The female race

Do laps while learning lines, be brave and don't laugh at dodgy accents: the year's best actresses on their acclaimed roles

Irish theatre has often been criticised for its lack of strong female roles, yet three of the four best-actress nominations in this year’s Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards are for performances in new plays. This year’s nominees range from relative newcomers to well-known stage and television actresses, some of whom have been nominated previously. Here, the four nominees talk about how they prepared for their roles and what it means to be nominated.

Cathy Belton

Nominated as Mary in The House Keeper

Cathy Belton says there is no great mystery to turning a good role into a good performance. It requires research, good choices and hard work. Her character in The House Keeper, Mary, faces having her home in Manhattan repossessed, so Belton had to work on her New York accent. “I got a great app on my phone, and I was cycling to rehearsals listening to New York radio,” she says. “You have to submerge yourself in it. We were lucky to have the writer of the play, Morna Regan, with us for the first week, and we grilled her to within an inch of her life.”

Belton’s second Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards nomination is all the more pleasing as it recognises her work in a new play, which she found intimidating initially. “It is so much more dangerous being the first voice of a new play on stage,” she says. “When I read The House Keeper first, I thought it was a great script, and I was scared of the part. I think that is always one of the great acid tests. If I feel a fear about a role it is usually a good thing.”

For Belton, learning lines meant hard graft. “Ingrid Craigie [who played Beth in the play] and I would meet 30 minutes before rehearsals and do 20 laps of a nearby pitch, running lines,” she says. “We did it every single morning. For me, learning lines is like learning spellings and tables in school.”

Currently midway through filming a television series, Belton says it took her years to get used to the uncertainty of an acting life. She now accepts it, despite the lack of security. “We need more women’s roles, in my opinion, as there is still a lack of big female parts for women of a certain age. When I started off first, the insecurity used to get to me, and I tried to leave acting. I couldn’t stay away and made a deal that I was just going to have to get used to the down time, use it to refuel, work on my craft and just keep going.”

Caitriona Ennis

Nominated as Young Girl in The Boys of Foley Street

This was one of Caitriona Ennis’s first professional roles in theatre, so to be nominated came as a huge surprise. “To have my name beside these actresses, most of whom I spent years watching and idolising, is so lovely for me,” she says. “It was also a great starting point to do a piece of work I was passionate about.”

Much acclaimed, The Boys of Foley Street was months in development before getting to the rehearsal room. Ennis says this long lead-in was key in helping her unearth her character. She also spent a lot of time interacting with families in the Foley Street area of Dublin. “During development we really focused on different stories in the area, and then when I found my own character it was all about the development, physically. Having the time meant I was able to challenge myself to find something, and I could try different things or make braver choices.”