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A VISIT WITH ANNE YEATS1 GENIAL AND FORTHRIGHT, Anne Yeats welcomes her visitors. She has her father's strong features and broad, deep forehead, but her laughing eyes and bright blond hair give her a distinction of her own. In the engaging clutter of her second floor studio-apartment at 39 Upper Mount Street, Dublin, birds sing in sunlit cages. .one is not surprised to find W. B. Yeats's daughter at home here. Q. Miss Yeats, the readers are interested in your father, of course, but they are interested also in the persons who inspired him, who helped him, lived with him.... Your father's work shows so much concern for you, his family. Did his life as-as he put it, "a smiling public man"-leave him much time for you? A. Not really a vast amount of time. He was 54, 52, well, they were married in 1917, you can look it up, when he was married. He spent a certain amount of time with us. I really did not see an awful lot of him until a year or two before he died. My mother thought he was tired out-she arranged his time so he would have energy for what he wanted to do-and would send me in to talk to him. I was worried about it really. I found that if I just gave out a few remarks, that would get him started. Q. What were your leading remarks? A. My leading remarks.... Oh, whatever was on my mind. Then I was working at the Abbey Theatre.... Usually he was talking aloud. Q. What were you doing at the Abbey Theatre? A. I was the designer. I did the sets for Purgatory and [On] Baile's Strand. I did the first set for Purgatory. I did that just before he died. Q. That would have been in 1938? 1939? A. 1938-39, well, he died in January, 1939, so it must have been 1938... . Q.... Anyway, did your father give you a free rein? A. Yes, he gave me more or less a free hand. I don't remember showing a design to him. It was a backcloth and a tree. The simpler set the better. Q. Did he have many suggestions about the production? A. No, he wasn't doing much in the theater then. I don't remember whether he came to rehearsals.... Earlier he did-a tremendous lot of time. Then he would have gone in and out. Then [193738 ] he used to go down the two first nights. 300 MODERN DRAMA December Q. Was there an air of presentiment [at Purgatory] that this would be his last play? A. No, I don't think so. At least if there was, no one said anything about it in my presence. Q. When did you work on the set of On Baile's Strand? A. Urn ... In 1936 we went to Spain. 1937-38-39, that set of dates. I left the Abbey in 1940. Q. What did you use for On Baile's Strand? A. The set was simple enough. We used two bronze doors, stage bronze doors. I think Robert Gregory did them, and the costumes, I did them. Q. You say Robert Gregory did the doors? A. I'm not sure. I think originally he did do the doors. I don't think it was Edmund Dulac. I'm fairly certain it was Robert Gregory. Q. What kind of costumes did you use? A. In shades of green. . . . They really looked like green nightgowns , except for Cuchulain who was wearing a short tunic with nothing on top. Q. It's not our business, of course, but why did you leave the Abbey? A. We parted company. They didn't like my work. I was fired. Of course, I was just twenty-one when I was fired, and I had been there since I was sixteen. I wanted to know more about production, so I started going to rehearsals at the Gate, the competitor up the street. The usual set at the Abbey was three white flats [gesture of three sides of a box]. I put in two flats...

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