Ten Things I Love About Theatre…

On the day of the biannual 10-Minute Play Festival at the Black Box Belfast, I offer ten reflections on the importance, and joy, of seeing and drama live on stage.

Coming Together

Drama is democracy. This was the proposition with which playwright Michael West confronted us in my first ever scriptwriting seminar. A script is just a set of instructions. Like the manual that come with Ikea furniture.

Ophelia turns away from Hamlet, hands an allen key to Oedipus, who begins to hum a remembered lullaby while using the short end to turn the hexagonal screw.

HAMLET: O loathsome King, wherefore aren’t thou so enthused by Danish furnishings?

Already we need many hands on deck for this imagined piece to come together, for this improbable story to be told. Actors, costume designers, stage managers, lighting technicians, countless others. We need people to bring themselves, physically, to a room, ready to make decisions on how we will tell this tale. There is no postal voting. We need them here, willingly, willing to…

Imagine

I’m seventeen, final year of secondary school. I’m the Assistant Director for the school play, to be performed by five of my classmates, and one female actor from a neighbouring school. In just under two months, it’ll be opening night. We’re doing A Handful of Stars by Wexford playwright Billy Roche. It’s set in a pool hall. So we’ll need a pool table, cues, chalk, specially designed walls, one bearing a dart board, another specially reinforced sturdy enough for Stapler, the ex-boxer, to slam the James-Dean-esque Jimmy Brady against without collapsing the entire set.

But, as of yet, we have none of those things. We have six actors, an Irish language teacher who’s volunteered to direct in his free time, and me, and my notepad. Oh, and a classroom. What we have, in fact, is the same thing every play begins with. A bare room, a vision, and our imaginations. For this, and for the first nine or ten rehearsals, Jimmy will play pool against his best friend Tony, across a little school desk, with a ruler for a cue, a rubber eraser for chalk, and invisible balls.

Gradually, we will gather up our materials, and, eventually, the front third of the school hall will be transformed into a dingy dive off the main drag of a small Irish town, and the school will be abuzz. Which is just as well, because we really need them to show up.

No Audience, No Show

The drama-democracy thing isn’t empty rhetoric. It can’t be coincidence that we trace much of our knowledge of both to Ancient Greece, where democracy was a participatory pursuit – live decision-making in a room – and where theatre was a place for the masses to gather, often outdoors, to watch, to listen, to be moved, often to loud tears, and to consider their place in the universe.

To be moved in this way, first we must submit to the reality of what the actors insist is happening. Which, it transpires, can be quite fun.

At a Play, We All Play.

It’s February, 2026. The world feels uncertain, but the Lyric Theatre is buzzing. Karis Kelly’s award-winning Consumed is about to begin its long-awaited Belfast run. We finish our drinks and file in. The stage is already lit. We can see a kitchen table, a sink, a hob, a stairs, a slightly messy run. For now, we are still in a theatre. But we know that, once the house lights go down, we are in someone’s house, in their kitchen, watching on from behind a missing wall.

Four women enter. They are four actors, with different surnames, no blood connection. But we immediately understand that, for tonight, they are from four generations of the same family, gathered to celebrate the birthday of the eldest. We, in the audience, settle into the darkness, willingly surrender our imaginations, our sense of what we usually agree upon to be real.

Theatre requires more than the imagination of the individual writer, or reader. Even the expansive imagination of the cast won’t suffice. We need to harness our capacity to imagine collectively.

We play along, as well we might for a nephew or granddaughter who has just informed us that the couch we’re sitting on is, in fact, a pirate ship.

We have agreed to come together, to play along. And for what?

Mirror, Mirror

Consumed shows three mothers mothering, three daughters being parented. I hear the distinctive notes of old tensions being, at first, suppressed and, eventually, ventilated. This family is not real, but its verisimilitude, its feeling of complete truth, derives from the experiences of every individual present. We are watching ourselves, hearing our own families, walking a well-trodden path from hugs to hostility and back to hugs.

The women, these characters, are of this place. We are somewhere in Northern Ireland, and just as familiar as the humour (the actors have to pause to allow laughs to die down) is the lack of agreement over what this place is. Karis Kelly, born 1987, is one of a new generation of writers asserting what it means to be from here – to be of a generation still feeling the damage inflicted on their parents and grandparents, while having its own priorities to negotiate. In the darkness, we sit and consider our place in all of this.

I glance around. Some are laughing more than others. Most are rapt, but it’s not everybody’s thing. But that’s fine.

Every Play Has Its Audience

A few weeks later and Kelly is speaking at the Seamus Heaney Centre, about journeys. About the journey of Consumed, and of any piece of drama. Ultimately, Kelly posits, the piece must find its audience, the people for whom it is intended. This may be a niche group within the population, speakers of a particular language, fans of comedy, of musical theatre. Or a group whose voice has hitherto been smothered, whose truth and lived experience is finally being elevated, given the platform of a stage.

So the challenge of the writer, of the playwright, once they have their premise, their setting, their story, their action, is to begin taking stock of the audience. Of what group they wish to guide the piece towards.

Or so goes Karis Kelly’s theory. Maybe you have your own. If so, great, because…

You Decide What Theatre Is

You could close this window and decide you have an idea for a story that would work on stage. Maybe my classmates playing imaginary pool with rulers reminded you of a moment from childhood. Or maybe, while you were reading, a ladybird landed on your monitor and got you wondering if insects are aware of their own mortality.

Well, if you’re thinking this, you’re correct. Theatre, as a medium, is owned by us. There are contestable ideas, conflicting and sincerely-held beliefs about what is good and what is worth putting on stage. Ultimately, we, the audience, decide what is worth seeing and what is worth applauding. You could write that play you just thought of and reframe what people think, not just about theatre, but about a range of issues. And sure as anything, someone else will come along after that, with another new play.

Theatre Prepares Us for Change

This new play will be the perfect answer to yours, because it will be of a new moment. Drama is change. Four women walk on a stage expecting a birthday party. They will not get what they expect. Nothing is more certain.

Will we never have enough plays. Because change, change beyond any possible prediction is the only certainty in this world (sorry soothsayers). There will always be a need for new plays, new events we need to better understand, forgotten events which need to be brought back out into the light and re-examined.

Theatre Connects Generations

Point nine of ten – I should be shooting for a climax about now. Here goes.

Hop in my glass elevator. We’re go to a community theatre show, run and performed by volunteers. Ah, here we are. How do I land this thing?

Phew, right in the lobby – that was close. Alright, now look around. Notice who’s here. Young people, who’ve caught the speech and drama bug; maybe one of their parents checks your ticket. Shuffling by you, a retired man who always loved shows but was too shy to even think of acting until someone asked him to play Grandpa George, the one who doesn’t get out of bed and go to the Chocolate Factory. Something about the exhilaration of the lights dimming, the chat of the audience fading to a hum on the other side of the curtain and then to silence. He’s been hooked ever since, and doesn’t mind how many more grandfathers he’s asked to play, or ailing monarchs for that matter. Because, playing George, at the other end of the bed from the veteran triple-threat Joe, and watching young Charlie perform, it inspired something in him, just as the young boy playing Charlie was inspired by the trust of all the adults who believed in him and supported him all the way to opening night and made him believe he could be the boy who every night would find the golden ticket and still look surprised.

There will be new plays, new stories. And there will be new re-imaginings of Hamlet, Oedipus, of Roald Dahl and Karis Kelly, rewired and retuned for a new era, and inspiring new stories. Many of those stories survived the plundering of libraries, the burning of books, of people. More will survive the wrath of hackers and deep fakers. As I type, there are writers fleeing conflict and catastrophe, their computers and notebooks left far behind them. Still they cling to their stories. Our stories survive, not by their committal to archive, but by their repetition, day upon day, night upon night.

Tomorrow’s Another Day

Repetition. Running the lines. Going through the warm-up. Checking off the list. Ushering the hundredth person to hold a ticket for Row G Seat 22 in 2026, and it’s still only April. Every night, something new happens on the stage. Ask an actor. Ask Ophelia. I bet she saw something in Oedipus’s eyes as she passed him that allen key that she never once did in all the rehearsals.

Go. Go watch something unfold. If you don’t go, it might unfold differently. In fact, it certainly will. Because in Row G, Seat 22, you’re never just sitting.

You’re playing along.

—

These thoughts are no newer than the medium they describe. I have liberally reused, repurposed and most likely bastardised the thoughts of many others. I’m stepping on stage this week to perform some words I typed, but of course I know they’re not mine either. I, we, have them out on loan for the evening. The idea of dramatising the tensions within a male-female friendship aren’t new, couldn’t possibly be new. But they will be the only thing happening on the stage at the Black Box for the few minutes we’re up there.

If you plan on coming, thank you in advance. Only applaud if we’ve earned it.

Belfast Playwrights’ Festival of 10-Minute Plays takes place Tuesday April 21^st at the Black Box Belfast. The last few tickets are available via:

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/belfast-playwrights-10-minute-play-festival-tickets-1984756342649

If you cannot make it but would like to support new writing for theatre in Belfast and beyond, consider donating via:

https://ko-fi.com/belfastplaywrights