Shame, rejection, and social stigma deeply impacted Catholics who had children out of wedlock in 20th century Ireland. Babies were taken from their mothers by nuns, mothers were sent away and ostracized, and unmarried fathers risked not finding work. If the father was absent, a deep sense of shame stained the lives of the mother and child. And if a shotgun wedding took place, neighbors knew why, and the hastened marriage did not expunge the act of an unmarried romp in the eyes of the Catholic Church and the Irish Catholic community.
Daisy Asquith’s After the Dance explores how these difficult themes of shame, rejection and social stigma played a role in her family. Daisy’s mother, Patricia was conceived after a dance in 1940’s Ireland. Her mother fled to give birth to Patricia in secret, and later handed her over to the nuns before she was adopted in England. More than 60 years later, Daisy and Patricia begin a quest to find out more about Patricia’s father, Thomas Browne. The Stranger than Fiction audience learned during the evening’s Q&A that making the film “was a struggle, really painful, we kept giving up actually, it took us five years to make, but you feel like you’re perpetuating the shame by allowing yourself to be silent” said Daisy.
“The thing about shame is that it kind of sticks to you, it’s a product of someone else’s disaster,” says Patricia in the film.
An extraordinary joy colors the spaces where pain does not reside, as the characters in After the Dance possess a special joie de vivre and spontaneity that wins the audience over. Even the characters with the shortest appearances leave their mark, seen when Daisy and Patricia try to locate local family in County Clare. Along the way they meet a gentlemen resembling what Irish Santa Claus might look like, who says how common it was for couples to shack up in a hay barn after dances. Remarking on the rejection suffered by participants, he says, “And anyone that never made a mistake never did anything.”
Patrica’s half sister Siobhan, the only sibling who agreed to help with the making of a film, is a force to be reckoned with. Frank and candid, genuine and soft, there’s no evidence to suggest that she is holding back. “When you’re engaged in something like this you peel layers of yourself away, and like any wound that’s open to the air, it hurts, and you don’t know what’s going to happen, and you don’t know when it’s going to heal or when it will be cured, and we’re not totally cured, and is anyone ever? It’s a journey,” she said during the Q&A. The courage it takes to be vulnerable and to take risks are some of the many aspects that make these characters heroes. “You know why I’m getting braver? It’s because I’m getting older and time is running out,” says Patricia in the film. And though she had the power to veto the results of this film up to the last cut, “Daisy had a clear vision of what she wanted to happen rather than setting anything in stone I just went along with it."
When Daisy and Patricia meet their cousins Johnny and Mary Browne, with each encounter the unassuming couple imperceptibly endear those they cross paths with, and they demonstrate the love and light that can turn a difficult situation inside out. As they prepare to accompany Daisy on a trip to New York City to learn more about the home and life of Thomas Browne, Mary says, “Out here is the end of the world, we’re not really up to date in the modern world.” True, they are not up to date, but rather timeless with their hospitality, their love, their reliability, their gaiety, their openness and their wisdom. They move through the world as if they are in perfect step with its rhythm. To witness the culture shock and exhilaration of a couple who had never been on a plane, let alone a train, was not just a testament to the film’s theme of courage, but a nod to the power of wonder and awe that comes with exploration.
The Q&A held a couple surprises including one comment from the audience who expressed her displeasure, remarking, among other things, “I see you’re having a go at the Catholic Church.” Evidence that difficult truths are painful to swallow, Daisy’s response was punctuated with pleas to stop, “I’m absolutely furious with the Catholic Church, do you know how many thousands of women had their babies taken away from them, [stop] many of them were found, [stop] their skeletons were found in wells, in doorways.” The power of After the Dance though, is that it allowed folks to come out of their personal prisons, as Siobhan calls it, and Daisy continued to say that “masses of people have come forward and said this happened in my family and no one ever talks about it.”
The second surprise, and less divisive, was learning that through word of mouth after the release of the film, Patricia learned she had a brother, who was introduced on stage that evening. To see the family presence of the Q&A was to bear witness to what STF moderator Ruth Somalo said so well, “that documentary has power to heal wounds and to transform and catalyze things that are deep and hidden and sometimes painful and I think this is a beautiful example of what you can do with the camera and open heart and a quest.”