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Shady Ladies tempts a crowd!
The creative team behind Shady Ladies were delighted with just under 100% attendance this weekend. There was some enthusiastic and critical feedback from audiences and it was a real credit to the project that so many new faces came along to Devon's only pub theatre to see our first international collaboration!

Click on this link to check out Shady Ladies preview on the brilliant Devon E-Zine People's Republic of South Devon!

In a first for Theatre Upstairs, the playwright Mary Halpin travelled over from Ireland to join us in the rehearsal room a week before the show. In case you missed Shady Ladies, scroll down for an interview with the playwright and some excerpts from our rehearsal blog. All Theatre Upstairs productions are rehearsed in Exeter with local theatre practitioners.

The cast with Mary Halpin. Photograph by Mike Alsford

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Interview with Shady Ladies playwright Mary Halpin
TUG: What have you been up to in your career since Shady Ladies was last performed?
MH: Since Shady Ladies was performed at the Abbey's Peacock Theatre a huge portion of my life has been devoted to writing for Fair City, Ireland's premier soap which is broadcast four nights weekly. I've worked on the series since season 2 - we're now in series 19 - both as a script writer and as a story writer.
I have written several radio plays, the one of which I'm most proud was called Twilight and was broadcast by BBC Radio 4. It was about a man who suffered from Korsakov's Syndrome which causes severe short term memory loss - so in a way, it's connected to Niamh's denial of her memories in Shady Ladies.

TUG: Was new writing a big part of Irish theatre back then? (Shady Ladies was first performed at The Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 1988).
MH: I don't think new writing has ever been sufficiently supported in Ireland. It wasn't then and it isn't now. My very first play, Semi-Private, did win a competion for a new play by a female writer and the prize was a production at Dublin's Gate Theatre, so at least there was some effort to bring new writing to the fore, but I don't see enough encouragement now.

TUG: Where did the idea for Shady Ladies come from?
MH: It came firstly from my admiration for actors. When my first play was produced, I used to have the actor's nightmare - I had to go on stage to play Ophelia (nowadays I guess that would be Gertrude!) but I didn't know the words. I am in awe of actors who can perform each night without drying, I can't even recite a short poem without hesitation. So the absolute horror of being on stage and not knowing what to say, provided me with the play's central character Niamh. The women came, I suppose, from a sense that history was always very much 'his' story rather than hers, and from a frustration I'd have when reading Irish history at the lack of female representation in the history books. I had to search to find stories about women - they were there, just not very prominently and I dramatised the women I found interesting or relevant to Niamh.

You can read more of this interview and our rehearsal blog on the Coming Next page.

Theatre Upstairs gratefully acknowledges support from Exeter's tEXt Festival.