Streets paved with theatre

Colin Murphy sent off a ten-minute script to Fishamble Theatre Company, and found himself caught up in an attempt to turn Temple Bar into one great theatre

Dublin's Temple Bar is a teeming, sordid quarter of drink-sodden debauchery. Where better to make theatre on the streets? Fishamble Theatre Company has just finished a four-day project, under the title of Whereabouts, that aimed to bring theatre onto the streets, and to exploit the natural and constant theatre of the area.

A rag-tag group of aspirant playwrights were brought together through a competition for short scripts (this isn't an objective report; I was one of them), directors were hired, actors were cast. The plays were sorted into two groups: daytime and nighttime. Venues and sites were found – a café for the story about a journalist meeting an anonymous source, an upmarket boutique for the one about a fight in a shop changing room, a hidden corner for the junkie, a grand stairway for the grande dame (in drag).

It was all organised into two Temple Bar "trails": one at lunchtime, one in the evening. Tour guides and production managers were recruited: the audience had to get from one piece to the next without getting distracted by the busking or abducted by a hen party. The audience gathered on the half hour; four groups followed each other around the trail in each session. The actors, repeating each show four times in quick succession, were primed by stealthy production managers, stalking the streets with walkie talkies. In some places, space was tight, and there was only room for the ticketed audience to squeeze in for the show; in others, the performance took place in the open, the actors accosting passers-by as well as the tour group.

There were moments that were extraordinary. For a short play by Anna Newell, we were herded into Claddagh records. Claddagh has a floor-to-ceiling front window, and we stood around, looking out, wondering what was going to happen. A woman's voice came over the shop's sound system, distraught. Across the narrow street, a woman sat at a pavement café table, sobbing. Other customers sat around her, barely noticing. We were privy to her thoughts, broadcast on the sound system, as she talked in her head to an absent brother. Passers-by passed by, unknowing, or spotted this group standing staring out the window and stopped to stare at us, and follow our gaze.

There were also moments of well-handled social realism. A drunken street sweeper who accompanied the group at one point; a mother despairingly searching for her missing son; a junkie wretchedly crying out. These were less overtly theatrical, but exciting for the way they blurred the division between what was "theatre" and what could have been just somebody on the street. In Temple Bar, there was a sense that almost anything, or anyone, could have become a play. Every nook could have been a stage.

Amongst it all, there were plenty of pieces that were overwritten (probably all of them showed signs of their authors' lack of experience), and acting or direction that was strained. But what was special was the way it all worked together, the way it surprised and subverted. Temple Bar was the stage and, in many ways, Temple Bar was the performer. The idea was a simple one, well realised, and Fishamble have now left us with a template. It could be adapted to any town – anywhere where the streets are filled with theatre.

?More Whereabouts is now over, but for details of other free Diversions events, go to www.templebar.ie