Irene Kelleher's play about the lonely death of a pregnant teenager
AS A first time playwright, Cork-based actor Irene Kelleher is thrilled that her play is being premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe after a successful three-day preview at the Brighton Fringe.
Mary and Me, which will tour Ireland from September and will be staged in Cork in 2018, is inspired by the true story of Ann Lovett, a 15-year-old girl who died giving birth beside a grotto in Granard in Co Longford in 1984. It was a story that shocked the nation, an apparently secret pregnancy ending in tragedy for a girl who didn’t feel she could confide in anyone. The infant also died.
Kelleher wasn’t even born when Lovett died but she recalls being told the story by a teacher at Ballincollig Community School while in Junior Cert year. “Tears started to run down my face. It resonated with me but I’m not really sure why. I thought if only Ann Lovett had a friend she could talk to. I started thinking about what I would do if I was in that situation. That was 2001. A lot of time had passed since 1984 but the story stayed with me.”
While at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015 performing Mrs Shakespeare, Kelleher went to see a lot of one-woman shows. “I found them inspirational. It was also a time when I was fed up with the industry. I was kind of losing control of my career.”
While Kelleher had always wanted to act, she was becoming disillusioned “with the casting briefs that were coming in. Every single male role was defined by a strong personality while all the female roles were in relation to men and all about looks, making them two-dimensional. I was constantly playing rape victims and prostitutes. I was very frustrated. It was not what I imagined I’d be doing.”
Two shots taken of 'Hannah' during the last preview performance of #maryandme before #EdFringe #edfringe2017 #irish #theatre #onewomanshow 🎭 pic.twitter.com/eHKoFkzmYC
— MARY AND ME (@MARY_AND_ME_) July 30, 2017
Kelleher speaks of breaking down in tears after an audition for a major TV series. “You had to be comfortable with being topless which I wasn’t at the time. As part of the audition, because the character is molested, you had to unbutton your top. What was happening to the character was described to me at the audition. I came out of it crying on the street.”
To wrest control of her career, Kelleher sat down to write Mary and Me, a one-woman show, late in 2015. It took her just six weeks to get a first draft done and it was then presented at the Theatre Development Centre at Triskel in early 2016 with Belinda Wild on board as director. Pat Talbot is now producing the play.
Kelleher (whose first short film, Outside the Box, won best Irish short at the Fastnet Short Film Festival in 2013), stresses that Mary and Me is a work of fiction.
“The character is called Hannah. The story is set in a fictional town in 1986. It spans seven months with Hannah coming to a grotto in utter desperation over a maths exam.”
Hannah begins to see the Virgin Mary as not just a statue. “Mary was just 14 when she became pregnant with Jesus. Hannah builds up a relationship with her. She confides in her. In Irish grottoes, there’s often the kneeling figure of St Bernadette. Hannah thinks this figure is Mary Magdalene. She feels they have things in common.”
The word ‘pregnant’ is never used in the play although Hannah is expecting a child. “The whole essence of the play is about not being able to talk.” Even when Hannah broaches the subject of her pregnancy with her best friend, Martha, she is discouraged from talking about it.
Despite being a dark play, Kelleher says there’s a lot of humour in it. “It’s not an hour of unrelenting misery. That kind of theatre leaves me cold.”
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