Youth spent in Cork inspires play about teen sex and power

CORK actor, writer and director, Gina Moxley is delighted that her hit play, Danti-Dan, first performed by Rough Magic in 1995, is being staged at the Everyman next month.

Directed by Aaron Monaghan (Declan in The Banshees of Inisherin), the play won the Stewart Parker Trust Award.

With Cavan-based Livin’ Dred presenting it on a nationwide tour, Gina, who lives in Dublin, says: “It couldn’t be in better hands.”

The play, which explores teenage sexuality, is set in 1970, somewhere in Cork.

“It’s kind of based on where I grew up (Gina and her family lived above The Angler’s Rest, which they used to own). I call it auto-geographical. Kids just sat on the bridge and went swimming. There was absolutely nothing to do.

“In writing the play, I was interested in teenagers and sex and power. I just wanted to flip it. The usual story is that there’s a predatory male and a vulnerable female. Females are always presented as being innocent and passive, with no active sexuality. I thought that was wrong so let’s see what happens when a girl is in a more dominant role.”

Back in the ’70s, Gina says that teenagers on holidays from school were out all day.

“Nobody knew what you were up to. I wanted the play to be very much from the young people’s perspective, so there’s no nostalgia. It’s quite raw and real. They’re finding things out in real time. It’s the first play I wrote. Once I hit the right note and had the characters, it just took off. It seemed like a really interesting path to go down that is quite uncompromising. It’s the pursuit of sexual knowledge.”

Aged 65, Gina says that when she was a teenager, she was “bold enough and wild enough. But I was working all the time in the pub, since the age of ten or eleven.”

That early experience cemented Gina’s work ethic. She works as steadily as is possible in the sometimes precarious world of the arts. Elected to Aosdána in 2020, which means Gina is paid a stipend, she describes it as “a godsend”.

“It’s worth a little bit more than the universal basic income. The peace of mind it brings is second to none. Most artists that I know don’t really make a bob. You can be OK one year when you have a bonanza, but it evens out. It’s so up and down.

“You can’t count on anything. (The stipend) stops me waking in the middle of the night, saying ‘Oh Jesus, what’s going to happen?’ So it’s fantastic.”

However, Gina won’t be able to afford to retire any time soon.

“Not that I want to retire. It’s nice that a lot of people my age are getting more work. I suppose there’s more acting jobs for older women rather than women in their forties and fifties. I’m lucky insofar as I direct as well.”

Recalling the era that Danti-Dan is set in, Gina says that the idea of social media wasn’t even a concept.

“There was just word-of-mouth and far more press. The newspapers all had one or two theatre reviewers on the staff. It was probably a healthier ecology in lots of ways.”

Teenagers today seem to have “no time to just think or do nothing” as they’re in thrall to their smart phones.

“They don’t think outside themselves or look at stuff. I notice on the bus that nobody is looking up or out of the windows. It’s like a retreat into the self. It’s the century of the self.”

But Gina is full of praise for the young actors in Danti-Dan.

“They’re a joy to interact with. They’re very curious.”

Gina as an actor has mostly appeared on stage but has also acted in films and TV shows produced in Ireland. Her credits include Game of Thrones, The Butcher Boy, Titanic, Blood and Steel, This is my Father and Moll Flanders.

She studied fine art at the Crawford College of Art and Design. Gina applied for a job as a designer with a theatre company in Dublin who invited her to audition to act instead.

She received a Masters in creative writing from Trinity College Dublin in 2006.

“I did it because I was sick of writing straight plays and I didn’t know how to get out of that mode into something a bit more contemporary or meta. I did that course around the same time that I got involved with Pan Pan Theatre Company. That’s my spiritual home really.”

There isn’t a novel waiting to get out, says Gina.

“Oh Jesus no! I couldn’t sustain it. I’m just a very slow writer.”

But clearly, Gina has found her metier. Her play, The Patient Gloria, will be performed at the Everyman in April. It got rave reviews in New York.

“We just did it in St Ann’s Warehouse in New York. It’s about women and female desire and psychoanalysis. “

The New York Times wrote: (Gloria) “is gloriously avenged by Gina Moxley’s irreverent, gutsy, hilariously funny and strangely moving mash-up of punk rock, satire and yes, therapy.”

Gina starred in Kevin Barry’s adaptation of Guests of the Nation produced by Corcadorca at last year’s Cork Midsummer Festival. She says it is “devastating for Cork” that Corcadorca has closed down. She has acted in a few of the former theatre company’s productions.

“The company had a 30-year track record and did extraordinary work. I hope it comes good for Pat Kiernan so that he will still direct plays. I have great time for him. He’s brilliant.”

Danti-Dan will be at the Everyman on February 8-9.