‘STORYTELLING SEEMS TO BE A THING FOR US’
THE Irish studio behind Poor Things, The Favourite and Normal People held its inaugural screenwriting festival this week, with organisers hoping to boost Irish film and TV production on an ‘island of storytellers’.
Storyhouse, staged by multiple Oscarwinning production company Element Pictures at their Dublin cinema The Lighthouse, provided an opportunity for budding screenwriters to learn from international guests ‘at the top of their game’ on Thursday and Friday.
Element co-founder and co-CEO Ed Guiney, who was the driving force behind the festival, said storytelling ‘really does seem to be a thing’ among Irish people.
He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘We have this incredible literary history and then you have Paul Murray winning The Nero Prize for The Bee Sting and obviously Paul Lynch [Booker Prize winner for Prophet Song] and [Normal People writer] Sally Rooney.
‘There’s Roddy Doyle and Colm Toibín and all these amazing people. So there’s no argument that we have extraordinary writers coming out of the country.’
He added that there is no dispute about our contemporary playwrights either, naming Conor McPherson, Martin McDonagh, Enda Walsh and Mark O’Rowe, all of whom have ‘made a huge mark internationally’.
‘Then another form of storytelling is music and songwriting, and then poetry is another thing for us,’ Mr Guiney added.
He admitted, ‘it really does seem to be a thing.’
His Element co-founder and co-CEO Andrew Lowe agreed the Irish are ‘naturally gifted storytellers’ and ‘already punching above our weight’ as writers.
But he told the MoS: ‘There’s very little spent on TV drama in Ireland by RTÉ, for example, compared to other countries.
‘So if you’re an aspiring screenwriter, it’s actually very difficult to get experience and so events like [Storyhouse] really – hopefully – draw back the curtain and help people understand the process better, with a view to doing better work themselves.’
Among the speakers at the twoday festival was the double Oscarnominated screenwriter Tony McNamara. The Australian wrote the screenplays for The Favourite and Poor Things, which earned its star Emma Stone, left, a best actress Oscar .
Room and Normal
People director Lenny Abrahamson spoke to David Nicholls, who wrote the novel behind the hit Netflix series One Day, while Baz Ashmawy was part of a writing for TV, panel fresh off the back of his acclaimed sitcom Faithless.