Sunday's Dramaturgy: My name is Eva O'Connor

Sunday's Child presents 
My Name is Saoirse

by Traverse 50 writer 
Eva O'Connor 

Directed by Hildegard Ryan
Written and performed by Eva O’Connor


Rural Ireland, 1987. Saoirse lives in a peach coloured bungalow with her Da and big brother Brendan. Her best friend is Siobhán, who has a glorious fountain of ginger hair, a whisper like a foghorn and an arse so big it distracts all the men at mass. 

Saoirse prefers running through fields to chasing after boys, but her best friend has other ideas. After a night out drinking with the lads, Saoirse discovers her pregnancy and is forced to set out on journey that will take her miles away from her home and the carefree adolescence she once knew.

My Name is Saoirse is an award-winning one woman show, set in 1980's rural Ireland, by Traverse 50 writer, Eva O’Connor.  The piece is a tender and moving coming of age story that follows Saoirse, an ordinary, extraordinary 15 year old growing up in conservative Catholic Ireland. 

Abortion remains illegal in Ireland to this day, forcing thousands of Irish women and girls with crisis pregnancies to travel to England every year. Although a prevalent part of Irish life, abortion is still a taboo subject rarely discussed - making Saoirse's story, sadly, as relevant as ever. Inspired by the writer and performer's personal experience, O’Connor's lyrical script explores the reality of life in Ireland for women both then and now.    


WINNER:
Argus Angel Award, Brighton Fringe 2015
First Fortnight Award, Dublin Fringe 2014
NSDF Commendation for Best New Writing, Edinburgh Fringe 2014

NOMINATED:
Best Performer, Dublin Fringe 2014
Best Writing Dublin Fringe, 2014
Stuart Parker Trust Award Longlist, 2015 





What was the inspiration for this performance?
I had an abortion myself. As an Irish woman, I was struck by how much shame and stigma that is associated with it. I was lucky, I was in Scotland at the time, and I received really good care during the procedure. I was actually treated by two Irish nurses and an Irish doctor. Irish women, helping Irish women. Abroad.  No such help exists at home.

I wanted to write a piece inspired by my experience, but removed enough that it wasn't autobiographical. My Name is Saoirse is set in the 80's, and although I did grow up in rural Ireland, my childhood was very different to hers thankfully.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
The play is written and performed by myself, and directed by Hildegard Ryan who runs Sunday's Child theatre company with me. We live together in London, so we didn't have to go too far to gather the team.

How did you become interested in making performance?
I initially wanted to be a dancer, then became more interested in physical theatre.   I started to write my own stuff when I did'nt get cast in any of the student theatre stuff  at Uni. I went on to do a masters in Rose Bruford in Theatre Ensemble which focussed a lot on devising, which I loved, as I'm quite a physical performer. 

Ultimately though I'm a real believer in the power of a strong script as a starting point for making a show.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance? 
I write the script as a short story usually,  leave it, come back to it, and eventually develop a full length script  Hildegard, who runs Sunday's Child with me is a brilliant dramaturg, so we work together to make the script as solid as possible, and then I hand it over to her to dream up the directorial vision.

What do you hope that the audience will experience? 
With My Name is Saoirse I hope people experience compassion. And laugh a lot. Irish people tend to use humour to deal with what ever difficulties life presents. I think My Name is Saoirse reflects that. It's quite a serious subject matter, but it's very comedic.


Do you see your work within any particular

tradition? 
I don't really see myself  in any particular tradition. In Ireland the theatre tradition tends to be script focussed, which I suppose has had an influence on our company. My Name is Saoirse was inspired by the story telling tradition, but then again most theatre is!

Full of Grace

Eva O'Connor and Sophie Fuller make up Sunday's Child. After a success last year at the Fringe with My Best Friend Drowned in a Swimming Pool, they are returning to Edinburgh with O'Connor's new play, Kiss Me and You Will See How Important I am. Inspired by a quotation from Sylvia Plath, and following four young people as they party harder, it marks the third collaboration between the duo. 

Can you explain why you are called Sunday’s Child?

Sunday’s Child started with Eva hitching a lift on the back of Sophie’s bike on the way to a University dance class. We both auditioned for the Uni dance team and (we still aren’t over the disappointment!) neither of us made the cut. I suppose we bonded over the disappointment and decided that we would never let anyone tell us we weren’t good enough. Eva had started doing her own thing theatrically, under the name Sunday’s Child and she asked Soph to be involved in a director role and things just spirally into this. And now three years later, three shows later, we are a company, our own little creative entity. And we really believe in doing our own thing,  Because if you are using your own initiative and are convicted and passionate then you’ll never wait around for others to validate your dreams. You’ll just get out there and do it.  

What will make Kiss Me stand out this year?

This year’s show is definitely our most daring and complex show to date. (It deals with mental health issues in a very frank way) but also very genuine. The show is about being young, and coming of age, and I think that’s a tough enough topic to tackle without being clichéd. So our aim is to have really raw, genuine performances.

It’s going to be exploratory and experimental with a strong emphasis on dance and physicality. We really want to use this fringe to push boundaries of our creative ideas. This is our third time at the fringe and we have learnt so much from our previous runs. Last year our show was My Best Friend Drowned in a Swimming Pool, which we went on to tour. Its amazing what you learn from having your best friend drown on stage 26 nights in a row!

I think every year you get a little braver and bolder until you think hang on, we can do whatever we want here. And there is something both brilliant and a bit frightening about that realisation.  

How did this piece evolve into a performance? where do you start?

We began with a blank slate as always. Eva writes the script, and then Sophie brings it to life. This piece deals with mental health issues, and how people all fight for the lime light in their own individual, strange ways. We aim to pose awkward questions and tackle controversial issues without reservation, or preconceived ideas about what we should be doing. It’s exhausting at times but at the end it feels like the piece just made itself. This year’s play is named after a quote by Sylvia Plath ‘kiss me and you’ll see how important I am’. We were thinking about her death, and how Ted Hughes might be to blame. Then we started dancing.

This year Eva was studying in Berlin and Sophie was working in London, so initially we thought a new show wouldn’t be feasible. But regardless of geographical impracticalities we can’t escape from theatre!