Humour helped me make sense of cancer chaos
Former Nualas star on her new play
Playwright, actor, singer, songwriter, comedian, barrister and former member of The Nualas, Karen Egan is one of our most versatile artistic and academic performers. At the peak of her career in 2015, while living in Finland, she was hit with breast cancer.
She tells me she now feels great and returns to the stage in a filmed production of her new play, Warrior.
Karen moved to Finland in 2011, with a commission to write a play for a theatre company there while acting as artist-in-residence.
‘I was also producing my song album Charlatanne, so I was going backward and forward between Finland and Ireland. I was launching my album on a Friday and I was diagnosed with cancer the following Monday. That changed everything.’
Warrior is loosely based on her experience, exploring the vulnerability, chaos, anxiety and humour of that experience.
‘Music and comedy always play a huge role in my work,’ she says. ‘There’s quite a few songs in this play, and a lot of incidental music, composed by myself and Cian Boylan. From the time of the diagnosis, I was going between Finland and Ireland to give performances, and was receiving treatment with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery from April 2015 to the end of the year.
‘I had to turn down a lot of work because you can’t really hide it on stage. Chemo is the most challenging part. After a few weeks you become increasingly exhausted. That has a knock-on effect on your psychological outlook: you feel low and go through some dark moments. But I have a fantastic family who gathered round, and my sister was always there to help.
‘The play is called Warrior, but I don’t want it to come across as me being a warrior – about how great I was or what a survivor I am. The real warriors are the people who are helping you on that journey.
‘There’s a lot of humour in the piece, but I don’t think I could be accused of making light of anyone suffering from cancer. Humour in a very dark situation can be quite cathartic. Humour and my family kept me going through treatment.’
This play was filmed in The Mermaid in Bray, without an audience. ‘Susannah de Wrixon picked up Covid and had to be replaced by Ruth McGill who stepped in at the last minute and did a wonderful job.’
Karen has a law degree from UCD and qualified as a barrister at Kings Inns, but never practised law; she studied acting, worked with The Nualas, rounded off with a masters in theatre studies from Trinity.
‘Everyone said you can always fall back on the law but… I decided to think I never did law and see where it takes me,’ she says.
At its furthest, acting took her to Australia and Tasmania. She become artist-in-residence in the Finnish theatre and stayed until 2015. In 2014 she got a six-week artist-in-residence job in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. ‘That was just magical. I was able to soak up all the culture while writing a play.’
■ Tickets for Warrior on-demand, March 21 to April 3, €10 single, household €15, from mermaidartscentre.ie everymancork.com and projectartscentre.ie