"It's an autobiographical, comical narrative that charts my own journey to a decision about whether or not to have a child," Joanne Ryan, writer and performer, puts it when I ask what her play Eggsistentialism is about. The day is an untypically hot one when I meet Ryan, who is excited that her new play will feature in the upcoming Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival. Her explanation might feel heavy, but talking to Ryan you get a flavour of her quirky sense of humour, hearty infectious laugh, and a deep curiosity and willingness to understand beyond the surface. She also admits that she may overthink things.
How personal the show is comes across in her tale of where the idea came from. "The show came out of a theatre incubation scheme that I did last year for four months, called HatchLK, through the Lime Tree Theatre in Limerick. The focus of the scheme was on political theatre making and we worked with UK political theatre company Theatre Uncut who came over every month and did workshops and training with us. I went in with an idea that I wanted to write a piece on gender issues, but I wasn't really clear yet what it would be about. Then on the very first day we had to talk about things that made us angry, what we were really afraid of, so I said 'blah blah blah blah' and did my spiel and at the very end, out of nowhere, I said 'and I don't know whether or not I should have a child'. And it was like ‘boom’. Everyone else went quiet in the room and I was like, there it is, that's the question."
"So, that's where it came from. I did a work in progress in April last year, which went very well and I used it to try a few technical things. So it's about whether or not to have a child. I suppose ostensibly that’s the comedic vein of the story. But it's also about the social, personal, political context we make that decision in, and what a fraught choice it is for lots of reasons." One of those reasons is to do with, as Ryan puts it, "inter-generational influence, so my grandmother is mentioned and my mother is a recurring character and she passes comments on everything as we go through," she says with a dose of laughter. “Doesn't everyone’s mother do that?” Which of course makes the idea relatable to many, even when unseen.
“I also talk at points to my unborn future child. It's about how decisions of one generation impact on and shape the next and the responsibilities we have, I suppose, to the future. I also realised that I'm part of the first generation in much of the world, in Ireland and Europe certainly, that have the choice for the first time. My mother didn't have a choice, my grandmother didn't have a choice. So I feel like I'm part of an experimental cohort who now have a choice and have to make this decision for the first time in the history of the species and that's just bizarre but also exciting and terrifying because it’s an experiment, and the decisions that we make, well, we don't know what the repercussions will be because this never happened before. I find that a really interesting question to explore and speculate on." This interest is infectious, and you can see that all this energy and thought has gone into the work, channelled from her own experience.
Like much theatre, it is a personal story. "It follows a journey from my 35th birthday when I realised that I'm 35 and all of a sudden 'shit, I should probably think about this. Have I forgotten to have kids?" with an 'Oh God' laugh that underlines the bizarreness of it all. The other old quote that 'life is what happens while you are making plans' comes to mind, and for a number of this generation, it is something that can stop you in your tracks. For Ryan, it all comes down to having to think about it and make a decision or it's not going to happen, or as she puts it, 'I'll just amble along until I'm 45, 50 and then I may have some regrets. From a personal point of view I kind of hoped that the project might lead me to a decision." You will have to wait for the run during the Fringe to find out if it does or not.
With the idea that 30 is the new 20 and how hard could it be to conceive? I put the thought to Ryan that is it a case of people ambling along almost forgetting that time is moving by, thinking that the ‘family thing' will happen when we want it to, rather than being a decision to be made? "Everyone just kind of thinks, well a lot of people, certainly me and my friends, just assumed that it would sort itself out on its own somehow, that we wouldn't have to, you know,' as her thought trails off into the void. "The focus was very much - because we were very much the first generation of women, particularly, who had opportunities to go to 3rdlevel education, have careers, legitimate professional careers - so there was pressure to do all that, take all the opportunities you had, to study as much as you can, travel as much as you can, and kids weren't really on the list for many of us. Then I suppose you get to the point where it's increasingly difficult, infertility." This has its own complications, timeliness and pressures, not to mention expenses.
"When I started talking about the show, particularly after the work in progress, a lot of people I thought I knew very well started talking about their issues with infertility and their struggles to have children. They didn't have a place to talk about that and they were really excited that it was starting conversations. I've been really struck by, more than any other project that I've worked on, how quickly people want to share their own experiences and personal stories and there are a lot of powerful personal triggers in the journey."
It is a story about everybody, which is why the reaction from people is strong, and that is before it has played anywhere. The subject matter is something that affects people very personally at a deep level. Ryan does mention that coming at it from the comedy angle helps to bring people along, and that a lot of what the show contains has been observed. "In the show I go to politics and philosophy and history and fortune telling and fertility clinics; every possible route to try and figure it out." Her hearty laugh gives an idea that it was a journey she enjoyed taking, no matter how madcap and deep it all was. "One of the questions is about status, I think: what do you gain, if you don't have a child, and what do you lose? It's tough in Ireland because so much, particularly in rural areas, less so in urban but it's still there, a lot of status, social status, comes from family. Community and celebrations are all focused on family, you know, and that hasn't really kept up with changes demographically."
But what of the play itself, from a 'putting it together' perspective? "The show is very technical. I'm so excited. We're using 3D video projection, which I haven’t seen much in theatre before although it's increasingly being used in contemporary dance, the multi-projector setup. It's incredible. Neil O'Driscoll who’s done work with the Abbey and the Lyric before, is a filmmaker and animator and he's going to be layering animation onto the more literal video set designs. It's just going to be incredible." Ryan herself was nominated for Best Actress in the Irish Times Theatre Award in 2014 for her performance in What Happened Bridgie Cleary where she played the title role, something she doesn't mention herself, but I find out later. And it does sound like a good combination, a modern story and experience told with modern technology.
"For this it just fits well. I've been working on the show for nearly two years and I kept going back to those video images in my head when writing and thinking about it. Also there's other themes within the show that it work well with like the Internet and the impact of the Internet on our decision making and how sometimes the Internet is the first port of call for major personal decision like ‘should I leave my husband?', 'should I have a baby?'," her voice being more like an announcer, getting across the strangeness of going online for these answers, qualifying it with the thought "that the Internet is the place you go to is just bonkers." At this point she explains the fun of looking at the Google trends and the fact that if you type in keywords 'should I' there isn't much before 2005 in Ireland, but after 2005, she tells me, it increases. A lot. "So increasingly, exponentially even, we are asking the Internet to fix our problems or tell us what to do and I think that's really interesting, so there's a lot of journeying into the Internet and video mapping in the best way to do that." And we haven't even mentioned the underworld of Internet comment sections.
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This will be Ryan's first show to write, but having worked as a journalist based in Bangkok for eight years, she is no stranger to writing. "I started out as a travel writer and then did other kinds. But my favourite kind of pieces to write were personal, light hearted essays on an experience. They were always my favourite to write, the hardest to write, but always my favourite."
"Then I started working in theatre again when I came home. I moved back on a romantic whim, to study Irish in the Gaeltacht. I had a real attack of being an ex-pat after eight years! I went to Connemara for a summer and ended up staying for 2 years and did a diploma in Irish. The diploma was designed for native Irish speakers so I got to study with native Irish speakers, which never happens. When do you a chance get to learn a language like that? So I felt like an idiot for a lot of the time, but it was brilliant for my language. I had the intention of doing Irish language journalism, and I started writing at Gaelsceal, the Irish language newspaper and did a few big features in Irish. And then I did an audition for Ros na Rún." Ryan was in Ros na Run, the TG4 Irish language soap, playing "this psycho bunny boiler. It was hilarious."
With Eggsistentialism, and its two years development, partners gradually came on board including support from Limerick Arts Office and help from Fishamble: The New Play Company's New Play Clinic Scheme, all of which is important in the creation of a work for theatre. During the writing, director Veronica Coburn came on board. "She's just a phenomenal mind to have in a room and she's been brilliant. I was clear about the kind of people that I wanted to work with and I was lucky that they were interested."
More recently Ryan was at an IETM campus in Poland and was on a panel where she spoke about Waking The Feminists. "I was talking about the Waking the Feminist movement in a very positive way, and the changes that it's made and the shift in consciousness. But I think it's very hard when inequalities and prejudices are systemic, endemic and internalised very often. It's very hard to consciously, as Gwyneth Paltrow would say, consciously uncouple yourself from your own mind and your own biases. But I think we've started. I think it's a very positive and exciting start to a process. The more we can support ourselves as flawed humans with lots of biases, many of them unconscious, with policies and structures and the kind of programming that's evident in this year's Tiger Fringe Festival, the better. It has to be conscious, careful, and deliberate."
Eggsistentialism does not rely only on Ryan's experience (and she has a wealth and an eclectic amount. Apart from being a fluent Irish speaker, she also has some French and Thai). She also drew from the testimonies of thirty other people who gave their stories of why they chose to have children or why they chose not to and the difficulties and regrets of both paths. Which brings us back to the beginning, or the main theme of the conversation; Choices that are made, the context they are made in, and the individual, the culture and other people. All told and thought about with the wit, humour and curiosity that is evident when speaking with Ryan. Couple that with animated video mapping and it does sound like an intriguing prospect when trying to make a decision about which shows to see at this year’s Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival.
Eggsistentialism does not rely only on Ryan's experience (and she has a wealth and an eclectic amount. Apart from being a fluent Irish speaker, she also has some French and Thai). She also drew from the testimonies of thirty other people who gave their stories of why they chose to have children or why they chose not to and the difficulties and regrets of both paths. Which brings us back to the beginning, or the main theme of the conversation; Choices that are made, the context they are made in, and the individual, the culture and other people. All told and thought about with the wit, humour and curiosity that is evident when speaking with Ryan. Couple that with animated video mapping and it does sound like an intriguing prospect when trying to make a decision about which shows to see at this year’s Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival.
Performance Details:
Belltable, Limerick performances 8 Sept - 10 Sept (more info: www.limetreetheatre.ie)
Black Box Theatre Smock Alley
Preview 12 Sept
Opening 13 Sept
Performances 14-17 Sept
(more info: www.smockalley.com)