`I hate to think that something I've been through has been wasted'

Almost painfully slender with long fingernails, several rings on each hand and one in her nose, Tara Gray looks too small to have the energy needed to write, stage and star in a play. In between cigarettes and sips of coffee, she explains she has lived three lifetimes in her 27 years.

It's those lifetimes and her feelings about them that were the basis for the play, Where Have All The Spoons Gone? , recently performed at Ringsend Technical School, Dublin, as part of Drug Awareness Week.

"I hate to think that something I've been through has been wasted," she says. "You can pass it on, give a piece of you." The play centres on Louise Clarke, played by Gray, and her struggle with drugs. Self-conscious and insecure, Louise looks for acceptance by dating a well-known drug dealer and trying marijuana, smack and heroin. Against the music of U2 and Annie Lennox, short vignettes showcase how her family deals with Louise as well as an alcoholic father, a weak mother and a snobby sister.

While working during the day for News Four, a local free newspaper, and taking care of her nine-year-old son, Daniel, Gray wrote, usually around two or three in the morning. The play was to have been written by Watersedge, the company which staged it, but Gray decided to write it herself. "I sat in front of the computer and imagined conversations," she says. "After the first two scenes, it just wrote itself."

She joined Watersedge about two years ago. "I always had a notion I could act," she says. "It's just another form of expression." Along with the other actors in the company - mostly local housewives - Gray gained confidence from performing. After completing her first monologue before an audience, Gray thought: "If I could do it on my own, I could do anything. The confidence spills over into everyday life - that's why you keep going."

She knew she would play a part in Spoons. "I don't think I would've been able to write the play knowing that I wasn't going to be in it."

The aim of the play was to get to "the human side of life" and deal with a very real problem in today's society. "Drugs are a part of people's lives," she says. "They're all around. A lot of plays are very good, well-acted but nothing sticks with you. Doing the play makes you think that could be me. I didn't realise how close to home it was until it was on stage."

She emphasises that "the drugs part" of the play is not about her. In fact, she had to practice the shooting-up scene which opens the play.

was presented as part of Switched On - ESB Accessing Theatre for Women and hosted by the Smashing Times Theatre Company and Watersedge. On opening night, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Joe Doyle, was the guest of honour.

The play was quite a hit - and an extra day was added to the original two-night run. "The play took on a life of its own," says Gray. "With the response we got, it just snowballed. It's the biggest thing we've done in a sense."

She knows her play affected at least one person. After the first night a 14-year-old girl approached her and said she would never use drugs after what she had seen on stage. After a few revisions to the play, Watersedge plans to tour local communities with.

Gray's background makes this success a bit of a surprise, she says. "If you had told me five years ago that this is what I'd be doing today, I'd have said no way." After leaving school in Ringsend at 15, Gray married at 18 and had a child. She cleaned houses to pay the bills but decided to separate from her husband after four years. She now lives in Townsend Street.

"I've always written poetry," she says, mostly about depressing and sad subjects. In her pieces for News Four, she covers social issues. "I don't do `happy'," she says with a laugh.

"I would've liked to go on to college and do it the right way," she says. She is now doing an at-home course in social studies.

Watersedge founder Ann Carroll says that Gray is very talented and energetic. "It would be great if all of that energy could be channelled - she'll be a great writer."

Of, she says: "I thought it was real and honest, life-like, emotional. I was gobsmacked by it to be perfectly honest.

"The message came over very, very clearly - that drugs, once started, are a web. It showed what a vicious cycle drugs are, they don't affect just one person."

Carroll founded Watersedge three years ago because she believes in community development. She called the acting company a way to "reintroduce these women to society. We had found women, to develop, can go into all different areas. Drama you can go into without any inhibitions. Tara and Watersedge Group showed the community that there is talent and that it should be encouraged and helped to grow."