Stephanie looks to herself to answer life’s questions
Munich-born but Mallow raised Stefanie Preissner has penned her first book Why Can’t Everything Stay the Same?. The Dublin based playwright will return to her old stomping ground of Mallow on Saturday, October 21 at 2pm at Philip’s Bookshop to sign copies of her book.
In Why Can’t Everything Stay the Same? Stefanie looks at the ways in which her life has changed since the days when she spent her evenings eating Coco Pops and watching Nickelodeon. The self scrutiny delves into her behaviour on social media and her approach to friendship, her relationship with her body, the importance of asking WWNSD ( What Would Nicole Scherzinger Do?) when faced with a big decision, and her career as a writer.
Stefanie is the creator of the hit comedy drama series Can’t Cope Won’t Cope, which show was originally commissioned by RTÉ and has since been broadcast on BBC Three. Season two is currently in production. She has also produced a series of short documentaries, How to Adult, with RTÉ Player.
Her one-woman theatre show, Solpadeine Is My Boyfriend, enjoyed sell-out runs in Dublin before touring internationally to Bucharest, Edinburgh and Australia and, as a radio play, it became RTÉ’s most downloaded podcast.
Stefanie graduated from University College Cork with a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies and Spanish. Alongside her career as a screenwriter and playwright, she has won several awards as an actor. She is currently working on a screenplay for Parallel Films with support from the Irish Film Board and is developing a TV pilot with Channel 4.
Hilarious and honest, Why Can’t Everything Just Stay the Same? is a coming-of-age story about one woman’s journey from childhood to adulthood, Mallow to Dublin, and not coping to coping with the inevitability and beauty of change.
While Stefanie was born in Munich, she moved to Mallow with her mother when she was one or two years old. Her mother and German father are divorced.
She said: “Mallow was great. I swam. I used to spend my summers and Christmas with my grandmother. I was always with my nana and mam for those holidays.”
Writing wasn’t initially at the top of her list of career choices and she went to the Garda training college in Templemore with the dream of eventually becoming the first female Garda Commissioner.
However, fate intervened and she went into comedy. Since then she has been featured regularly on Brendan O’Connor’s ‘Cutting Edge’ and she tends to set Twitter on fire with her one-liners and views.
In August she was named Cork Person of the Month and her name will now go forward with other monthly winners for possible selection as Cork Person of the Year 2017.