Local actor praised for moving monologue on Mother and Baby Homes

“You see, I was part of the exodus of unwanted babies, chucked into a home before I could open my eyes.”

So begins what writer Tzarini Meyler describes as a “real and raw” performance of her moving monologue inspired by the Mother and Baby Homes and performed with an intense vulnerability and power by Athlone-based actor/musician/storyteller Fia Rua (Eoghan Burke).

While originally recorded during the autumn as one part of LipZinc Theatre Company's Talking Tarot online series, which also featured another Athlone-based actor Martin Kelleher, the video's re-release online this week coinciding with the publication of the Mother and Baby Home report has been met with an emotional reaction.

“If the monologue helped people to understand or just pause and consider what went unchallenged for so many years then it was worth doing,” Fia Rua, who is this month's Reader in Residence for Westmeath Libraries, and is involved with an upcoming music video show Siamsaíocht on Athlone Community Radio and social media explains.

“I thought it was brilliant,” Tzarini said of the finished video and Fia's performance where he goes back to a child's mindset and how the experience in the institution has shaped him as a person. “We did it in back and forth takes, he's in Athlone and I'm on the Cork/Limerick border. We did it all on Zoom. He (Fia) has just made the story so real,” she says.

Doing a piece remotely brings its own challenges, Tzarini, whose name comes from her artist's parents love of all things Russian, explains, and the smartphone video was made in black and white, almost confessional style looking straight into the camera in one take so it all feels very intimate, and with no props or costumes, it really relies on the moving and intense words.

“I think it just helps you stop and listen, take a moment, even though it's fiction (it is based on personal accounts) watch it and everyone will take something different from it,” she says.

Tzarini, who is the founder and artistic director of LipZinc Theatre Company, wrote the piece as part of a series of 24 monologues as part of the Talking Tarot series released on their social media channels in October. Each piece was inspired by a tarot card and it examined how much of life was very up in the air and still, people want to know what the future holds.

For this piece, the card was the 6 of Swords which seen as a dark card because it's a picture of a boat leaving and then conjured of thoughts for her of emigration and folklore and brought her to the idea of the changeling and Mother and Baby Homes.

Having grown up hearing about distant cousins or family members who went into similar institutions and were never heard of again, she was inspired to do research into personal stories and was struck by the secrecy and the shame of their lives, and what became of them.

Ultimately though, she takes a hopeful tone to the story at the end of the video, and despite intense pain, she says: “It's all about in the end him using it (his experience) as a strength, he's Superman”.

Check out LipZinc Theatre on Facebook and its YouTube for more or see the video below.