SHE was a suffragist, socialist, the first woman elected to Westminster and an enigmatic figure who played a leading role in the Easter Rising and a new piece of theatre wants to unravel some of the mythology around Constance Markievicz.
Constance was created by Kellie Hughes and features new music by composer Michael Rooney and will be performed next month in Lissadell Church in Co Sligo. As a child Constance Markievicz lived in Lissadell House so the church setting seemed appropriate for this new work which has been commissioned by the Hawk's Well Theatre in Sligo.
Kellie Hughes admits to an initial reluctance to tackle a dramatisation of the enigma.
"I had a real image of her in the ballgown with a gun and plummy accent; this Ango-Irish figure, and I thought putting that on a stage is not something I want to do," she said.
Yet the more she tried to shake Constance the more the lady got under her skin.
"People eulogise her and they also demonised her," Kellie explains.
"She was a woman in a time whenever women were not taking part in life in that way. She was unapologetic and loud and obnoxious. She was also caring and her human side came out very strongly."
Kellie was particularly taken with something Constance had written in a letter to her brother - My enemies will make a monster out of me, my friends a heroine and both will be equally wide of the truth.
"Such a prophetic statement, there was something very self aware about her."
Constance Markievicz was a lady of firsts.
She was the first woman elected as a Westminster MP. Her historic win was in 1918 but, as a member of Sinn Fein, she did not take her seat. Instead she became a dedicated parliamentarian sitting in the Dáil.
She was also the only woman to be court martialled in the aftermath of the Easter Rising and was sentenced to death, but was spared "solely and only on account of her sex" according to the written court verdict.
Kellie - who is a theatre maker and the artistic director of the Ad Astra Performing Arts Scholarship at UCD - has created eight different movements and they will be performed by an eight-piece orchestra featuring classical and traidional musicians, with one live voice and sound design by Joe Hunt.
"One piece is called contradiction," Kellie explains.
"There was a rumour mill around her. Did she have a basement full of skulls? Did she shoot a policeman? Did she shoot a policeman in cold blood?"
Constance is being staged in Lissadell Church at 8pm from December 5 to 7.
