One of the most thought-provoking was whether Tóibín, Shaw, and Warner believed that for a devout Catholic, their version of Mary could coexist with the Church’s official position. The 90-minute discussion circled around themes of audience, religion, and theater in general before turning to the audience for questions. “Ireland is a very open place now. … If there was bravery, it was a private one.” “I wasn’t challenging the Catholic community,” he said. He said, instead, that he was writing a play that confronted his own lingering sense of devotion, and the difference between a public atheism or agnosticism (he’s not sure yet) and his private ambivalence between belief and doubt. Tóibín, who grew up in County Wexford in the 60s and 70s, argued that in Ireland, and most of the Western world, we live publically in a post-Christian society, so there wasn’t much bravery at play in confronting religious belief. (Indeed, that the play closed after a mere two-week run of what was supposed to be a 12-week engagement, despite receiving Tony nominations for Best Play, Lighting, and Sound, gives it added poignancy).Īlthough the theme of the PEN World Voices of International Literature festival was “bravery,” Tóibín was quick to counter moderator Jeremy McCarter’s suggestion that he was brave for confronting the dogma of Catholicism, the holiness of Mary. The germ of Testament, as Tóibín explained, was not necessarily the beginning of writing, but the tone, the idea, the feeling of a relentless take-no-prisoners type of woman giving a monologue about being Mary, Mother of God, but completely rejecting her role in the development of Christianity speaking her own version of it as if she will never get another chance to say it. The play, which unfortunately closed on May 5, was the primary topic at hand for Tóibín, Shaw and Warner during the panel discussion last Friday, back in The New School’s fine egg-shaped Tishman Auditorium. Borne out of it was the germ for Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, a novella (Scribner, 2012) and a one-woman Broadway play (starring Fiona Shaw directed by Deborah Warner). Tóibín’s course focused on works by or featuring strong women, including Sylvia Plath, Nadine Gordimer, Joan Didion and James Baldwin, as well as classical Greek plays like Antigone, Electra, and Madea. He called it “Relentlessness,” and before each class, he would drink a mix of a double espresso, Coca Cola, and sugar that he said he thinks pretty well mimics the effects of cocaine, and, as he put it in a panel discussion at the PEN World Voices Festival on May 3, “just go.” At least once, the class was actually kicked out of the building because it had gone so far over time that the staff was locking the doors for the night.
Several years ago, Colm Tóibín taught an evening class at the New School in New York.