Lórcan Strain: 'I learned that it didn’t matter what my sexuality was' 

Starring in The Glass Menagerie in Cork, the actor says they have no problem mixing straight roles with their work as a drag performer  

Lórcán Strain: left, as Jim in The Everyman's 'Glass Menagerie', and right, as drag alter-ego Marian Mary the 6th

Lórcan Strain (who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them), was begged by their mother not to take their Barbie doll into school at the age of four. But Strain, who stars in The Glass Menagerie at the Everyman, did just that. And that was the beginning of the bullying they encountered which included being beaten up and thrown into bins at secondary school. But it was mainly verbal abuse and slurs.

Now aged 32 and excited about their career, Strain says their family always supported them even though they are practising Catholics. Coming from what Strain describes as a conservative place - Milford in Co Donegal – school was tolerable because being mixed, they had female friends who stuck up for them.