SHOEMAKER 23

There are those who question my integrity in daring to write and produce Shoemaker, something to do I think, with considerable ignorance and lack of educatuion on their part, a belief that because they feel something, therefore, it is true and cannot be challenged. As a teacher, I find that sad if not altogether alarming. If we must disagree at least let us both be 'armed' with facts.

I am not Cuban, but Shoemaker is so much more than a play about Cuba.

It is actually about 'little people' EVERYWHERE who transcent large world events, events they can never hope to influence but through their courage, tenacity and humanity, they survive with dignity and pride..

Shoemaker is also unashamedly a play about the scourge of imperialism and a world wide revoluton begun, in part, by Che Guevara-Lynch in Argentina. (Yes, Che was half Irish and he developed, as his father said, an 'Irish Rebel's heart'. Che was enormously proud of his Irish heritage from which he learned about the Irish patriots, rebellions and the effacy of guerilla warfare) Che joined with Fidel Castro and their cause was taken up, most notably by Nelson Mandella, Yasser Arafat and Gerry Adams. Mandella refers to the others as his brothers in arms...those who came to the aid of the ANC when no one else was bothered about apartheid, not the Americans or the British or Europeans or for that matter Australians. My point here, in case it is missed, is that there are blacks and whites and Christians and Muslims, Palestinians, Africans, Irishmen and Cubans.......;brothers in arms'. The cause was a shared, single cause, more asbout those who have and those who have not than about the color of one's skin or religion.

Now if you know nothing about me, please know that I am an Irishman and a republican and few counrties have suffered under colonial rule than my country. Know your history.

I could elaborate at great length the silliness of my detractors but I doubt if they are capable of hearing.

Suffice to say this about theatre in general and it is where Nuworks has always sat: The entire fabric of what we do in an art form that should never be subject to sensorship is founded on the basic premis of the suspension of disbelief.

Moreover, all actors, the great and the not so great, despite a myriad of well intentioned theory, a good deal of which I teach and have done so for close to 50 years, are simply people pretending to be someone they are not.

Viva la revolution!