Playwright Enda Walsh on the challenge of writing for an audience of one in Cork

A renowned writer with strong roots in Cork, Enda Walsh is looking forward to the Theatre for One performances this month, writes Marjorie Brennan

Enda Walsh. Picture: Jonathon Goldberg

Enda Walsh is no stranger to confined settings, with much of his acclaimed theatrical work, from The Walworth Farce to Ballyturk, unfolding in claustrophobic and enclosed spaces.

However, his latest work takes intimacy to the extreme, with just one actor performing to one audience member. Walsh is one of the writers featured in Theatre for One at Cork Midsummer Festival, presented by Landmark Productions and Octopus Theatricals.

A big hit with audiences when it premiered at the festival in 2019, it returns this year with 12 specially commissioned five-minute pieces performed in a confessional-style booth located outside Cork Opera House. This time around, the six original writers from 2019 return along with six new writers they have mentored; Walsh is working with Joy Nesbitt. While any new writer would no doubt be delighted to benefit from Walsh’s expertise, for him, it is a two-way process.

“I find that it is great for me — it is really interesting to figure out why a writer writes the way they write, what their point of view is. Learning someone’s process, how they think and see the world and the words they choose to tell their story is always interesting,” he says.

What one piece of advice would he give an aspiring dramatist?

“Probably to hold on to your instinct, to really try and communicate that, don’t always be so neutral about everything. People are very complicated. The work I’ve done in the past, I want to connect with people but I also want to give them an experience that is new and that they can find themselves in it, no matter how strange it is.”

Walsh certainly walks the walk in this regard, pushing the boundaries from the outset with his breakout hit, the all-conquering Disco Pigs, which he staged in 1996 with Pat Kiernan, director of the late lamented Cork theatre company Corcadorca. Walsh says he was “devastated” when they called it a day in 2022.

“I had a little cry. It was such a huge part of my life — and it still is, you carry it with you. I have such amazing memories, it was a really extraordinary time. We didn’t know what we were doing but Cork audiences and the people in Cork, a generation older than us, allowed us to work out of the Triskel. We were so fortunate to be given that break and to be supported in that way. I have gone to make a good life for myself and it is all down to those people who supported us and that time in Corcadorca.”

Walsh went on to write many more acclaimed plays, as well as screenplays, operas and musicals, including the award-winning Once, and Lazarus, with David Bowie. However, he says it is “hilarious” how many people continue to mention Disco Pigs as an influence.

“I go around the place, and the people who saw it are now running theatres. The head of BAFTA came up to me the other day in a restaurant and he went, ‘Enda Walsh?’ and I said ‘yeah’ and he went, ‘thank you so much, Disco Pigs changed my life’. And I thought, ‘wow, that’s really something’. That is a little bit down to me but mostly down to Corcadorca.”

Disco Pigs also launched the careers of two great Cork acting talents, Eileen Walsh and Cillian Murphy, both of whom he went on to work with on other projects. While he didn’t stay up to watch his old friend be awarded the Oscar for Oppenheimer, he says the win didn’t surprise him in the least.

“It was both amazing and not amazing, because it was a bit like, ‘yeah, of course he won’. I am so fucking proud — I got up the next morning and got in touch with him. It was absolutely brilliant.”

Walsh has been based in London for decades now but is still very much connected to Ireland, professionally and emotionally. He is always happy when his work is performed in Cork, a place he returns to regularly and where his brother still lives. In terms of what excites him in Irish theatre, he singles out another Murphy from Cork, the choreographer, actor and writer Luke, whose show Volcano has been getting sensational reviews, and which he saw at the Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival in Cork last year. It had definite ‘Walshian’ overtones, and this reviewer described it as “ Ballyturk meets Black Mirror”.

“I loved it,” says Walsh. “Luke Murphy is the real deal. I am dying to see what the hell he does next.”

For Walsh, that visceral connection is always the key to good work. While he says the accessibility of Theatre for One is important — there is no booking and it is free — what matters particularly to him is that it offers an opportunity for a unique connection in a world where such encounters are no longer guaranteed.

“In an age when you can go through a day more on your phone than actually chatting to people, there’s something great about sitting opposite someone and sharing something very personal. That is something that we take for granted and also something that you can lose — you can isolate yourself. You can live a busy life but you can go through a day without having a true connection with someone new. Meeting a stranger, you learn a lot about yourself. That is the real deal — of life and living.”

• Theatre for One, Emmet Place, June 15–23 (excl. June 17) 1pm–8pm (June 15, 16); 12pm–8pm (June 18–21); 10am–8pm (June 22,23). Free, 10 mins.

Theatre for One at Emmet Place, Cork City.  Picture: Maria Tracey

Five Cork Midsummer Festival theatre highlights 

Alter, Kamchàtka 

Jun 14–16, 10pm, meeting in city centre

The world-renowned artistic collective brings audiences on a late-night journey to a secret location in a mysterious, and silent, performance. 

Good Sex, Dead Centre with Emilie Pine 

Jun 20–22, 8pm; June 23, 3pm, The Everyman 

Described as a love story for a loveless age, each night features two new performers who have not read the script, and who will be guided on stage by an intimacy director. 

Tempesta, by Deirdre Kinahan/Sugarglass 

Days and times vary, from Jun 14-23

Inspired by real-life events in 1930s Ireland and Spain and performed in the The Pav, a former cinema, this will be accompanied by a score performed live by Steve Wickham of The Waterboys. 

The Summer I Robbed a Bank, Mark Doherty/The Ark 

Jun 15, 12pm and 4pm; Jun 16, 2pm, The Everyman 

One for all the family, in this adaptation of the book by David O’Doherty, a madcap robbery leads to a summer of mayhem for 12-year-old Rex.

Grace, Jody O’Neill 

June 14, 4.30pm; Jun 15, 11am and 2.30pm, Graffiti Theatre, Blackpool

Grace doesn’t need words to communicate with her dad but when he dies suddenly, she must find a new way to be heard.