Even though most know
her through the Introduction to Literary Studies seminar, this associate
professor is a specialist on Irish literature, drama and cultural studies. The
following interview reveals more about the dark-haired Irish-born Clare
Wallace.
·
Miscellaneous
What did
you study at Trinity College?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I
studied English at Trinity. I did a
couple of years of French as well. However, I would have to say that the degree
was only a part of the ‘study’ experience there. Trinity is a remarkable university
partly because of the wonderful campus in the heart of the city and its
copyright library, but also partly because of the ways in which students from
very different disciplines come into contact with each other socially and
creatively within the university.
If not
teaching literature, what other profession would you like to attempt?
Teaching literature is my
profession and I’m afraid I haven’t had much time to consider any hypothetical
new ones lately. I quite like what I do.
·
On Literature
Is there
a short story that helped you get through a rough patch?
I don’t really use literature
as therapy, if that is what is implied.
There are a few short story writers, however, I would recommend Angela
Carter’s collection The Bloody Chamber
and Other Stories for an intoxicatingly playful mix of feminism,
postmodernism and lush language; J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly for delightfully gloomy Victorian Gothic and
James Joyce’s Dubliners which
everyone should read a few times.
Your
latest academic book is on David Greig. Is there any specific reason why you
study his works?
The reason I’ve spent so much
time working on his plays is because they are fantastic—thoughtful, formally
inventive and political in a manner that is ‘anti-cynical’ to coin a phrase.
He’s one of the most significant and gifted playwrights at work in the UK
today. If one has a choice (admittedly
not always the situation for a BA student), one should never write about
authors one doesn’t love.
Who do
you consider to be the greatest Irish dramatist?
Samuel Beckett.
What was
the most memorable theatre production you have ever seen?
Best of all time – not sure.
Best recently – I just managed to catch the last night of Greig’s latest play, The Events, in London. When I
interviewed him for my book, back in 2012, we had a long conversation about
current events, (in particular the Anders Breivik massacre in 2011) travel and
his projects and it was fascinating to see how many of those ideas made their
way into that play. It’s a really moving
and provocative two-hander about trauma, violence and multiculturalism—with a
choir on stage.
Do you
have a favourite piece of Czech drama or prose?
Kafka, The Trial; Kundera The Book
of Laughter and Forgetting … cheery books like that.
·
On a more personal level
What part
of Ireland are you from exactly?
I grew up in in the
countryside in County Monaghan quite near the village of Glaslough and within a
couple of miles of the border with Northern Ireland. Despite the shadow of The Troubles, I had
quite a peaceful, rural childhood!
When and
how did you get to the Czech Republic?
I came to the Czech Republic
first in 1996. An Englishman, Bryn Haworth, had succeeded in securing some
funding to establish an Irish Studies strand within the English Department, so
I came to teach Irish Studies. Then when he left I carried on from there and
ended up teaching lots of other things as well.
Do you
have a writing spot in Prague (a café, literary bar etc)?
It would be nice to be hanging
around artistic places doing artistic things but the reality is rather more
banal. Like all my colleagues who work at Faculty, our financial situation
necessitates other sources of income. I
teach at two private universities in Prague, I am also a parent of a school-age
youngster, so I am lucky if I can even manage a coffee somewhere these
days. I can’t speak for creative
writing, but I doubt if anything much of scholarly value can actually be
produced in a literary bar in any case.
From your
experience, is there anything the Czechs and Irish share (characteristic,
behaviour, sense of humour etc)?
No, I do not think there is
much specific or meaningfully shared territory between Czech and Irish
identities; that said, I don’t hold with national stereotypes, they lead to
hasty generalizations about people as groups that are rarely very
truthful. Mostly they are a cover for
either wishful thinking or covert racism.
·
On University and future plans
Quite a
few of our readers are slowly putting together their BA thesis together – what
was yours on?
Good question – it was a very
long time ago! At the time I was doing a BA we could choose between writing two
extended papers of around 25 pages, or one 50 page work. I know I chose to
write two papers, and I know I wrote on work on Jacobean Tragedy. The other was
obviously very dear to me as I have utterly forgotten what it was about.
What are your current research projects?
At the moment I have just completed a chapter on a theatre company
called Suspect Culture for a book on British theatre companies. I have also just completed revising a paper
on Northern Irish dramatist, Stewart Parker, and his television plays. And the
biggest thing on my horizon is a monograph on British Theatre Criticism from
1980-2012 for Palgrave.
Have you
written any poems, drama or prose?
Unfortunately yes, but I was
young at the time.
Do you ever experience a writer’s block? How do you
tackle it?
Writer’s block can be a nice way to say a few different things, can’t
it? It might mean ‘I’m too lazy’; it might mean ‘I don’t know what I want to
say’; it might mean ‘I don’t want to do this really’ (perhaps connected with
‘I’m too lazy’, perhaps not). So one needs to know which it is in order to
begin to tackle the problem. Personally, I find it difficult to jump in and out
of a research project—usually I try to guard two mornings a week for writing
and research which sounds like a luxury.
The reality is that it’s never enough if one knows one needs to crank
out 5000 words of good work a month between classes and marking and prep. However, if one were to wait for the perfect
time to write, nothing would ever get done. So my policy nowadays to at least
do something even if it is insufficient.
Better to get started than to be paralyzed at the starting line, set
some targets and then let deadlines do their terrible work on your conscience.
And finally, where do you see yourself 5 years from
now? What books would you like to have written by then?
Hard to predict, hopefully somewhat less frenetically busy. The theatre criticism book will certainly be
done. After that who knows. Maybe I’ll
just have writer’s block in a literary café for a bit.
- Prepared by Anna Hupcejová
