A play on memories in this monologue

LIKE ANYONE else who loses a parent, Michelle Read was grieving as she cleared out her family home after the death of her mother. Margaret had a diagnosis of dementia when she died but it had not yet taken hold enough for her to be unable to live in her own home. And what Read, a playwright who normally deals solely in fiction, found among her mother’s possessions were snapshots of a life which she turned into her one woman show On A House Like A Fire.

‘I cleared my mam’s house back in 2014 when she passed away and I have kept a load of stuff. I started to take all that material out and went into a workshop space thinking I wanted to write about all of the stuff - maybe just for me, maybe a poem or a personal diary.

‘And then as I started writing, I started going through all the photographs and I came up with On A House Like A Fire.

‘I started talking to a lot of my friends about losing their parents and going through that rite of passage. We were talking about clearing houses and what you keep and what you let go of and once you’re out the other side of it. You are wanting to hold on to the person — how do you do that? What do you keep, what do you let go of?’

On A House Like A Fire is a moving piece that reminds us of the warmth that memories can bring and how sometimes as we age ourselves, we get to understand the lives our parents led a little bit more.

‘Going back through the photos I started really noticing things that maybe I knew but I had forgotten as an adult,’ Michelle says. ‘My mum was always really glam both my parents were. They were young in the 1960s and 1970s and dressing up in all the fashions and my mum had amazing beehive hair in the 60s and I remember being a kid and looking at her hair and thinking it was amazing.

‘There are photos of me with her and her beehive, then she had my brother and in the next photos she has cropped hair which was really short. So looking at the photos I could see the journey of a young mum that I was totally unaware of and it was lovely to reconnect and think about that.’

Margaret’s own voice can be heard in the production too.

‘I had interviewed my mam a few times and I have her voice on tape talking about the past and I found it really comforting. After the years pass you are thinking ‘how do I keep this person in my life and how do I hold onto them?’ - and you want to hold on to them. I think that’s what the show is about — it’s not about grief and it is more about remembering the fun memories as well.

‘My mum had a wicked sense of humour and I do have her voice in my head and I can hear her laugh. I think it’s about that sense of memory and holding onto someone and the things you wished you’d kept that get lost. I have her Marks and Spencer tea set that she loved but I don’t have a pair of her glasses and it’s those personal things that mean the most to me.’

It’s a heartwarming play that examines the process of ageing and is scored by composer Brian Keegan. And for Michelle, some of the items in the show illustrate the beauty of memory like the maps her parents used that she held on to.

On A House Like A Fire will be at Roscommon Arts Centre on May 17 and then Bewleys Café Theatre, Dublin from May 20 to June 8. See