How do you start writing seriously?
It was the anniversary of the civil rights movement and the left in Derry decided to put on an alternative conference to the official events which were going to take place. At that event I told the story about me and my boyfriend at that time putting up two Welsh striking miners. My boyfriend was doing an MA in music, we lived in London, and these miners were coming up to London to collect money for their strike. We used to collect at Brixton Tube Station.
They land in expecting us to be a heterosexual couple, a straight couple, and they just weren’t expecting to stay with a gay couple. They were nervous, they were homophobic, they were sexist, and they couldn’t wash a cup. By the time they were leaving they were cleaning, and cooking spaghetti carbonara, and giving Reiki massages. We all went on a journey together and I told that story at the alternative conference in 2008.
Afterwards, an American woman came up to me and said that it was a fantastic story and that I should write it down. I didn’t, but for two years I was looking around for this American woman and eventually I bumped into her in a shopping centre in Derry. Her name was Mary Connors and she insisted I go with her to her house in Inishowen; her house was beautiful and overlooked Lough Swilly, and write up that story.
You wrote the story in Mary Connors’ house?
Not quite. I spent a lot of time looking out at the beautiful scenery. I did eventually start writing and when I started and when I did it just poured out of me. It all came out, “Pits and Perverts” was the title of the play and it all came out. I wrote it everywhere, in restaurants, in the house, in Inishowen. I just kept writing until it was completed.
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And how does that play get produced?
A woman for Tinderbox Theatre, Hannah Slattne, got involved, she worked with me as a Dramaturg. Other organisations were also involved and it was produced for the City of Culture in Derry in 2013. And it was a huge success.
How did you feel about that?
I was completely overwhelmed. It was a huge success. There were standing ovations and great reviews. People were roaring and shouting. It was incredible.
But I never felt that I deserved the success. I never felt that I was actually a writer or that I was good enough. The play was the talk of the town, everyone loved it, but to me, I just couldn’t see myself as other people were seeing me, to accept that.
What happens then?
In 2015 there was a Legacy Fund and the Derry City Council got a grant to tour the play. And it went all over the world, to London, to Wales, to many other places. When the play went to Wales to where the strike took place a man came up to me after the performance and said that he identified totally with the miners in the play and he was crying. Another big burly man came up to me and he couldn’t speak and he just came up and hugged me.
It has taken me many years and 6 plays to say that now I consider myself a playwright and a writer.