Enda Walsh: ‘There’s been stuff of mine that’s been successful, but I’ve hated it. Really hated it’
The brilliant brains behind Disco Pigs, Ballyturk and The Walworth Farce reveals surprising insecurities, and why being an Irishman in London makes him the writer he is today
Enda Walsh at his home in Kilburn, London. Picture by Jonathan Goldberg
Enda with his wife Jo Ellison. Picture by Andrew Downes
Producer Laura Hastings-Smith, writer Enda Walsh, actor Aaron Johnson, actor Matthew Beard, actor Hannah Murray and actor Imogen Poots attend the 'Chatroom' photocall during the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. Picture by Francois Durand/Getty
Eenda Walsh with, from left, Mikel Murfi, Cillian Murphy and Stephen Rea at rehearsals for 'Ballyturk' in 2014
Enda Walsh’s plays – Disco Pigs, The Walworth Farce, The New Electric Ballroom and many more – are choc-a-block. They’re full of pain, tragedy, hilarity, macabre wit, truth, and detail. There is what the characters say, and there is everything they mean.
There are also Jammy Dodgers, pink wafers, other highly specific biscuits for particular moments.
He seems, I say, like someone with a very busy mind?
“I’m not really anxious as a person,” he begins, then pauses, acknowledges with a laugh, “well I am, a little bit – but my characters are a lot.
“The plays happen in real time. Usually the drama has happened just before we begin the play, so they’re already fuelled with a question or an anxiety or an itchiness, and then it starts.
“I never really have a direction of where it’s going to go, or how it’s going to be formed. It means that the characters, in the second, don’t know where it’s going to go themselves. I throw everything into the moment and allow them to pass through an experience in real time.
“That’s always been what I’ve done and it’s become sort of a rule of mine.
“I realise that if I don’t know and they don’t know and the audience doesn’t know, it makes the moment feel very dangerous. It could all collapse at any moment, or else the anxiety mounts and it needs to explode in some way.”
“Theatre to me, isn’t a literal thing – ‘this happens, then this happens’ – they’re very live things…
“This sounds really pretentious, but I think of them in abstracted terms. I think of them as feelings. Then I need to just bang out these literal words, to disguise what that the feeling is, or exaggerate it.”
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He’s talking to me from London, where he has lived since 2005 with his wife Jo Ellison (editor of ‘How to Spend It’ magazine in the Financial Times).
They met “when Disco Pigs was playing in the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. Jo had just finished college and she was working in the box office, and we met there.” And they have a daughter, Ada.
So was it always theatre with him, I wonder? After all, at the time he began writing – Disco Pigs, his first play, came out in 1996 – theatre was a slightly moribund artform, still under the heavy, deadening hand of the Irish Greats.
“Always, yes. When I was younger I was nervous, and I was aware that when I got nervous, I had a bit of a stammer… When I’m really, really tired, still, I find myself stammering, or a little bit stressed.
“So I was aware back then of the power of the voice and the pressure on it and what it was to throw a word out. Performance and live performance seemed really incredibly exciting.
“I got involved with the Dublin Youth Theatre and that seemed… it felt comfortable. I felt less shy and more ‘Oh, I think I understand this medium.’
“Also I used to look at my dad, and at other people. I guess all writers do, but to try and eke out silences and details of people and what they’re not saying and subtext and all that carry-on. Play-writing is all about charging the silence.
Enda with his wife Jo Ellison. Picture by Andrew Downes
“I’ve always thought of it in those terms – it’s sort of visual and oral and aural. It’s the liveness of it that I’ve adored. I love the potential for failure within it. You’re relying on an audience – because it’s live – on their patience and their imagination.”
I confess to him then that I half-hate going to the theatre – because of this very thing: The potential for failure. I am weirdly obsessed with actors forgetting lines, things going wrong.
“Yeah, a lot of people are I think,” he says. “There’s that thing when you are in front of an audience, that the audience goes: ‘This is going to be shit. I had to skip dinner, the Dart was late, I’ve arrived here and this is going to be shit…’” he laughs.
“I’ve sat in so many audiences over the years for my plays, and you can feel it. Now that’s an extraordinary thing. And it’s terrifying, but also it’s exciting. You’re trusting yourself – your skill as a theatre-maker – that you’re able to grab them, then hold them, surprise them, then move them. But that’s a lot to do. No wonder it fails so f**king much!”
No wonder indeed! So, has he had his own experience of that?
“I’ve had some hilarious experiences – and some terrible experiences, where I know it hasn’t worked, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Times where I’ve failed, and that’s hard.
“And there are times where it’s really worked, and it’s always a surprise to me, how it’s worked: ‘I know I wrote and directed that, but did I have a say in it?’ It’s a combination of many, many heads around it, and I’m the one asking questions and making sure everyone’s ok, keeping everyone up and focused and energised.”
If something doesn’t work, how much of that does he take on himself? After all, theatre is a collaborative artform. If there’s ‘fault’ it could lie in many places.
“Oh I do take it on. There’s been stuff of mine that’s been successful – from a reviews point of view – but I’ve hated it. Really hated it.”
Will he give specifics?
“I can’t really, because it’s horrible to the producers and the actors,” which is fair. “I don’t read reviews, but I hear from people that the reviews are great – and yet I feel really, really down. I know that there’s nothing I can do about it, I’ve just got to live with it.
“Sometimes that disappointment goes in a week, and sometimes,” he starts to laugh, “it can stay around for two years. I’ve had that, where it’s hard. I know there’s something in the back of my head. I feel a bit humiliated and embarrassed that I was part of something and it’s out there. And I feel as if I failed.”
Producer Laura Hastings-Smith, writer Enda Walsh, actor Aaron Johnson, actor Matthew Beard, actor Hannah Murray and actor Imogen Poots attend the 'Chatroom' photocall during the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. Picture by Francois Durand/Getty
Producer Laura Hastings-Smith, writer Enda Walsh, actor Aaron Johnson, actor Matthew Beard, actor Hannah Murray and actor Imogen Poots attend the 'Chatroom' photocall during the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. Picture by Francois Durand/Getty
To hear someone so successful – Walsh has worked with Steve McQueen (on Hunger), with David Bowie (on Lazarus), with Max Porter (adapting Grief is the Thing with Feathers) – is fascinating. And unusual. I get the sense of someone pushing himself constantly, so that ‘success’ – whatever that means to him – is never terribly interesting. Certainly not something to linger with. It’s all about what’s next, about finding new ways to tell stories and create emotions.
He talks candidly about life post-Covid.
“Last year was weird, coming back after the pandemic. I did two shows last year, I did Medicine and The First Child and I was a bit like... I was f**ked afterwards. I was really really tired. But also I had this perspective on the work, having not done it for two years, and then having done it.
“I was happy with both the plays, a lot – but I fell in a terrible hole. I had real ‘is that it?’ I had terrible ‘I’ve just wasted my whole life being a writer’ You know that way?
“I was like, ‘f**k me, who needs another writer in the world?’ We came out of this pandemic and all these incredible scientists dragged us out – why the f**k couldn’t I do something of some worth?”
He’s laughing, but I can see it was no less serious for that.
“My wife reminded me this happens every January. But it spread into late March. And then I sort of came out of it.”
Eenda Walsh with, from left, Mikel Murfi, Cillian Murphy and Stephen Rea at rehearsals for 'Ballyturk' in 2014
The point though is that “the work really, really matters to me. It’s personal, and you are putting yourself out there.
“And it does take a lot out of you. It’s not just the physical thing of having to drag everyone with you and get everyone excited and keep everyone focused.
“It’s the putting it in front of an audience and then… this sounds so awful,” he laughs, “this terrible artist would turn around and say this shit when everyone’s going through… But I did feel a bit like, ‘f**k, I’m knackered.’ I think I’ve had a really busy 12 years...”
It’s ok to feel knackered, I say. The pandemic was really hard. Did he find work dried up really suddenly?
“No,” is the unexpected answer. “I took on this film for Netflix called The House – this crazy stop-animation that did really well for us and was really fun to do. I took on this other big TV project which I won’t go into yet.
“Also I felt really great. I really missed people. I missed socialising and all that type of carry-on but I was writing really well. It’s been a good two years for that. I think I’ve worked out a load of things in my head. But actually the theatre-making which is my first real love, I really missed it, and coming back to it – and the shock of ‘oh my god this is what I do with my life’ really shook me.”
It was, he says, “a tricky beginning of the year, but I feel like I’m positive again. But it was really important for me to acknowledge the fact that I was really tired.”
More laughter. “It’s ok to say that. Yes, I’m a f**king middle-aged man.”
We talk then about the pull between telling too much and too little, when creating work; about how much ‘not knowing’ audiences are willing to put up with.
“It’s that classic thing,” he says. “With music, we don’t need to understand it, we just feel it. Visual art – unless it’s a landscape or a bowl of fruit – we sit with it and think about it. It communicates in a different way.
“But words are literal things, and they mean something – so when you throw them on stage, the audience goes, ‘I know what this means.’
“So it begins this conversation with them where we’re dealing with a literal thing. Words can mislead you and confuse you and put you in an abstracted place where you have room to think and dream it out.
“I’m completely fine with that,” he adds. “Most Irish audiences are ok with that. They’re not annoyed by it.
“I had this hilarious moment – years ago, I can’t remember what play it was, but two women ran after me, on Shop Street in Galway: ‘Enda Walsh, we saw your play last night, will you unriddle it for us?’
“I said: ‘Unriddle it? You bought the tickets. You unriddle it.’ But there was also joy, and they were still thinking about it.
“Some people are like: ‘F**k you, tell me a story. Let me know what I’m thinking. Let me know what I saw. That’s your job.’ As a playwright I’ve never thought that’s my job. But I do want to connect with people. I do want them to feel moved without them knowing why they’re moved – that’s a big thing.”
In pursuit of this, he is constantly evolving the ways in which he communicates, or as he says “ways to tell something visually and disrupt it with music or motion”.
Recently, this has meant opera – a trilogy created with composer Donnacha Dennehy that began with The Last Hotel, followed by The Second Violinist, and culminates with The First Child. Why opera, I ask?
“When I did Misterman and Ballyturk – I felt that the most interesting thing in both those pieces, for me, was when there was no text. Whether it’s Cillian Murphy looking at this vast space, and this huge music around him…
“I found that I was more and more going to the opera here in London. I found that all my favourite productions happened to be opera or dance.
“I thought I needed to investigate how to tell a story in that form. Before Donnacha asked me to do it, I thought that was a direction to go. And then he asked me.
“And I wasn’t ready to do it at the time. But then I was really ready.
“I think, if anything,” he continues, “I’m running away from any plot-driven, narrative-heavy work, and just allowing plays to operate not as talking machines. Instead creating rhythm atmospheres and patterns.
“We’re creating these weather patterns that we’re throwing at people. It’s the things that are not spoken, that are underneath, the subtext of that. Which in Ireland we have so much.
“I know when I’m in America, people are like: ‘Oh my god, you Irish, what is it with all the writers?’ And I go: ‘Have you lived there?’ What our history is, what we’ve kept secret, what we’ve lied about – within families as well as society – I’m just surprised that not everyone is a f**king writer!”
Does he miss Ireland?
“I really miss Irish people. As soon as I talk to them, I feel, ‘here I am, at home.’ That shorthand, that we all know when we start talking.
“But I‘ve been so long out of it. I think I’m 20 years away, I sort of fantasise about going back and living there as an old man, and I probably will. But it suits me as a writer to always feel a bit that I’m not part of things.
“I want to feel like I don’t belong. I do belong, in that I’m here [in London] with Jo and Ada and the dog and my friends and all that, but I know that I’m an Irishman living abroad and that suits me. That perspective on yourself and who the hell you are...
“I don’t know what sort or writer I’d be if I lived in Ireland. I wouldn’t get to miss it so much. And there are things I can recall easier living here – the past, all the nostalgic shit, I can remember it clearer over here.”
Finally, what is he working on now?
“I actually cannot tell you,” he says with a laugh, “which is so annoying. I’m doing a film which I can’t talk about, and a big TV thing that I can’t talk about.”
One thing he can talk about is the musical Sing Street, adapted from John Kearney’s film.
“Just before the pandemic, Sing Street was about to open on Broadway, and now it’s going back – but with a whole new cast. Because, god love them, all these kids who were going to be in the show grew up.”
This, we agree, is “f**king heart-breaking. In America, Broadway means a lot – but they’re all super talented and I’m sure they’ll all have good careers.
“So that’s happening, but I can’t really talk about the others. It’s like I’m doing nothing,” he says then, with another laugh. “It’s great.”
“I’m writing something at the moment and I’m really enjoying it, although today was a f**king disaster. Our washing machine broke, and when the new one arrived, I was going to plumb it, but realised it didn’t fit, and had to recall them. Then I sat in the laundrette all morning, reading back over my work, watching clothes go round, and trying to figure out whether anything I was writing was any good…”
What an image, I say.
“I know. So much anxiety. All I needed was Donnacha Dennehy there, sound-tracking all of this angst.”
‘The First Child’ is presented by Landmark Productions in association with Irish National Opera as part of Galway International Arts Festival and runs from July 18-24 at Bailey Allen Hall, NUI Galway. giaf.ie
Marina Carr Author of 30 or so plays, Carr is the daughter of a playwright, Hugh Carr, and as a child built a theatre in the family’s garden shed. She won the Dublin Theatre Festival’s Best New Irish Play award in 1994 for The Mai, and has since received the Susan Smith Blackburn prize, the EM Forster award and the Windham-Campbell Literature award. On Raftery’s Hill is widely acclaimed as a modern classic.
Martin McDonagh Born to Irish parents and brought up in London, McDonagh has always been drawn to Irish themes and settings, particularly Galway, where he spent summers as a child, and most notably in the award-winning trilogy that started with The Beauty Queen of Leenane in 1996. Recipient of four Tony Award nominations, five Laurence Olivier Award nominations (and three wins), as well as an Oscar for the short film Six Shooter.
Conor McPherson A contemporary of McDonagh, McPherson started out writing plays for UCD Dramsoc. He founded the Fly by Night Theatre Company, which produced his own work, including This Lime Tree Bower and Rum and Vodka. The Weir won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1996. Recently he created Girl from the North Country, using the music of Bob Dylan.
Sonya Kelly Kelly’s debut, The Wheelchair on My Face, won a Scotsman Fringe First Award for new writing at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012, and received a Critics’ Pick in the New York Times. How to Keep an Alien won the Best Production Award at the Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival in 2014. Her work for Druid Theatre Company includes Furniture, Once Upon a Bridge and The Last Return, which premieres at the Galway International Arts Festival this July 8 until 23.
