— About the Director

MFA Directing alumnus John Cooper has directed over 130 productions at theatres across Canada. Recent credits locally include the Arts Club Theatre's production of Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel and the Vancouver Playhouse¹s production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He is a three-time Jessie Richardson Theatre Award winner for Outstanding Direction; his most recent win was for the Arts Club's production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. His production of Audrei Kairen's Big Mama: The Willie Mae Thornton Story won the Betty Mitchell Award for Best Production of a Musical in 2000. The Big Mama Thornton project was revived this past summer at The Belfry Theatre and will travel to the National Arts Centre in April. UBC directing projects include Bryan Wade's adaptation of Lady from the Sea and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. John is a freelance director based in Vancouver and he teaches stage directing as an adjunct professor for UBC's Department of Theatre and Film.

 

 

— Lughnasa Festival

Compiled by John Cooper

- Pagan celebration of fertility up in the hills; fertility of the land, of human beings

In 1962 The Festival of Lughnasa, a study of Lughnasadh by folklorist Máire MacNeill, was published. MacNeill drew on medieval writings and on surveys and studies from throughout Ireland and Britain. Her conclusion was that the evidence testified to an ancient Celtic festival on August 1st that involved the following:

A solemn cutting of the first of the corn of which an offering would be made to the deity by bringing it up to a high place and burying it; a meal of the new food and of bilberries of which everyone must partake; a sacrifice of a sacred bull, a feast of its flesh, with some ceremony involving its hide, and its replacement by a young bull; a ritual dance-play perhaps telling of a struggle for a goddess and a ritual fight; an installation of a head on top of the hill and a triumphing over it by an actor impersonating Lugh; another play representing the confinement by Lugh of the monster blight or famine; a three-day celebration presided over by the brilliant young god or his human representative. Finally, a ceremony indicating that the interregnum was over, and the chief god in his right place again.

Lughnasadh celebrations were commonly held on hilltops. Traditionally, people would climb hills on Lughnasadh to gather bilberries, which were eaten on the spot or saved to make pies and wine. It is thought that Reek Sunday the yearly pilgrimage to the top of Croagh Patrick in County Mayo in late July‹was originally a Lughnasadh ritual.

As with the other Gaelic seasonal festivals, Beltane and Samhain, the celebrations involved a great feast. In the Scottish Highlands, people made a special cake called the lunastain, which was also called luineanwhen given to a man and luineag when given to a woman. This may have originated as an offering to the gods.

Another custom that Lughnasadh shared with the other Gaelic festivals was the lighting of bonfires. The ashes from Lughnasadh bonfires would be used to bless fields, cattle and people. Lughnasadh was also a favored time for handfastings ‹ trial marriages that would generally last a year and a day, with the option of ending the contract before the new year, or formalizing it as a lasting marriage.

Assemblies on hilltops are a traditional part of the proceedings. Lughnasa Sunday is known as 'Bilberry Sunday" in many districts of Ireland. It is traditional to climb the mountainsides to collect these fruits for the first time on this day. This has given rise to a variety of names for the festival- Blaeberry Sunday, Heatherberry Sunday, Whort Sunday etc. The size and quantity of berries at Lughnasa was a sign of whether the harvest as a whole would be good or not.

Another example of these fruit-gathering traditions used to take place in County Donegal. On the first Sunday in August young people would set off after lunch to pick bilberries and not return until nightfall. Often "bilberry collecting" was only an excuse for young men and women to pair off for the day. The boys would thread berries into bracelets for the girls, competing to make the prettiest gifts for their partners.

There would be lots of singing and dancing. Before returning home the girls removed their bracelets and left them on the hillside. After climbing back down the hill the men indulged in sporting contests such as horse racing, hurling and weight-throwing.

Sports are a common feature of modern Lughnasa festivals. The various Highland games are probably a descendant of the Lughnasa games. Some are still held around the traditional time of Lughnasa, but may be held at any time during the summer or autumn. Ripening crops have to be protected from the forces of blight and from the floods and winds associated with Lughnasa. Traces of this conflict are seen in the battle imagery associated with the festival, such as the Battle of the Flowers, faction fighting, and other competitive sports.'

In Ireland and the Isle of Man many of these hilltop gatherings have survived to the present day. On the Isle of Man the inhabitants would climb to the top of Snaefell on Lhuany's Day. A pilgrimage, often barefoot, would often be followed by drinking, dancing, fighting, and very unruly behavior.

There is a legend that the custom of hilltop pilgrimages died out when clergy started to take collections at the summit.

Lughnasa was celebrated from the summit of the earth to the depths. In addition to climbing hills, Lughnasa was also a time for visiting holy wells. Wells on the Isle of Man were said to be at the peak of their healing powers at Lughnasa; St Maugold Well near Ramsey is reputed to cure sterility if the sufferer throws a pin in the well or dips their heel into it. Assemblies at wells would often be celebrated on the feast day of local saints, but many of these gatherings were moved from the saint's day to whenever Lughnasa was locally observed. Visitors would leave offerings; typically coins or clooties. Clooties are strips of cloth strips or rags, left tied by a holy well, usually as part of a healing ritual.

Flowers are a prominent Lughnasa theme, and in English villages wells are dressed with elaborate floral tributes on significant dates. Many sacred pagan wells were renamed after Mary (and other female saints), and floral arrangements were an important part of the August 15 feast of the Assumption of Mary, or Marymass.

In northern Scotland, where the harvest naturally occurred later, Marymass eventually replaced Lammas as the festival of the first harvest. This may explain medieval associations of Mary with ears of corn. Mary's association with wells, mid-August Lughnasa flowers, and other harvest corn customs could be another example of the Christianization of pagan traditions and beliefs.