From shadowlands to wonderland

“The most important doorway into theatre is the one first opened at the age of seven or eight. That moment is never forgotten.” Fresh from success in the West End, Michael Barker Caven is directing Alice in Wonderland at the Helix in Dublin this Christmas.

It's no lesser challenge, he says. “They, children, are the most important audience of all.

“That first step into the theatre becomes the rocket fuel that send you back, and back again, throughout your life, hunting for an experience that will transcend the ordinary.”

Caven is still hunting for that experience himself. He took a circuitous path to the professional theatre, via brief careers in restaurants, advertising and teaching. But he knew he was a storyteller. In his early 30s he moved back to Dublin and started directing, but found himself on the fringes of a tightly-knit theatre scene.

“I'm an outsider, a fact of my birth as half-Irish, half-English.. I came to the town knowing no one, and that's defined my journey.”
His career in the “goldfish bowl” of Dublin theatre has been impressive if not stellar. He has been nominated for Irish theatre awards, has directed regularly at the Gate, has staged acclaimed Irish premieres of a several notable British and American works, and proved himself a safe pair of hands in commercial theatre with Fiona Looney's Dandelions. But the Abbey never came calling.
“I've always wanted to direct at the Abbey. I longed to do it when I was starting out. Why I haven't, is for others to answer.” But if the Abbey didn't call, the West End did. Directing Shadowlands, to rave reviews exposed him to the “immense pressure” of commerical theatre.

“In the subsidised theatre, if the audience doesn't come, that's not the end of the day. If they don't come in the West End, it is.”
 He says they came, and with them the likelihood of further work in the West End, and possibly further afield. There are more towns out there where he knows no one, but this time his reputation will travel before him. Still wanderer, but no longer an outsider.