A New Life: Award-winning playwright Ronan Noone left Ireland before he felt able to commit himself to writing. Alison Healy reports
Ronan Noone worked briefly as a reporter. Then he emigrated and began painting houses and working in bars. Now the 35-year-old from Clifden, Co Galway has found his niche as an award-winning playwright in Boston.
But he believes he would never have achieved this success if he stayed in Ireland. "I'm affected by a certain paralysis of ambition," he says from his Boston home. "If I stayed, I would have been sucked into duty and peer pressure and internal pressure.
"I would be mindful of expectation and maybe end up being satisfied with that life, living with a civil-service mentality. I would have seen a different life played out before my eyes."
Noone is amused that he is unknown in his home country yet he is asked for his autograph at opening nights of his plays in Boston, New York and Chicago.
Nobel laureate Derek Walcott has championed him, describing him as "extremely gifted with a tremendous future".
The actor Gabriel Byrne was an associate producer of his play, The Blowin of Baile Gall, which was recently produced off Broadway.
"I always knew I was going to write and I always knew I was going to leave Ireland," he says. "But in that Irish way, you would be reluctant to turn around and say you want to be a writer, because are you just another bar-room scrawler or do you know how to finish a story? I held back from saying it until I got published."
And he got published in style. His first play, The Lepers of Baile Báiste, won the US National Student Playwriting Award in 2002 and a clutch of other awards, including the LA Times Critics Choice, the Boston Globe Critics Choice and three Independent New England Reviewers' Awards (IRNEs).
He had written the play in 1994 while still living in Ireland and sent it to the Druid Theatre. "I got a curt 'no, thanks very much' and that was that. I couldn't see how I could break into the playwriting world in Ireland. I didn't see any chink in the armour. Who did I know who was writing plays?"
Indeed, his own route through university did not indicate that he would take this path. He studied maths, sociology and politics at NUI Galway and then did a diploma in journalism at the university. But work was hard to get and he soon found himself in the dole queue in Galway. He still has his dole card pinned to the wall to remind him of the days he queued to get £60 and butter vouchers.
Then he got the Green Card and found himself in Martha's Vineyard where he worked in a bar and painted houses. During the long winter, when tourists deserted the island, Noone sat down and wrote.
A customer in the bar asked him if he ever thought of doing the Boston University creative writing course. His application caught the eye of Derek Walcott, creative writing professor at the university. He was given a place on the course, his first play won good reviews and soon the awards started to pile up.
Now he laughs when he recalls how little he knew about theatre. "The first time I was brought into a green room I asked why it was called green when it was painted blue. That's how much I knew."
He has now written about 20 plays, including full-length plays, one acts and short plays.
Critics have described him as a poetic, musical writer with strongly defined characters.
The Lepers is about sexual abuse, while The Blowin (as in blow-in, or outsider) deals with racism and bigotry. "I hold a mirror up to Ireland but it's kind of cracked," he says.
Walcott is generous in his praise of Noone. Speaking from his home in St Lucia, he says he is constantly struck by Noone's modesty despite his talent. "He has a wonderful future. He writes terrific dialogue. I think he is a very gifted playwright. I really wish him the best."
Now Noone is dipping a toe into the movie world with a film script Brendan that has been optioned by an independent producer.
If it ever gets made, he will have to force himself to sit down and watch it. "I still can't go in to watch the plays. It's too much. I wait backstage and listen instead."
That led to one unhappy experience early on. The actors got their scripts late and worked day and night before the opening of The Blowin. To show his gratitude, Noone brought them in a bottle of whiskey on the opening night.
"They were delighted, thanked me and left it in their dressing room for afters. So I stood outside listening to the play. A line was dropped. And another one. Then there was a long pause.
"Gradually I realised they didn't know their lines so I went back into the dressing room, opened the bottle and finished it by the time they got off stage.
"They came in mopey-faced from what happened and found me comatose on the floor with the empty bottle beside me," he recalls. "Then we went on to win a pile of awards for the play."
He is not unduly worried about critical reaction after that play received two wildly different critiques. The critic Raven Snook wrote of The Blowin, "it's inevitable that someone will meet a violent end; it's just too bad it isn't the playwright", while a critic in Show Business Weekly described it as "a haunting masterpiece".
He would like Irish audiences to judge for themselves.
His next mission is to coax an invitation from a theatre or arts festival to stage a play here. "It would be strange and fascinating to go back home and put on one of your own plays. It would be very interesting to see the Irish reaction."
After many twists and turns, Noone is now happy with his lot. "I do what I love to do. There's a lot of pain but a lot of gain. At the end of the day, I don't live a life of quiet desperation."