This much I know: Mark O’Halloran

I was brought up in Ennis.

I’ve lived longer out of the place than I did in it, and yet it is still always in me.

I went to UCG to study science after school but it was a disaster.

I only lasted a year. I failed the exams, but not before I’d been introduced to Dram Soc and realised ‘this is what I want to do’.

It can be a challenge to combine acting and writing. I went back on stage this summer, after a break, and it feels fabulous. I love the immediacy of theatre, hearing the audience respond. First night nerves can be painful but they are part of the acting process. I was petrified on my last opening night.

I believe every writer has to come up with a load of rubbish before they discover where they are going. It took me a while to realise that I was even ‘allowed to write’. You know, I had this idea you can’t be a writer if you come from Ennis, type of thing.

I’m a disciplined writer, in my own chaotic way. I tend to write a lot at night. I have to lock myself away from the world and have no distractions.

Early on, I was very lucky to meet Lenny Abrahamson who has directed a lot of my work. He had great belief in my work and that unlocked something in me. I like to say we plucked each other from mutual obscurity.

My worst trait is probably a type of selfishness. I’m pretty outgoing and sociable, but I do like my own company. None of my family worked full-time in the arts, but they’re all performers in their own right. Dad was in the local musical society and I was always fascinated going to see him in things like The Mikado.

My very first memory is of wearing a sort of baby grow with a teddy bear on the chest. I was in our sitting room with my god father, Uncle Pat, and I vomited all over him.

I travel as much as I can, much of the time alone and to quite remote places. Travelling allows me to feel as if I could be anybody at all. My great friend, and actor, the late Tom Murphy, sent me a postcard once which I can relate to: ‘The more I travel the more I disappear’.

My writing work is mostly observational. Adam and Paul came about because I was living in Mountjoy Square and had never seen junkies before and became fascinated by them — their child-like speech, their slow-motion movements. Garage was more of a memory piece, it took me back to Ennis. The idea for Prosperity began from deciding to stand on O’Connell Street and follow ten people, to see where that would take me.

Loss changes you, but there is no escaping it. The death of my father, of Tom Murphy and of my older brother — who both died of the same disease — were challenging times for me.

I went on the recent march for gay marriage. Civil partnership is not enough. I think the government is lagging behind the people in its attitude to a number of things and this could be one of them.

I’m a natural-born atheist. I enjoy living in Dublin but I wish someone had a vision for how the city is developing.

My new play ‘Trade’ is tricky material. It’s a two-hander, one character is a vulnerable, young rent boy and the other is a middle-aged client. Good casting was crucial. We’re staging it in a B&B on Dublin’s North Denmark Street so it will be a very intimate experience for a small audience.

Mark O’Halloran is a writer and actor. His work includes the award-winning films Adam & Paul and Garage and the TV series Prosperity. His latest play, Trade, premieres at the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival on September 28.