Last year around this time I got an email from a stranger asking to read my script that had been shortlisted for Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize. For some reason, I had not got the message about my own success, and was baffled for a moment.
That play was written before and just happened to fit the theme of 2020, which was forgiveness. It was a highly personal piece of writing, and has since developed into a play called IT’S TRUE I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH, which is being produced by Eva’s Echo Theatre Company in Galway. It was a piece I needed to write, an outburst of things I felt were necessary to say. A wild thing.
Today, I got the email that I wasn’t shortlisted this time around. I wasn’t expecting to be, because the piece I sent them hadn’t found its wilderness yet – it’s need to exist. The theme of this year’s competition is UNTAMED – ON CIVILIZATION AND WILDERNESS, and I am fairly grateful for the rejection since I think it will push me into direction I wouldn’t have thought otherwise.
I have also received support from Galway County Council to write the play, and now that I am not waiting results from the Fellowship, I can share a little bit of the process here – the civilization, the thought-out structure, the research, the things I want it to speak about. And hopefully amongst those thoughts is also that pull which I find makes a great play text – the pull which defines why it needs to exist.
Queen of Wandering 