Goodbye, goodbye.
The truest gift he gave me was the gift of having met him.
And having worked closely with him.
I had been working for ten weeks as a substitute art teacher in Summerhill College, Sligo. It was where I had attended secondary school myself.
The school was staging the musical, The White Horse Inn. I ended up painting two scenes...one to the left of the main stage and one to the right of it. Two stage extensions had been built to ease the pressure of space and to help the production flow better. I think I painted two Alpine scenes.
Joe saw the show, inquired as to who the artist was and he sought me out. He asked me if I would help out painting the stage settings for the Sligo Musical Society show. Little did I know he meant for me to design and paint the complete set single-handed. The backdrops I had painted for the Summerhill College shows were the only large scale work I had ever done but I had the confidence of youth and agreed.
(.......I digress for a moment...... I am just now recalling how the live orchestra stirred me. Not for the brilliance of their music, but for the loveliness of the instruments too.
The music cases.
The rich, shiny ebony, maple and willow wood. The strings and bows agleam in reddish-orange browns.
The double bass. And violins. The cello.
The clarinet and the flute.
The creamed sheet music lit by warm ambient lighting.
The sea-shell lampshades.
Silver.
Dress suits, formal wear.
Some very Protestant names.
Nervous tuning of instruments.
It was special and so magical..........)
I was part of it all now and I was valued as a scene painter....and so young, they said.
I even had my name printed in the programme.
Scenery Painter.......Nelius Flynn.
I felt so worthwhile with my limited talent, and lack of experience.
Joe gifted me the confidence to paint huge backdrops that I never dreamt I could do.
No matter what I produced for him it was always enough. He never expected more than I was able to give.
I don't ever remember thinking I would not be able to fulfill the many diverse tasks he set out for me in musical theatre and other shows. He steered me through and together we were a team.......and I was his confidant.
We worked together with the carpenters, the lighting crew and the director of the show. But we were separate.
Joe was stage manager.
And strict with flighty chorus singers and dancers who might be heard chattering by the public in the front rows of the audience.
Or who might be tempted to look out at the audience through the centre-opening in the front curtain.
Somehow on opening night there was always a finished set for the latest production. The Merry Widow, The Pirates of Penzance, Guys and Dolls, Where's Charlie, Viva Mexico.
Always. I would be handed a prop half an hour before the show was due to start and asked to paint it. It was not unusual for me to be painting on stage as the orchestra started to play the overture and Joe would be saying,
"Clear the stage! Clear the stage!"
I always muddled through and I learnt something with every passing production.
We rehearsed the scene changes.
Like clockwork we performed magical tasks behind the scenes. Together with some freshly recruited stage hands we (dressed in black) set up for the next act in record time.
Always quietly.
And when the curtain was drawn back we listened expectantly for the minor gasps, and chatter of appreciation from the audience.
I became familiar with the backstage vocabulary: flats, cut-outs, proscenium, french brace, legs, fly curtains, house lights, sight lines, stays and cleats. It all had a charm that I devoured.
I was twenty one or twenty two years of age.
When we moved from Sligo to Monaghan to start my art teaching career the thing that I missed most was working with Joe on shows.
The excitement and magic of life backstage has stayed with me throughout my life. I have performed, done stage make up, directed shows and designed scenery many times.
Yesterday we laid you to rest in Sligo cemetery Joe. You carried your many gifts lightly. You exited the stage in the quiet way you had lived.
It all went off smoothly.
No unnecessary drama.
You would have approved.
No fluffed lines. No missed cues. No props dropped !
The stage is bare now but I listen and hear the strains of Josef Locke singing out
"Goodbye"
from
The White Horse Inn.
https://youtu.be/2JvUkzVFKmY?si=Y4g4VEZKghbq-bsO&t=41
It was called Eye Level.
We asked Joe, as a director of The Hawkswell Theatre to speak at the launch in the Emyvale Leisure Centre. He travelled from Sligo and of course he did a great opening for us.
I decided a few months ago to have my second Emyvale exhibition this year in the same venue over the May bank holiday weekend.
It is titled: Ink & Imagination
It will be on view 4th. and 5th. May.
I have fond memories of both Mary and Joe.
The exhibition is dedicated to them both.
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