge gaps that were there in terms of accessibility and services.
Anyone who attended a disability rights protest outside the Dáil would have seen Naughton there, usually wearing an eye-catching hat. He knew to go right to the seat of power to get heard, but he also had to battle against that power and system his entire life.
So no wonder O’Reilly has long wanted to tell Naughton’s story. He tried once: Naughton was the inspiration for the 2004 film Inside I’m Dancing. But, as can happen with commercial film projects, the story soon evolved in a different direction from O’Reilly’s initial pitch.
Now he has a second chance, with the play No Magic Pill, which will visit the Black Box stage in Galway this coming week, followed by the Civic Theatre in Tallaght.
The pair first met when O’Reilly, then a writer “getting nowhere”, applied for a job after seeing an ad in the DCU newsletter. He got the job, which was in a place called the Centre for Independent Living (CIL), which Naughton had helped to found in 1990. The centre was a world away from the institutionalisation approach to disabilities.
“I turned up and quite soon a door was pushed open, and in rolled a man in a wheelchair with a fishing hat on his head and a cigarette in his mouth,” said O’Reilly. “He said to me, ‘shake the thumb’, and that was my introduction to Mark Naughton.”
O’Reilly went on to work “effectively as a lobbyist” for CIL. “Martin described CIL as the IRA of disability,” said O’Reilly. “He said our job is to create change, it’s to plant bombs, it’s to agitate for change.” CIL stood out because it was run by the people for whom it was advocating.
“This motley crew were the misfits of disability – within the hierarchy of disability they were on the very bottom,” said O’Reilly. They were radical and subversive, and they had to be because of how little the state offered them.
Inside I’m Dancing
One night over 20 years ago, at 3am, O’Reilly woke up with a bolt of inspiration – he should write about Naughton. He told a friend, James Flynn of Metropolitan Films International, about his pitch, and how a film should be made about Naughton’s return from the US, and his work in getting EU funding for a pilot personal assistance programme for people who were physically disabled.
The film “went in a very different direction” in the end, and though O’Reilly loves it he knows that it was not Martin Naughton’s story as he wanted to tell it.
O’Reilly does not have a disability, and spoke to Naughton about whether he should have been the one to tell his story. “Martin replied: there is one reason you should tell it – because you want to.”
O’Reilly felt “such a sense of failure” when Inside I’m Dancing became a different thing to his initial idea. He felt regret, and avoided returning to Naughton’s story. Then he met Jane Daly from the Irish Theatre Institute, who asked him what story he hadn’t told but was afraid to tell.
The answer could only be one thing: that original story – called No Magic Pill – about Naughton. She told him the fear of writing it was the very reason to write it. Getting Arts Council funding for the play made it all happen.
But it wasn’t easy – he tried adapting the screenplay, but that was “a mess”. He reached out to Naughton to tell him he was trying to tell his story again, only to discover his old friend – just 62 – was in his final days. He sent a note to him, thanking him for everything, and promising to finish the play.
Celebration
While working on the play, Naughton brought on board director Raymond Keane and disability consultant Peter Kearns, and found that the play became less of a hagiography of Naughton’s life, where he is depicted as a saintly figure, but instead taps into his spirit.
The decision was made early on to only cast disabled actors. “There are very few professional disabled actors in Ireland, because they haven’t been given the training or opportunity,” said O’Reilly. “And the practice in Irish theatre is to cast non-disabled actors in those roles. We said – we’re going to break that trend, and we’re going to draw a line in the sand. So that from No Magic Pill onwards, that practice of casting non-disabled actors in those parts comes to an end.”
They partnered with Independent Living Movement Ireland (formerly CIL), the Irish Wheelchair Association and the Disability Federation of Ireland, who helped them to locate disabled actors – including some people who hadn’t acted before, but wanted to. “There’s a risk in that, but it’s also completely exhilarating,” said O’Reilly.
While the film Inside I’m Dancing did break ground at the time in bringing the story of two disabled characters to the mainstream in film, two non-disabled actors were cast. No Magic Pill shows how this practice doesn’t need to continue.
O’Reilly had earlier worked with a cast of intellectually disabled actors on the play Sanctuary, which he was commissioned to write by Blue Teapot Theatre Company, which tells stories through the lens of disability.
All the characters in No Magic Pill are inspired by real people. The story centres on a character inspired by Martin Naughton while he is at a crossroads in his life, having had a funding request turned down. He questions whether he should “stay and fight, or whether it’s time to pursue a lifelong dream of escaping to America”, said O’Reilly. The play flashes back to moments in his life, from his childhood, to his time in St Mary’s Hospital, to how he became politicised.
While the topic overall is a serious one, O’Reilly underlines that it’s not a dour or overly-serious play. Just like Martin Naughton, it’s full of life and energy. “It’s a really entertaining, funny, I hope moving, surprising, unexpected story,” said O’Reilly. And it’s most definitely not that awful phrase, “inspiration porn”.
Because O’Reilly himself is not disabled, there will be questions around the suitability of him writing No Magic Pill. “It is a fair question – why should a non-disabled person be writing about disability?” he said. “What allowed me to bridge that gap was having Peter Kearns on my team – he’s a disabled man and is also a dramaturg, and specifically a disability equality dramaturg.”
Kearns’ training is in seeing the work through the lens of disability equality, and O’Reilly said Kearns trained all the team in this – teaching them, for example, about the differences between the medical model of disability versus the social model of disability: that the disabled person is the ‘problem’ versus the belief that society is disabling people through lack of access and negative attitudes. Every line of the play was filtered through Kearns, and through asking – does this fit the social model?
A guiding line for the team throughout the process was the CIL motto: “Nothing for us without us.” It wasn’t a case of O’Reilly coming in and deciding what other people’s lives were like – it was hugely collaborative.
The play will have ISL and audio captioning, and work is ongoing to make the venues fully accessible for both crew and audience. An extended ramp is being put into the Black Box Theatre, and an accessible toilet is being put backstage as well as in the audience section. Similar moves are being made at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght. The fact that accessible toilets aren’t as standard backstage across all theatre venues speaks volumes to the barriers there for disabled actors. Other challenges they faced were finding accessible rehearsal studios and also accessible accommodation.
O’Reilly notes that the Arts Council was great in supporting the production, and also in helping with disability access costs.
Martin Naughton was well known in the disability activism sector – indeed, President Michael D Higgins paid tribute to him after he died – but perhaps was not well-known enough on a national scale considering the work he did. “I sort of see him as the Michael Collins of the disability movement, leading the War of Independence for disabled people,” said O’Reilly.
He hopes that the work prompts yet more discussion about Naughton’s life. There must also be the hope that it sparks more of the ongoing conversation around how Ireland treats people with disabilities, something which activists like Naughton have been speaking out about for decades.
“In a way it’s obviously only a play, but at the same time, if the play can start a conversation about the widespread social exclusion of disabled people from Irish society, that sense of marginalisation and sense of invisibility that many feel, that would be great,” said O’Reilly. “We’re trying to say let’s look at this group and look at how we can change – not just in the arts, but within all of society.”
“It’s hugely challenging – but it’s also massively important. And if the play can contribute to or start that conversation, we’ll have done something right.”
No Magic Pill is directed by Raymond Keane, written by Christian O’Reilly, performed by Sorcha Curley, Mark Fitzgerald, Peter Kearns, Ferdia MacAonghusa, Julie Sharkey and Paddy Slattery. Dramaturg and disability consultant is Peter Kearns.
It will run at the Black Box Theatre in Galway from Tuesday 27 – Friday 30 September at 8pm. Suitable for age 12+ and tickets are €20/€18. Booking at the theatre website. It will also run during Dublin Theatre Festival at the Civic, Tallaght, from 4 – 8 October at 8pm. Tickets: €25/€23 and can be purchased via the Civic Theatre website or in person, or at the Dublin Theatre Festival or box office.
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