Little people, big dramas

As the photographer is setting up a good angle, moving my notebook, cappuccino and croissant out of the picture, Maeve Ingoldsby laughs nervously. "You wouldn't want people thinking I eat croissants," she jokes. It's typical of the playful sense of humour of a woman who is probably Ireland's most prolific stage writer for children. Kevin's Story, which opens at the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny, this week, is her latest play in collaboration with Barnstorm, where she has been writer-in-residence for five years.

Kevin's Story is a new departure for Ingoldsby, moving away from her characteristic "kitchen-sink drama for children" style. Switching from dreamlike sequences to real situations, Kevin's Story evolves as a series of snapshots of Kevin's everyday life (both real and imagined) and, at this point in time, of the difficulties he is having writing his story for a school project. "Kevin has a wonderful imagination, and at the beginning of the play, he doesn't realise that this is what makes him special. He is no good at sums, no good at spelling, no good at football and is always getting into trouble," explains Ingoldsby.

As the plot unfolds, Kevin meets an unconventional adult (the school caretaker) who allows him to move away from the internalised view of himself as "useless and a bit crazy" to a more confident, self-accepting one.

A former primary school teacher herself, Ingoldsby talks enthusiastically about how she draws inspiration from her visits to primary schools. "I'm lucky teachers allow me into their classes," she says. "They know I won't do anything that will upset them or the children and that I have respect for the system. "I pretend to do a phone-in with them, getting the children to be the parents or teachers discussing certain topics. That gives them lots of opportunities to say things.

"Most people/children in the world are afraid of the same few things: being laughed at, not being liked, not being one of the gang and, oh yeah, having naff runners . . . I think there is no such thing as a bad person. People do things because they are under pressure, afraid or under emotional stress."

Common themes in her work are sibling rivalry, family disharmony and being the odd one out. Her first play for children, Earwigs, went into its third production last year. Scaredycats (1999), Silly Bits of Sky (1998), Bananas in the Bread Bin (1997) and Digger, Doc and Dee-Dee (1996), an adaptation of Volker Ludwig's Bella Boss and Bulli, are the other plays she has written while working with Barnstorm.

Ingoldsby also wrote Crabs in a Bucket (1995) for Kilkenny Youth Theatre and Off the Wall for the Civic Theatre in Tallaght.

"My writing career is a series of fortunate accidents," says Ingoldsby, who grew up in Clontarf and now lives in Portmarnock, Co Dublin. Married to a retired civil servant, Bernard McDonagh ("I'm lucky, I'm married to the right man"), with six grown-up children, Ingoldsby worked as a teacher for seven years before the birth of her second child.

"It wasn't easy. I had five children under six at one stage. It's not to be recommended. But it's lovely now. They are all very close together and great friends," she says.

While she claims she never thought she'd end up a writer, she was already volunteering to write a play while at Manor House secondary school in Raheny. The result was a 10minute send-up of fairies in which the dainty, fragile ones were shuffled into the back row while "all the hard tickets, the ones you wouldn't generally cast as fairies, got the lead roles".

The eldest of eight children herself, she says she has good memories of her home life as a child, hated primary school and loved secondary school. She says she gets her sense of humour from her parents. "I love silly humour and corny jokes." She was a teenager before she saw her first professional production (Philadelphia Here I Come!) and, soon after, Juno and the Paycock in Irish at the Taibhdhearc Theatre in Galway.

"They both blew my mind," she says. While doing her teacher training at Carysfort College, she wrote her first pantomime, in Irish.

Ingoldsby wrote sketches for the children while teaching at St Vincent's School in Marino, Dublin, but it wasn't really until she was at home full-time with her young family that she began writing professionally.

"The first script I was paid for was a pantomime performed in Damer Hall on St Stephen's Green. I wrote it in two copy books upstairs while Bernard was minding the children downstairs," she says.

Ingoldsby has also written scripts for Maureen Potter and a few episodes of Glenroe, Fair City and Only Slagging, the precursor to Scrap Saturday on RTE Radio One with Barbara Brennan and Frank Kelly.

In fact, it was Frank Kelly who suggested she change from using her Irish name, Maeve Nic Giolla Iosa, to Maeve Ingoldsby. "Overnight, people believed I was a writer," she says. "It was amazing, and partly thanks to the fact that Pat Ingoldsby - who is my second cousin - was already well-known."

While working with RTE, Ingoldsby was introduced to Patrick Sutton, then the director of TEAM Educational Theatre Company. She went on to write four plays - "real plays for children, not just funny bunnies and look behind yous" - for TEAM before moving on to work with Barnstorm.

"When I started writing plays for children, people asked me: `When are you going to write a real play?' That has changed. I am now regarded as a playwright," she says. Ingoldsby speaks very highly of Barnstorm, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and of its commitment to bringing professional theatre productions for children to venues around the country.

"Some people patronise children and others have an `it'll do' approach to them, but children are very perceptive and they deserve professional standards," she says.

"There is nothing like the joy of watching actors at work with a director and how they bring something to life. I've been very lucky to work with such good people."

She enthuses in particular about Barnstorm's artistic director, Phillip Hardy, and general manager, Vincent Dempsey.

"We are like a family at this stage. I have seen myself leaving several times, but I am still there," she says.

She concedes, however, that she is not planning to write a play for Barnstorm next year.

"There are two plays in my bottom drawer and I am like a horse refusing a fence," she says. "Every time I go to them, I get scared."

Kevin's Story runs at the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny until February 15th.There will be a gala family performance on Friday at 8 p.m. Barnstorm Theatre Company will then take the show to Derry, Longford, Dublin, Sligo, Cork, Portlaoise, Limerick and Mullingar. Booking on tel: 056-51266.