My play in the Big Green Apple is ‘Till the Ocean is Hung Out to Dry’. I have been writing for the theatre for a number of years.
My most recent play was ‘Do Not Go Gentle’ performed by Smashing Times Theatre Company as part of their ‘Witness’ series of plays at the Project Arts Centre. Other plays include ‘Over The Bridge’ at the City Arts Centre and ‘The World Will End in Fire’ at the theatreupstairs@lanigans. In 2004 I received an Art Council Award for which I wrote and directed ‘A Journey Through the Markets’ which was performed in Collins Barracks in Dublin.
At first, the challenge of writing a play in 24 hours didn’t appeal to me. I had always mulled over plays and done rewrites and dwelled on them. To do something so quickly seemed to run the risk of certain failure. Also I wasn’t sure if I could do it or not.
Someone I know has the moto ‘do things that scare you’ and I think that’s a good one to live by if you work in the theatre. So I bit the apple!
On 22nd September 2013, George Heslin, via Skye from New York, announced the theme of the plays which was ‘With love from…’ Something about those three words and the three dots excited me. I was glad the theme wasn’t something to do with the collapse of the economy or some worthy political ideal. And that night, I slept little. It felt pressured, but also exhilarating. Next morning I started to write and the bones of the play was done by that afternoon. I titled it ‘Till the Ocean is Hung Out to Dry’….a somewhat quote form W.H. Auden’s poem ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’
Ten directors gathered in a room to choose their preferred script and cast. They would then have 24 hours to rehearse 10 ten minute plays, to be performed in front of an audience of around four hundred people in the theatre in Liberty Hall. It was heady stuff!
My director was Bairbre Ni Chaoimh and when I heard that I was more than pleased. Bairbre assembled a cast of Charles Leggett, Noni Stapleton and Andy Kellegher and rehearsals began. I did some rewrites. I had used the word ‘schlepping’, in the script; I wanted to describe animals in a farm being uneasy and shifty. Bairbre came up with a better word ‘skittery’ which was written into the script. An American actor Charles Leggett helped replace words we use in Ireland with authentic America diction; mobile phone to be replaced by ‘cell phone’…’pal’ replaced by ‘buddy’.
Noni Gallagher played the part of the American wife to perfection and the cold, dark, broken and brooding presence of Andy Kellegher completed the line-up. I felt so fortunate to have a cast and director who so completely and intuitively understood the script. A deeper understanding in some ways than I had.
The evening of the performances was one of the most magical nights that I have spent in the theatre. A sold out house and you could feel the electricity in the lobby of the building; a fission of terror and joy.
When I slipped backstage, just to thank the actors and director for all their hard work, nerves were crackling; fear was omniscient…it was the happy agony of what actors do. Take big risks.
The show started. With everything being done in 48 hours I had expected that there would be a kind of element of tight rope walking to the proceedings; but the actors seemed remarkably self-assured. It was the audience who were the nervous wrecks. As each play progressed and people relaxed into the evening, laughter flowed and applause filled the space.
I was nervous as hell when my play started, but I quickly relaxed. Bairbre had done a fantastic job directing it. The words I had written a few days earlier sailed out into the back of the auditorium. The audience laughed. They understood it. The lovesick Irishman encountering a middle-aged American couple…and a little epiphany occurs among these three people.
Applause. I was a happy man.
The Big Green Apple is a unique opportunity for playwrights to have their work staged in both Dublin and New York. For many Irish playwrights, New York has a magical ring to it; the place where the plays of Mamet, Williams, O’ Neill and Friel were performed. To be going there with my play for the 1st Irish Festival produced by George Helsin and Origin Theatre Company is a great thrill.
Special thanks to Camille Donegan and Yvonne Usher who worked tirelessly to take this project from being an interesting chat over coffee to being brilliantly realised in three weeks time in New York. And also to Henning and the cast who are working hard at this moment to bring the five plays to life.
Break a leg to everyone involved.
The Big Green Apple 