I left Dublin when I was 22 to study musical theatre at Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Before we graduated we were encouraged to get proactive, send out our headshots and cover letters to casting directors. My first audition after graduating was for the role of Cosette in Les Miserables with none other than Cameron Mackintosh himself. It was a wonderful audition, the panel actually spoke to me, appeared interested, gave me a proper chance to show them my abilities. I didn’t get the part, I knew I wouldn’t, I’m not a Cosette, I’m an Eponine; they snorted when I told them so. I left genuinely thinking I would be called back again to sing for Eponine and on a West End stage within the year, ha!

One year later I was working as a hostess in a fine dining Japanese restaurant while still auditioning for musicals. I could no longer write “recently graduated” on my cover letters. A fresh year of churned out graduates with new energy were being welcomed into the already giant talent pool. I desperately wanted to be on stage again, so I decided to join an amateur society. At the time, many out of work actors, directors, dancers, technicians etc. used amateur theatre to hone their skills, just like going to the gym, keeping muscles toned while out of work. I fell into a group of people that wanted to make theatre above all else. We did a couple of shows with amateur societies and a few short concerts until the director and producer of the group felt confident enough to take on their own work. We took a musical to the Edinburgh Fringe and on tour around the UK. We met people who were putting on work above pubs or in tiny black box theatres and I started gathering a network, constantly balancing the stability of a monthly pay check from the restaurant with a show that I could fit in around my shifts. Everyone I worked with was committed to finding solutions rather than problems. People got involved knowing the money was non-existent but hoping it might lead to future possibilities.

After 10 years of catching tubes to random back rooms, I got married and pregnant. Suddenly cleaner air and access to the sea took priority over opening nights and weekday nights in Soho. Moving home was a shock, not just to be back under a roof with my parents but also because it felt like someone had hit a giant pause button on the world, the hours in a day dragged heavy and slow. I concentrated on growing an infant and plodding up Irish Town nature reserve trying to tempt my overdue son out with deep breaths of sea air.

When Oscar was about a year old I started getting restless. I missed my creative network and wanted to sink my teeth into something in Dublin. All those years I had spent gathering producers, actors, casting directors, musicians, all gone, back to square one. I called on the few people I knew and gathered I would have to produce something myself this time. 

A tiny idea was forming in my head of a musical based on my London experience. It was so tiny I was afraid to mention it out loud. A direct and determined friend with an ‘ain’t no mountain high enough’ attitude told me to just write it and to get back to what I am good at, building the team I needed to make it happen. So that’s what I did. I wrote a terrible script and met Ross O’Connor to write the music for it. Luckily he was experienced enough to know that scripts can always be improved. We had a work in progress and we needed to test it out. The ‘Scene and Heard Festival’ was the only non-curated festival for new work at the time in Dublin, providing an opportunity to test out brave new projects on audiences who were willing to offer feedback. We put on a 30 minute extract. It was a huge chaotic mess but, there was potential. We needed a developmental director and a script fixer. 

I persuaded Claire Tighe and Karl Harpur to join, and together we made a really great, quirky new musical full of heart, ‘New Fish A Musical’. We put it on for a week’s run in Smock Alley Theatre, it was actually successful. I raised just about enough money from sponsors, events and raffles so that we broke even, unheard of nearly. Then Covid hit and it all went belly up.

Two years later my husband was offered a job transfer to Stockholm. Theatres were still closed and we had two more children, our youngest was just 6 months old. It was a good time to move to a country that prioritised young family life. That’s where I find myself today, up north in the land of Fika, dancing around flower poles in the summer and learning how to ski to reach the sunlight on the mountains in winter. I had already started the research for a new play, thanks to funding from the Arts Council, before I left so I continued on with that, looking for funding that didn’t require me to be residing in Ireland. As the play is based on the life of my grandmother, poet and activist Una O’Higgins O’Malley (daughter of Kevin O’Higgins, First Minister for Justice on the Irish Free State) there were many ties with possibilities at home. Once again I started collecting people, gathering a team around me to work collaboratively, set deadlines and some structure around the process.

It's nearly 20 years since I first left Dublin for London. I have failed repeatedly and faced hurdle after hurdle. At first I blew up into an emotional rage whenever a door was slammed in my face but I learnt to gather myself and then start searching for the windows. I have learnt how to collect the right people so that when those doors are slammed, the windows are much easier to find. The process of making theatre, writing, producing, can be a lonely one. It helps if you are self-motivated and determined. It also helps to build a team around you to check in with, collaborate with and ultimately make better work with. Thankfully this funding is allowing me to do exactly that.

Biography

Grace is a writer who, after training and working as an actress initially in London at Central School of Speech and Drama, created and produced ‘New Fish A Musical’ as part of a collaborative team. Grace is currently writing a new play about the life and work of her grandmother Una O’Higgins O’Malley, poet, activist and daughter of First Minister of Justice for the Irish Free State, Kevin O’Higgins. This work is under the mentorship of writer Colin Murphy, director Conall Morrison and producer Hugh Farrell. It is funded by The Arts Council, Wicklow County Council and supported by Glencree Peace and Reconciliation Centre.