No, “Swampoodle” is not a relative of the Loch Ness Monster — it’s the old name for an Irish neighborhood in D.C.’s NoMa (North of Massachusetts) area that was settled in the 1850s by immigrants fleeing the potato famine. It’s also the name of a play written and directed by the Irish husband and wife team of Tom Swift and Jo Mangan that is debuting at the Uline Arena on Saturday. Why play in the Uline?
We were immediately drawn to the beauty of the building itself. The layers of paint and some of the traces of things, like [restroom] signs for ladies and gentlemen, all those things were immediately evocative. And it felt like it would make an astonishing place to set a piece of work for.
So you didn’t know at first about the building’s history
“The Irish [neighborhood], that was the starting point. However once we found out about the building, that Malcolm X spoke there but in that audience was George [Lincoln] Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party; the Beatles performed there; Bob Dylan; the Rolling Stones and at another point it was a Baptist church — the joys of finding a place like that with layers and layers of history to uncover was just amazing.
Today the arena operates as a car garage. How are you working around that?
It will still be a car park during the day and we’ll be working in it during the evenings and weekends. Our intervention will not alter [it] in any way; we just use lighting and costumes. I love that the space is the set.
Any hints for us about the play?
As well as mining all those [Irish immigrant] histories, it’s an entertaining evening, a sort of “you don’t know where to look” event. But it’s about people and how we interact with each other and proceed with life. – Liz Farmer
