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Copyright

Amanda Coogan; Lianne Quigley; Alvean Jones ;

Published On

2025-04-07

Page Range

pp. 289–318

Language

  • English

Print Length

30 pages

13. ‘You Can Feel the Change in the Air’

Reflecting on Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady, a Shapeshifting of Teresa Deevy’s The King of Spain’s Daughter

Chapter of: Active Speech: Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy(pp. 289–318)
‘You can feel the change in the air’: reflections on Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady’ records a conversation between Amanda Coogan, Lianne Quigley, and Alvean Jones discussing Deevy as a deafened artist and their interpretation of Deevy’s 1935 text The King of Spain’s Daughter in an adaptation entitled Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady. In articulating their adaptation and production processes and the inclusive performance design for d/Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing audiences, they explain how working with Deevy’s text inspired them to create new work foregrounding the lived experience of d/Deaf people. Their discussion contextualises the system of education for deaf children in Ireland in the twentieth century, focusing on the injustices and trauma experienced by deaf children who were segregated, then categorised into different groups depending on their level of speech acquisition. Quigley, Jones, and Coogan explore the rationale for, and process of, creating an immersive performance with members of Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, a performance which responded to these injustices in embodying and celebrating women’s sign.

Contributors

Amanda Coogan

(author)

Amanda Coogan has been described by the Irish Times as the leading practitioner of performance art in Ireland. Her extraordinary work is challenging, provocative, and always visually stimulating. Her artworks encompass a multitude of media—objects, text, moving and still images, all circulating around her live performances. Her expertise lies in her ability to condense an idea to its essence and communicate it through her body. Her 2015 live exhibition, I’ll Sing You a Song from around the Town, was described by Artforum as ‘performance art at its best’. Amanda has collaborated with Deaf artists to realise two of Deevy’s works: Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady, an interpretation of The King of Spain’s Daughter, which was staged in the Abbey Theatre (2017), and the premiere of Possession, staged in Project Arts Centre, Dublin, and in The Granary Theatre, Cork, both in 2024.

Alvean Jones

(author)

Alvean Jones is a member of the Irish Deaf community, serving on a multitude of committees, and is involved with adult and continuing education as an administrator having worked for many years as a tutor. Alvean is secretary of the Deaf Heritage Centre Ireland, and has an abiding interest in history, and Irish Deaf history, specifically. In 2016, she co-edited a book on the history of St Mary’s School for Deaf Girls entitled Through the Arch to celebrate the 170th anniversary of that school. She has worked with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf since 1994 as an actor, writer, and director. In 2015, Alvean performed in Amanda Coogan’s RHA exhibition and in Coogan’s 2016 Belfast International Arts Festival production Run to the Rock. In May 2017, Alvean performed with Kate Romano in Ailís Ní Ríain’s play, I Used to Feel, which was staged for Cork Midsummer Festival and revived as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival in September 2018. Alvean collaborated with Coogan as a researcher, dramaturge, and performer contributing in multiple ways to You told me to Wash and Clean my Ears (2014) and to Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady (2017), both staged at the Peacock Theatre. Alvean performed in Death of the Innocents (2021) by the Belfast-based Deaf theatre company D'Sign Arts at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. In 2024, she co-curated and performed in the premiere of Teresa Deevy’s Possession (2024), which was staged in Project Arts Centre, Dublin and The Granary Theatre, Cork. Alvean has created several videos translating historical articles and Irish Deaf history into Irish Sign Language and is currently working on an anthology of Irish Deaf history.

Lianne Quigley

(author)
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0729-3656

Lianne Quigley is an Artistic Director of Dublin Theatre of the Deaf (DTD). She is a Deaf activist and co-led the campaign for the legal recognition of Irish Sign Language (ISL). Lianne is Chairperson of the Irish Deaf Society, a Deaf-led civil rights organisation. She performed in and co-directed the Coogan/DTD collaborative project You Told Me to Wash and Clean My Ears (2014), directing the forty-strong, Deaf community cast. She wrote and directed I Have Spread My Dreams Under Your Feet: The Story of W.B. Yeats (2015), performed at the Deaf Village Ireland, and led the choreographic research in the Coogan/DTD collaboration, Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady (2017). Lianne has written, directed, and performed in DTD productions 1916 (2016) and Suffragette (2018), both performed at the Deaf Village Ireland. In 2020, with Alvean Jones, Lianne co-wrote and performed Letter 8, which was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre as part of the Dear Ireland series. In 2022, she worked with Amanda Coogan, Alvean Jones, DTD, Cork Deaf Community Choir, and staff and students of South East Technological University to devise a production of Teresa Deevy’s ballet Possession, which was performed in February in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin and in The Granary Theatre, Cork in June as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival, both in 2024.