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 One of the great things about writing plays is you get an added thrill when they are professionally produced for then your characters really come alive.
Growing up, like a lot of Irish families, we used to listen to the Sunday evening play on RTE. Since then, I have always been drawn to radio, finding it more satisfying to create my own images as I listen to dialogue.
Once my own first play was produced I went on to write more scripts. I also wrote for an educational series called Treasure House, jokingly described by the producer, Dan Treston, as aimed at children ‘between nine and ninety’. Thirty minutes scripts based on the lives of people, who by their achievements in the field of science, art, literature, be what it may, vastly improved or enriched the lot of mankind.
My scripts include the life of ‘Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross.’ I was inspired by his words to the wounded and dying he tended on the battlefield. ‘Do not tell me your nationality or your creed only your name.’
‘Miss Horniman and the Abbey Theatre’ and her generous, if sometimes prickly, relationship with Yeats and Lady Gregory. I was pleased when my script was chosen by a sixth year student as her ‘special topic’ essay for Leaving Cert. Honours History.
‘Daibhidh O’Bruadair – One of the last of the Irish Bards.’ With so little available material I took ‘poetic’ license and my script was rated by the Finance Department as a ‘work of artistic merit’ and, therefore, eligible under the artists’ tax exemption scheme.
Some popular scripts got as many as three airings. Hilaire Belloc was one ‘whose sins were scarlet but his books were read.’ He came across full of life and his cry ‘Bring up the bubbly!’ when cruising in ‘The Nona’ must have found an echo in most hearts. Another was Charles Kickham. Good verse and stirring music, always a sure winner. An interesting feedback - a descendant of the patriot’s first and only love, Bessie Blunden, rang for a ‘nostalgic’ chat and was pleased to receive a copy of the script.
Funny moments - when an inebriated actor, who shall be nameless, playing the part of the twelve years old F. Scott Fitzgerald came over the air sounding like Al Capone!
Satisfying - when my script on Frederic Ozanam, founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’ was broadcast on the 150th anniversary of the Society in 1983.
Enlightening – when researching Alexander Pope – to find I had been attributing many of his witty, ironic sayings to Shakespeare!
My first stage play ‘Country Banking’ was one of the finalists in the Women’s Play Competition in 1982.
My second stage play ‘Whose Baby’ won the O.Z. Whitehead Play Competition in 1996 and was performed in Dublin and Galway.
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