Norma Sheahan: ‘I’ve gone off the dating apps...I couldn’t be dealing with it’

Because Cork-born actor, writer, stand-up performer and mother of three girls, Norma Sheahan, has no filter, audiences can expect more than a peek into her personal life when she takes to the stage of the Cork Opera House on Sunday.

It’s Wine O’clock With Norma Sheahan is a show that includes frank accounts of her Tinder escapades, for instance.

Aged 48, Norma got divorced last year and her daughters, Jodi (almost 15) and identical twins, Jessica and Isabella (17), told her to ‘get a life and get a fella’.

And so, she ventured onto a dating app, which was all very new to her given that, when she last dated, there were no mobile phones.

“I’m of the era when someone might say: ‘Hello, you’re a fla, can I shift you?’

“Obviously, times have changed. You couldn’t say that to anyone now because you’d get arrested or cancelled.

“So I went on a dating app. My sister gave me a tutorial and I’ve gone around the world in eight lays,” she jokes.

“My sister said you’d need to date outside a 50 mile radius in Cork to avoid the cousins, whereas in Dublin, a five or 10 mile radius will do grand.

“I’ve gone off the apps now. I was mad enthusiastic for a while and then, oh God, I couldn’t be dealing with it. I was looking for a bit of craic. With most of the guys, I didn’t get passed texting. Anyone who seemed like a bit of fun, I’d meet them for coffee or a drink but it rarely went beyond the first date.

“There’s no shortage of humans. I’d say it’s hard for a woman in her late 30s looking for someone to settle down with. Men don’t seem to know what they want until they’re in their 50s. A woman has to make a decision before that because you’re called a geriatric mother at 35.”

Norma’s daughters have no problem with their mother mining her life for the very public arena of the stage.

“They don’t care what I do; they just want Revolut and to be driven everywhere. When I was a teenager, I didn’t give a toss about what my parents were doing.”

Even getting the girls to sit down for five minutes to tell them she and their father were getting divorced was a problem.

“They were saying they were ‘in a hurry and that this better be important.’ That’s all part of the show. I’m like the poster girl for divorce because it has been so amicable. The daughters knew we weren’t happy but we’re much happier now and we have better communication.”

Brought up on a farm in Whitechurch, there was never any question of Norma working on the land.

Her mother sent Norma and her four sisters to the Montforts.

“The Montforts do everything; tap dancing, drama, the whole shebang. Then I went to the Cork School of Music and had classes with Maureen Prendergast, a legend of Cork acting.”

Norma went to University College Dublin to study commerce at the behest of her mother, but she spent a lot of time in Dramsoc, the drama society at the university.

“I got my degree. I wanted to go to RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts). It was very hard. I had four rounds of auditions and I had to fly to London each time.”

She was accepted into the prestigious drama school where she spent three years.

Norma’s first professional acting job was in Enda Walsh’s play, Bedbound, for which she won best actress in the Evening Herald Irish Theatre Awards in 2000. She was nominated for the Irish Times Theatre Awards for best actress in the same production that year.

“That got me into the Abbey, Druid and The Clinic.

“I’ve had ups and downs over the years. I’ve done podcasts, filming and drama and I’ve managed to survive. I need to be making a few bob living in Dun Laoghaire with three teenagers. I would have gone back to commerce if it wasn’t working out.”

The downside of an acting career is the periods of unemployment, or ‘the droughts’ as Norma calls them.

“The key thing is that you learn not to sit back and wait for the phone to ring. I think that’s everybody’s job, no matter what you do.

“You have to graft, constantly. When you put one cow out to pasture, you have to make sure that the others are milking. That’s how I’ve always seen it and that’s how it will continue.”

Norma has put filming “out to pasture for a while. That’s why I’m producing (and writing and performing) for the stage now.

“I’m much happier doing this. Some people are calling my show a play. It’s me and the mic basically, telling my story.”

Having played the lead role of Little Red Riding Hood in Cork Opera House when she was just 11, Norma feels totally at home on the stage.

Filming involves a lot of waiting around, she says.

“I struggle to get work so I have to create my own work. If you look at the people who you think are doing everything, scratch the surface (and see that they’re hustling also.) I’m making this show happen.”

Norma recalls her father’s advice when she was starting out. “I was very young and had finished a job in the Abbey. When I told my dad I was on the dole, waiting for the next job, he said: ‘Be careful of that. There’s a job for everyone if you look hard enough’.”

Clearly, Norma followed her father’s advice.

It’s Wine O’Clock with Norma Sheahan is booked in all the main venues around the country for the next 12 months – and it’s all Norma’s own creation.