DIRECTING WOMEN : Far from home, young Irish illegals search for a sense of belonging in Fionnula Flanagan’s ‘Away Alone’

Amnesty . A fine word, warm like a sheltering blanket, especially during the 1980s for illegal aliens passionately seeking a better life and a chance, at last, to belong.

Well, for some, maybe. But what about those who arrived after the December, 1981, cutoff date specified in the landmark amnesty legislation of the early ‘80s. Do welcoming arms close over a cold heart at the flip of a calendar page? The plight of one unsung group of immigrants that arrived too late is at the core of Janet Noble’s drama “Away Alone,” which opened last night at the Court Theatre in West Hollywood.

The “illegals” in this case are Irish, quite young (average age early 20s) and desperately escaping an economic chaos in their homeland that currently has a third of the population supporting the entire population. It’s a situation that is deeply felt by Irish actress Fionnula Flanagan, director of the play’s West Coast premiere.

Flanagan claims the problem is even more pronounced than the 19th-Century potato famine that drove thousands of Irish immigrants to our shores. “If you look at 50% of the population being under 25,” she explained, “it means that they are graduating out of school, graduating out of training colleges, they’re coming fresh onto the job market between the ages of 16 and 22 or 24, with little or no opportunity because the economy is simply not growing at the same rate as they are producing children, which sort of ravages an economy. So they do what they’ve always done, which is emigrate.”

Although many young Irish move to Germany, an amazingly large number find their way to the United States. As well as U.S.-based Irish organizations can estimate, there are currently more than 140,000. “America has always had such ties with Ireland,” Flanagan said, “and, of course, it’s very easy for the Irish to pass as American. It’s not unusual. I mean, you know, if I were illegal, people would never question it. When I go to get work, yes, they do ask me to produce a Social Security card, they ask me to produce an alien card, you have to fill in one of those forms now each time that you work. The net is getting tighter, but socially you’d never question it.”

“Away Alone” producer Catherine MacNeal, who also produced the acclaimed 1988 Theatre West production of Brian Friel’s Irish tragedy “The Freedom of the City,” also directed by Flanagan, gives another example: “There are a lot of illegal Canadians in this country, but try to finger them. We can’t even tell who’s Canadian.”

The safety factor for these young Irish dreamers varies, depending on where they establish themselves. According to Sean Benson of Emerald Island Immigration in Woodside, N.Y., the police in New York and Boston have been instructed by authorities “not to ask too many questions.” In San Francisco, with an estimated illegal Irish population of 10,000, there have been more than a dozen arrests in the past three weeks, but the Bay Area’s Irish Immigration Reform Unit says the arresting officer claims to have an informer within the illegals’ group. “They rat on each other,” said Flanagan. “Vendettas going on, you know, the old Irish thing of betrayal.”

The Immigration Act of 1990 was signed by President Bush last October, allowing a minimum of 48,000 Irish to settle in the United States over the next three years. But, said Flanagan, “at the same time, the people who are already here illegally are not affected by that. So they will forever be illegal, unless they go back to Ireland and apply for one of the visas and take their waiting period. There was no amnesty granted when the new visas were given, which is what they were hoping would happen. So these people live in a kind of limbo.”

MacNeal nodded in agreement. “They mainly enter the country legally,” she said, “then they become illegal when their tourist visas run out.” And live in limbo.

Definitely not in limbo is the career of the director. Flanagan, who began working in Irish theater at age 13, counts among her acting credits an Emmy award-winning performance in the ABC miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man,” and all six leads in the theater piece “James Joyce’s Women,” which she produced. She also had the dubious honor of seducing Rob Lowe in 1986’s “Youngblood.” Her latest project, “Death Dreams,” with Christopher Reeve, airs June 23 on the Lifetime Channel.

Flanagan saw “Away Alone” in its acclaimed New York production last year, the night after seeing “Grapes of Wrath” on Broadway. Steinbeck’s Joad family, she felt, spoke for its era, but the kids who are “away alone” in Noble’s play speak for today, when homes are breaking up and the young often have to find their way without the help of the family unit.

“These are the young Joads of today,” she said. “These are the people who are really risking. I don’t mean just the Irish. I mean all the illegals.

“It’s the old thing of blaming the victim. We make them victims, then we blame them for the ways in which they’re trying to cope as best they can. And some of the ways they cope, of course, are on the fringes of the law. They have to be. For each one of us, isn’t that what we’re trying to do? To belong? To belong in society, in our families, in our communities?”

The play, MacNeal added, “is for anyone who has tried to break out of the mold, strike out on their own and face a world that they don’t know. And try to make something more of who they are. How do you do that? You make relationships with people, and it’s your friends that support you through that, and that’s what this play is about.”

Flanagan agreed. “All these kids are here without their families,” she said. Throughout the play, the characters “keep re-creating, not their parents, but the nest of their own peers.”

Although “Away Alone” concerns illegal aliens, it does not carry a political placard. “The problems of the play,” Flanagan said, “involve being young. It’s not being Irish, it’s being young.

“How do you cope with this world--I’m talking about the world of this country--if you arrive when you’re very young, you’ve got ideals, and dreams, and a few fantasies and fears. You’ve got a peer group you meet that you’ve got to keep up your end with, and on top of that, you’ve got to dodge the law. You haven’t done anything really wrong, but you’ve got to prevent yourself from being picked up and deported.”

The title of the play is taken from the last line of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake.” Joyce, too, was an exile. But whether from intellectual narrowness or economic oppression, being an exile still means you are forever away--and very alone.