Circle Mirror Transformation Gate Theatre, Dublin ★★★★★ When it comes to drama teachers, the word “eccentric” easily gets mentioned. Though the methods haven’t always been straightforward: the Polish director Jerzy Grotowski likened his rehearsal process to a kind of psychotherapy; the students of Stanislavski’s first acting studio were sent to live and work as farmers. Can any of what they were doing be considered art-making? There’s a moment in Annie Baker’s sublime play – a belated Irish premiere of the ground-breaking American playwright’s work – when a young student asks her teacher: “Are we going to be doing any real acting”? Their drama class involves the usual ensemble-building exercises that easily seem unconventional: the absurd chaos of people running around playing “explosion tag”; the dramatically random improvisations of the “circle mirror transformation game”.
The student had been expecting the art of performance to finally begin when they start working from a playscript. “We are acting,” insists the teacher Marty, played with soft assurance by Niamh Cusack. Her teaching methods are certainly questionable.
These weekly gatherings of strangers, in a community centre in a New England town, begin with Marty leaving her introduction to someone else: her husband James (a discreetly excellent Ristéard Cooper), who is also a student. As he stumbles through the monologue, it’s unclear whether Marty is using her exercises .