STAGING A NEW MOVE
Young Offenders star Jennifer Barry is joining forces with the Derry Girls for a play in the capital
While most people her age were getting their uniforms ready for school after the holidays, Jennifer Barry has instead been getting ready to go on stage. After starring in hit comedy The Young Offenders, the 17-year-old found herself a very recognisable face both at home and across the water as the Cork-based show was an RTÉ/BBC co-production.
And now Jennifer is getting stuck into a new play by Derry Girls writer Lisa McGee, Girls And Dolls, which will hit stages in both Derry and Dublin later this month.
Even so, the determined teenager hasn’t ditched school and wants to sit the Leaving Cert.
‘I’m doing my Leaving Cert this year hopefully,’ she says. ‘That’s the plan.’
But, Jennifer admits, it is a bit of a balancing act.
‘You just have to get on and do it,’ she says. ‘You have to play along and I just want to act so I am willing to try and balance both.’
Jennifer still lives with her parents Christine and Hugh in West Cork and it’s more pressure from herself than from them that sees her walking a fine line between ordinary teenage life and that of a professional actress.
‘They are very supportive of whatever I want to do but I plan on finishing school first,’ Jennifer says.
‘They know I want to act but they know I want to finish school as well so they are okay with it.’
The Young Offenders and fellow Irish comedy Derry Girls went head to head in a recent Radio Times poll, with the North beating the South by a very narrow margin.
Jennifer, though, is gracious in defeat and is delighted to be working with McGee and also Derry Girls star Jamie Lee O’Donnell (who plays the outrageous and outspoken Michelle in the TV series).
Girls And Dolls is a double-hander so there’s just two people on stage throughout.
‘It’s about two ten-year-old girls called Emma and Claire in 1989 in Derry during the summer holidays,’ Jennifer explains.
‘It’s a summer they experience together and their memories of it. So you get to live through that summer with them here. There’s just myself and Jamie Lee in the play so we play nine or ten different characters.
‘Jamie Lee is just such a great actress and a great person too. I’m so lucky that I am getting to work with her. We love the Derry Girls and they like us just as much.’
Derry is at the opposite end of the country from where Jennifer is growing up in West Cork.
And she’s not sure where she got bitten by the acting bug but from an early age it’s all she ever wanted to do. ‘I’ve wanted to act for as long as I can remember — I never wanted to do anything else,’ she says. ‘If you have the drive the passion and the blood for it then I think you should just go for it.
‘My grandad used to do amateur theatre John and I have a brother Jack who is older than me and a sister, Rachel, who is younger.
‘My brother Jack has Down Syndrome and he loves acting too — he wants to be in Emmerdale, that’s his dream.
‘I’ve been going to acting classes since I was five or six, to my teacher Pam Golden who is like my other mother — she is amazing.’
The Young Offenders took off like a rocket with TV viewers and Jennifer admits she was surprised by how popular it became.
‘It was mad, I never expected it,’ she says. ‘It was very overwhelming but it is part of everyday life now — you get used to it.’
In the comedy, which has already been earmarked for a second series, Jennifer is teenager Siobhan whose sister is Linda, played by fellow Leaving Cert student Demi Isaac Oviawe.
As the youngest cast members, Jennifer says it’s good that the pair have each other to turn to.
‘I live in West Cork and Demi lives in Mallow so we don’t go to the same school,’ she says.
‘But it is nice to know that we are both doing the Leaving Cert at the same time — we are both on this together and we’re not alone.
‘We can talk to each other about working while we are still in school. It is nice to have someone to talk to about that.’
So what do her own school friends think about Jennifer’s success? ‘I don’t think anyone can really believe it,’ she says. ‘I am just a typical West Cork teenager and this kind of stuff doesn’t normally happen to people like me.’
What does a West Cork teenager normally do, then?
‘Plays GAA, but I suppose I’m not really one now anymore.
‘I still see my friends — I go to school with them when I’m not working and we go out, of course.’
It was social media that got Jennifer her Young Offenders role, acting alongside Chris Walley and Alex Murphy who play teenagers but in reality are in their 20s.
‘I saw an article on Facebook saying they were looking for cast members so I just threw my tape up,’ she says.
‘It has been an amazing experience and I’ve met so many new people.’
The rest of the cast treat herself and Demi like their little sisters but there have been a few graphic snogging scenes that are very realistic to teenage life.
Has that been embarrassing for Jennifer?
‘They are like family, like our big brothers,’ she says of her co stars. ‘But you have to just plough on and do it.’
Girls And Dolls is at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, from Tuesday, September 11.