If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere
My life has changed fundamentally in the last few years. Parenthood, while wonderful – full of joy and noise – is completely full-on and exhausting. I’ve much less time for pursuing my theatrical dreams since the birth of my daughter Aurora in February 2012 (a tiny bun in the oven during my all-female production of Hamlet in June of the previous year) followed by my son Luke less than 16 months later. So when I read about the Big Green Apple event on the Attic Studio’s Facebook page, I was totally game. The strict parameters regarding characters and theme appealed to me and the tight writing deadline was right up my street. While challenging, it was totally doable. Luke was only 4 months old and napped for a few hours every afternoon (he still does, thank goodness) and I used this bit of respite to pen After the Eulogy.
I had such fun writing the piece, which is a farcical comedy about Ireland, the banking crisis, marriage and big egos. The characters include a disgraced dead banker, two of his ex-wives and the cocky Brooklyn actor the dead guy paid to say nice things about him, because he couldn’t be sure anyone else would. In an era where ordinary mortals take pains to manipulate their public image via the Internet and social media, it’s not that ridiculous a premise that a vain sociopath would hire a complete stranger to spin yarns about him from the pulpit.
Of course I hoped that my script would be selected for performance in Dublin and might even make the final cut for Origins’ 1st Irish Festival, but it was really just so great to do something for Me at a time when thinking about myself and my needs inevitably had to take a back-seat. To have an avenue for my creativity – an opportunity to be my artistic self again for a short while, was a godsend. Although nappy and nursing duty meant I couldn’t be present during the rehearsal period at Belvedere college, I did bus it up from Cork on the evening of the show, only to hop back on the Aircoach 15 minutes after the curtain call.
It was a great buzz to see my short script come to life at the Big Green Apple event at Liberty Hall, directed so well by Maisie Lee and performed beautifully by Aenne Barr, SJ Quigley and Keith Singleton. When I heard my piece was one of the five selected for performance in New York I was “beside myself”, as they say. Having a play, even a short one, performed on a stage in New York, New York was a dream come true. And I will make it there, for the performances at the Times Square Arts Centre. I’m getting a reprieve from mommy duties for 8 whole days and jetting off with some friends to enjoy this lovely personal accomplishment as well as all the amazing things that NYC has to offer. It’s kind of madness, since money’s tight, but what an unbelievable opportunity. I just have to be there.
Aside from my excitement about seeing what Henning Hegland and his troupe of performers do with my script, I’m so looking forward to jazz at the Lennox Lounge, show tunes at Don’t Tell Mama’s piano bar and eating my weight in cupcakes and foie gras ravioli at Scarpetta. I was in NYC twice before and had a ball. The second time I was there I did a superb acting intensive with Larry Singer in Tribeca. This visit should be extra special, for obvious reasons. It’s a pity that my husband Keith won’t be with me (he’ll be minding our bunchkins in Cork), but I’ll have some of my girls with me to toast my achievement.
The script development process
After Liberty Hall and the big announcement, my colleagues and I were put in contact with two dramaturgs – the Abbey Theatre’s Jessica Traynor and Rebecca Nesvet, who is involved with Origins’ Theatre. We were informed that we could either keep up scripts as they were – under 10 minutes – or we could expand them up to a maximum of 20 minutes.
Being a writer who has no problem getting words down on paper (getting rid of them is always my problem!), I opted to lengthen After the Eulogy, confident that there was ample scope to develop the characters further. In fact, in the weeks that followed I developed the piece into a three-act play with the original post-funeral “after-party” functioning as the opening scene. For the purposes of Origins’ 1st Irish, I knew it would be way, way, way too long, but I figured I could, perhaps, combine the first scene with the final section in which Jessica, the dead banker’s younger ex-wife, was jilted at the altar by Jonah, the self-obsessed act-or. I road-tested a version of what I thought could become the New York script with a wonderful group of creative people from Cork, who are all part of the Broken Crow theatre ensemble. Lead by writer Ronan Fitzgibbon, the group was very encouraging about my initial idea, but less enthusiastic about where I had taken it. The advice was to go back to where I started and just expand the “moment” after the eulogy, rather than seek to bring the characters on a different, ultimately less interesting journey. I could see their point.
Jessica Traynor was remarkably giving with her time, providing written feedback on the original scripts and even making herself available to meet each writer in person. By the time I met her for a coffee and a chat at the Abbey, I had already amended the script in the light of the comments from the Broken Crow crew. Gone was the ill-fated wedding at the end, and instead I fleshed out the original scene and tried to beef up the two women, so that they remained vital and present when Jonah enters and takes up a lot of air-time with his self-indulgent schtick.
Jessica was generally positive about the changes I had made to the script and gave me some excellent suggestions about where and how to strengthen it further. In particular, she urged me to consider opening the play with a little snippet of Jonah’s eulogy. When I got home, I did as Jessica suggested and wrote a portion of the eulogy. It worked.
For her part, Rebecca’s feedback on Jonah’s voice was most helpful. It was great to get the impressions of an American dramaturg on aspects of Jonah’s background and motivations. More generally, Rebecca posed some thought-provoking questions about conflict, sequencing and cultural references. All in all, I found the engagement with both dramaturgs – as well as the two script readings with Broken Crow – really fruitful and rewarding. I’d never had access to such knowledgeable theatre people on previous writing ventures, and I’m sure I could definitely have benefited it.
The writing process culminated in a reading at the Attic in late July. The original director and actors were unfortunately unavailable for this, but I got two actors on board who I’d worked with before – Diana O’Conner, a member of the Attic who I actually had in mind when I wrote the part of May and Ronan P. Byrne, one of the finest, most versatile male performers I know, who does a mean New York accent. Yvonne Ussher helped me fill the final role, inviting Niamh Hogan to read the part of Jessica. All three did an excellent job with my (almost) finalized script, especially in the light of the skimpy rehearsal time.
I was thrilled with all the laughs and the complimentary feedback after the reading though appalled when to learn the duration of my script. It was insanely long. Oh, I knew beforehand that I had cuts to make – several minutes to lose – I just didn’t quite realize how many! Only one of the other writers opted to extend his piece, but he was still well under the 20-minute deadline. The other three had the good sense to leave well enough alone. Their original scripts were just dandy – perfect as they were -no need to tinker with them unduly. But me … oh, I had to try to make more of mine and in the end I created an almighty headache for myself.
I was very close to scrapping the whole thing and going back to my 10 minute original. That would definitely have been the quickest, simplest option. But it certainly wouldn’t have been painless, since it would have meant losing so much of the fun, new stuff I had written, including the eulogy and Jonah’s improv, which I really liked. I managed to cut several pages more before sending it off to the Big Green Apple team with an instruction that “Henning can cut as he sees fit to get it under the wire. I am done.” Sorry Henning. I know this was not ideal, but hopefully you’ll gain a greater affinity with the text by having to make choices. I have every faith.
The Theatre of my Past
I have a variety of experience as a writer, actor and director. In June I performed the role of Sr Norma in my one-woman show, The Calling, about a youngish nun who starts to doubt her religious vocation following a chance encounter with erotic fiction. The show was part of the Cork Arts Theatre’s summer lunchtime series and was very well received. I hope to revive the piece later in the year. I would love to bring it to Dublin and maybe further afield. Yeah, New York would be nice. Sure. Why not. It’s just me and a couple of statues of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin!
My directing highlights include the gritty Irish premier of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death (Smock Alley Boys’ School, 2010), the all-female version of Hamlet (Pearse Centre, 2011) and productions of my own plays Massaging Moses (Teachers’ Club 2009) and Murder Monologues (Cork Gaol 2005, Teachers’ Club 2008, Powerscourt Centre, 2009) all for Plastic Theatre, the production company I established with Keith Seybert, my husband, in 2002.
While I have been totally immersed in producing, directing, writing and occasionally acting in productions for Plastic Theatre in the past, it’s super stressful trying to do it all – or a lot of it anyway, on your own. And it’s been disheartening, more than once, to get small audiences when me and my cast and crew have put so much into a piece. There’s a lot of great work being made in Ireland and Dublin in particular. It can be hard, without funding or very visible, supportive mentors to generate the word-of-mouth necessary to pack houses. I’ve got to say it’s been really fantastic to have a team like the Big Green Apple crew- particularly Camille and Yvonne who have done Trojan work on this project – behind staging After the Eulogy. I am so grateful to the Attic Studio and Origin’s 1st Irish for this opportunity.
What the future holds
Regarding future writing endeavours, I plan to revisit several existing scripts to whip them into shape and maybe even send them off to big, bombastic production companies. Other people do it, so I probably should too. If they don’t know about me, they’re definitely not going to commission me. It’s just a matter of self-belief, I guess. I also recently started working on my first novel Descending the Tree. It’s about a marriage in crisis. So far I’ve written about 20 pages, all of which will most likely end up in the bin. It will be a tough slog. I like dialogue. The little details that make up a novel are a head-wreck. Finding the time to get down to it is also easier said than done. Sitting quietly with a computer is very difficult with two smallies under 2 and 1/2. They are both like tornados at the moment. But I am determined. It can be done.
After the Eulogy is one of 5 new plays by Irish writers staged as part of “With Love From” at the Origins’ 1st Irish Festival in New York. Venue: Times Square Arts Centre. Dates 22nd-23rd September 2014 @8pm.
http://1stirish.org/?post_type=show&p=1063
The Big Green Apple 