Novice Galway playwright has her debut work performed by Druid

Meadhbh McHugh was just 24 and a post-graduate drama student in Trinity College when she wrote the first draft of the play, Helen and I.

The Galway woman sent it to Druid Theatre, which presented it at the 2014 Galway Arts Festival as part of its Rehearsed Reading programme, a Druid scheme which nurtures new writing.

That reading was so successful that Druid opted to give Helen and I –  which explores the relationship between two adult sisters who are caring for their dying father –  a full production.

Three years on from that first draft, Meadhbh is at the exciting, but nerve-wracking stage of technical rehearsals. Helen and I will open next Tuesday, with previews starting this Friday night.

“I feel I am using all my energy; mentally, physically and emotionally,” she says over tea in the city’s House Hotel on a break from rehearsals.

It’s hard work but Meadhbh is learning lots, although she reckons she won’t appreciate how much until later.

She’s studying for a PhD in Theatre in New York’s Columbia University, but is at home in Corofin in the run-up to the Druid opening.

Meadhbh’s love of theatre and musicals began in childhood. There’s a strong tradition of singing on her mother’s side, with her maternal grandfather Jim Kearns, who is from Athenry, having been a noted tenor in his youth. Her granny plays cello and her mother plays piano, so live performances were part of life for Meadhbh and her two younger sisters.

Her family lived in Tuam while she was aged between eight and 16, where she was involved in youth groups, both as an actor and singer. She loves singing and, for a time, thought she might be a singer, before realising she didn’t have the necessary compulsion to perform on stage.

She did, however, always have a desire to write and theatre is her chosen medium, maybe due to her childhood immersion in performance.

“I didn’t distinguish between theatre and musicals,” she recalls, “I was just going to a show and there was no distinction.”

After leaving school, Meadhbh did a degree in Drama and English at Trinity College before going on to do a masters in playwriting at that university’s Lir Academy.

She describes herself as “lucky” to have been in an environment where her love of literature and theatre was nurtured. She wrote a play for her BA year about violence among young boys in Galway which was workshopped a year later at the Dublin Theatre Festival as she went on to do her Masters. Her first radio play, April Showers, won a PJ O’Connor award for new writing in 2014 and was produced by RTÉ Radio One.

“I was always interested in plays and plays about the West [of Ireland], she remarks, adding that she did her MA thesis on Irish writers including Synge, Marina Carr, Tom Murphy and Martin McDonagh. Meadhbh is also interested in poetry and women writers, listing Sylvia Plath, Virginia Wolfe and Adrienne Rich as favourites.

“I love lyrical writing,” she says, adding that the joy of multi-layered language in theatre is that it tells a story while also creating a wealth of images for the audience. And she’s delighted that her work is premiering at Druid, because the company is renowned for language-focused drama where “language and performance merge”.

That’s been happening with Helen and I in rehearsals, as actors Cathy Belton, Rebecca O’Mara, Seána O’Hanlon and Paul Hickey are directed by Annabelle Comyn, one of Ireland’s leading directors, who is also making her Druid debut.

Helen and I has moments of humour but Meadhbh describes it as “a dark play in certain ways, one that explores how people can be mean and cruel to each other”.

The play centres on Lynn and her older sister Helen who return to their childhood home to look after their dying father. There, they are joined by Lynn’s husband Tony, who hasn’t been invited, and Helen’s teenage daughter Evvy, who has been.

The play offers an insight into relationship between the sisters and their roles in their family, as they look at what might have been.

As a playwright, Meadhbh’s initial grip on a story comes via character rather than plot, and that’s what happened here. She’d wanted to write a play about women and the starting point was when she ‘heard’ the voice of a woman with a story to tell.

“If I can get into the voice of a character, they can tell me a story,” she says. “It may sound strange but it feels like I’m following the voice I’m hearing.”

Meadhbh has sat in on rehearsals for the past week and is understandably nervous as she waits to see how audiences will react to her first full-length drama. But, as she points out, a play is not complete until it’s performed in front of people – that’s the magic of theatre.

After it opens, she’ll head back to New York to continue her studies and teach undergraduates at Columbia as she enters year three of a six-year programme.

Her play-writing is done at weekends – Meadhbh also writes poetry but hasn’t yet sent it anywhere; it’s more “an instinct and spontaneous”, she says. However, the plays are her ‘work’ and she’s already started a new one, more light-hearted than Helen and I, although it’s on the back-burner at the moment because of rehearsals.

“I’m looking forward to writing it with the knowledge I get from this one,” she says.

■ Helen and I will run at Mick Lally Theatre, Druid Lane from September 13-18 with previews from this Friday until Monday. Tickets: €22, €20 Concessions (previews €20/18) Tel: 091 568660 www.druidtheatre.ie.