A very different night out at the theatre
WHAT would you do if someone asked you to go out and you thought that maybe it wasn’t a good idea? That’s the premise for The Friday Night Effect, one of the plays being staged for this year’s First Fortnight Festival, which aims to raise awareness and tackle the stigmas surrounding mental health issues.
The play was first staged at both the Edinburgh and Dublin Fringe festivals and went down so well that it’s now been picked up for television, something playwright, actress and cofounder of Sunday’s Child Theatre Company Eva O’Connor is remaining tight-lipped about.
Along with her co-collaborator Hildegarde Ryan, Eva has created a show for BBC3 called Overshadowed, thanks to legendary screenwriter Kay Mellor catching the stage version. And now their unusual play is about to come to the screens too.
‘It’s kind of unusual in that throughout the play we pause the action and ask the audience, ‘Right, what would you do?”,’ Eva says. ‘The audience is divided into teams and they vote democratically then on stage we go with whatever the audience has chosen. We have had to learn lots of different scripts to cover all eventualities.’
The play is centred on three girls who go on a night out and about how the small decision you make over the course of a night can change your life. ‘The questions seem quite trivial to begin with but get increasingly more weighted as the night goes on,’ Eva explains. ‘Initially the audiences think it’s a bit of craic but by the end of the show they are on the edge of their seats.’
It started off, Eva says, as an experiment and it’s gone so well that this, too, is destined for TV. ‘We can’t really say when,’ Eva explains. ‘It will be in the UK but I can’t really talk about it until everything is signed off on. We did a previous play, Overshadowed, for BBC3 this year and it will be going on RTÉ Player later this year too.’
Overshadowed is very close to Eva’s own heart as it is a semiautobiographical story about eating disorders. ‘It can be a really tricky one to get right on screen as you can easily offend people so I was really happy at how it was received,’ Eva says.
‘We were really aware of not giving people tips or glamorising anorexia in any way.’ The play, Eva says, is not her own personal journey step for step but it was the first time she had spoken about her illness publicly so it was a difficult but brave step. Worth it, she reckons, if the work on stage or the small screen has helped someone else.
But Kay Mellor had seen the play in Dublin and offered Sunday’s Child the chance to bring it to television with her company Rollem.
‘It was the first ever series Rollem produced that Kay didn’t write herself. She is an amazing, powerful woman, they have this base in Leeds where they hire loads of women and they have total creative control.
‘It was myself and Hilde’s first time in television in terms of creating something and they were so supportive. Kay actually flew to Ireland, it must have been about two years ago now, and saw Overshadowed and my other play My Name is Saoirse as I happened to be performing both of them on the same night. And she said “Okay, someone gave me a chance in television and so now I’m going to give you a chance.” As an artist, to have someone to support you like that, it is amazing. And I want to do that for someone someday too, hopefully.’
The Friday Night Effect has provoked huge debates among it’s audiences, something the cast enjoy. ‘One woman in Edinburgh stormed out at the end because she felt let down by her group. It’s really interesting.’
The Friday Night Effect is at Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin from January 9 to 13. For more details see firstfortnight.ie.