Event: Conor McPherson in Conversation with Gerry Godley
Location: Dalkey Heritage Centre
Time & Date: 3.30pm Sunday 20th June 2010

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The first and most wonderful thing that strikes one about McPherson on hearing him speak is how apparently normal he is. Neither a long beard nor an intellectually superior demeanour in sight. Anyone who strolled into the Dalkey Heritage Centre last Sunday afternoon to admire the view would have been forgiven for thinking that the warm, slightly shy Dubliner, dressed in blue jeans and shirt, was an IT consultant being interviewed about his new book PCs for Dummies rather than a playwright with a host of awards to his name.

As it is, McPherson gave the reason for his not being Twitterliterate as his ripe old age of 38, giving some hope to those of us with the same excuse, but without the Tony award nominations. Perhaps his regularity may be explained by the normality of his upbringing as he described in a little detail to his interviewer, Gerry Godley. An average student on his own admission, his first love was music, and he played guitar in bands in his early youth. A decent Leaving Certificate at the “too young” age of 16 found him studying Arts at UCD, including English (“reading books – OK”) and Psychology (“might come in handy should I need to fire a band member”). As it happened, after reading the play Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, McPherson wrote his own first play, and presented it to the UCD DramaSoc for performance. And so it began.

McPherson went on to describe how, via a road paved in part by self-doubt and rejection, he finally came to have the critical success he sought in London. Throughout the interview, McPherson touched on the Irish people’s relationship with England, musing on how our history compels us to hate, but how many Irish artists, himself included, owed their career and success in no small part to English audiences.

The playwright’s thoughts on the Irish psyche formed a large part of the discussion, as he noted how so little time has past since the famine, and how he believes we are a nation still only coming to terms with that event. Our recent history and our own collective reaction to suddenly having it all seem to him to be a clear continuation of this.

He also talked in some detail about our country’s historical interest in spiritualism and mysticism, as Gerry Godly noted the reoccurrence of ghosts and such themes in McPherson’s work. His interesting notion that our existence on the edge of the known physical world before the discovery of the Americas may have paved the way for a deep rooted belief in the spiritual world, and our eventual openness to the Catholic church and its teachings, was certainly thought-provoking.

When questioned about the future of theatre in this age of instant digital communication, McPherson seemed confident of the art form’s future noting how, through many changing and challenging times, theatre has endured. His advice for aspiring playwrights was both earnest and practical – write about what YOU really want to write about, not what you think the market is looking for; and that there is nothing stopping any playwright putting on a play himself – even if it is above the local pub on Bingo night and your mother has the lead role because you can’t afford a real actor. So there you have it – it appears the play really is the thing.