New writing meets actors in Smock Alley show

An appreciative audience was treated to an unusual encounter between writers and actors presenting works-in-progress in a recent show at Smock Alley Theatre. 

One Giant Leap Present: Show Jumps – An Afternoon of Writing took place during the Scene + Heard Festival. 

This wasn’t one play but several: the event involved multiple writers, and actors – the scripts perched on stands in front of them – who performed the scripts to a live audience for the first time. 

The five new stories, never seen or heard before, were ‘Fermenting’ by Clodagh Healy, ‘Montague’ by Megan O’Malley, ‘Cause and Effect’ by Gabriel Graves, ‘Concrete’ by Sean Fox, and ‘Prosecco Wedding’ by Cait Moloney. 

Introducing the performance, director Caitríona called the participants “the most talented writers and actors I know of”.

Although the stories were unrelated, four of them had a consistent theme and narrative arc for their main characters: this was the multifaceted ways of ‘love’, whether it would be finding love in your old age with ‘Fermenting’, ‘Montague’ with breaking up with a person and finding love in other aspects of life, ‘Cause and Effect’ with needing time away from a person before finding the love again, and ‘Prosecco Wedding’, in which a woman marries someone she doesn’t really know very well. 

The Moloney wedding story was particularly funny, as siblings Kate and Sarah complain about the man their youngest sister Molly is marrying: he doesn’t even know her favourite song is from Winnie the Pooh – he thinks it is ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls. 

Although these were staged readings, the lighting cleverly followed the themes of the story: in ‘Concrete’, the lighting was white, showing the dull everyday life of the main character, while ‘Cause and Effect’ has a shade of red signifying the heartbreak and a rekindling of love.