Learning how to thrive in precarious world of acting

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Clare Monnelly never intended to become a writer. But circumstances and her personality dictated that the successful actor, whose next stage appearance is with Decadent Theatre in its revival of Marina Carr’s The Mai, would diversify into creating her own work.

After graduating from the Gaiety School of Acting in 2011, where she had been “doing back-to-back plays, non-stop” it was a reality check to learn that the real world wasn’t so accommodating of her talent.

Clare did get work and plenty of it, but in between roles, “I had all this energy and nowhere to put it. I was acting but needed to create my own work. It was the kind of attitude that ‘if you’re not going to put me on stage, I will’,” she recalls with a laugh.

“I’m a bit of a control freak and it was about getting a bit of control back, not leaving the trajectory of your career to be decided by outside forces.”

Clare’s first play was Charlie’s a Clepto, a one-woman show about a young single mother who’s fighting to get her child back. First staged in 2017 in the Axis, Ballymun, it received two nominations in the 2018 Irish Times Theatre Awards (for Best New Play and Best Actress) as well as the Stewart Parker New Playwright Bursary.

She followed it with Minefield, a work about social media and public shaming which premiered at last year’s Dublin Fringe Festival.

In between, she’s carved out a career acting with theatre companies such as Druid (Furniture, Big Maggie), Cavan’s Livin’ Dred (Ride On and Bailegangaire, which won her an Irish Times Best Supporting actress nomination), the Abbey (The Unmanageable Sisters), and the Gate (A Month in the Country).

Her screen credits include three series of the Emmy Award-winning series Moone Boy, Where the Wild Things Go, Rosie and Alison Spittle in Ireland.

Clare grew up in Ballinteer in South Dublin, the youngest in a family of three and “was an activity child”.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app

The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.