Enda Walsh: 'As an older writer, I don’t think I could write Disco Pigs now

Playwright and Tony-Award winner Enda Walsh can’t quite believe that his seminal play, ‘ Disco Pigs,’ premiered in Cork 30 years ago at Triskel. 

For the first time, the London-based writer is directing the play, which will be staged at the Everyman. Disco Pigs launched Enda’s stellar career as a playwright and screenplay writer as well as the careers of the two original stars of the play, Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh. And it put the former Corcadorca Theatre Company on the map, under the artistic direction of Pat Kiernan.

The play, set in Cork, is about two teenagers who share the same birthday, speak the same secret language and experience their familiar world being torn asunder by impending adulthood. A boy called Pig and a girl called Runt have an intense friendship, but when Pig wants to take their relationship further, Runt makes a bid for independence, leading to cataclysmic events.

Asked what kind of an adolescent he was, Enda (59) says: “I think I was really introverted. I was lost and a bit of a daydreamer. I was getting into poetry and literature when I was about fourteen or fifteen. There was an informal group of us who were into books and chatting about them in the school yard while bumming cigarettes. We started writing short stories. It was quite extraordinary.”

Enda knew he wanted to write but didn’t know how to go about it. “I kept reading and I recognised there was power in it. But I felt lost and sort of frightened of the world, during my late teens and early twenties. It wasn’t until I came down to Cork and started working with Pat that I found my tribe.”

A Dubliner who was taught English by Booker Award-winning writer, Roddy Doyle, Enda says it took a while before he found his unique voice. “I always think I’m ten years behind myself. I know I’ve done a lot but I guess in my early twenties I had to suffer a little. There was a lack of confidence and not knowing what I wanted to do. When you’re that age and you know there’s something you think you can do but you don’t know how to f**king start, it’s so frustrating. I feel for kids of that age.”

Enda didn’t complete his studies in communications at Rathmines College. He did some acting with Dublin Youth Theatre and travelled around Europe as a film editor.

He answered an advertisement from Graffiti Theatre Company looking for an actor. He got the gig and it was the start of his love affair with Cork. He started working with Pat in 1993 and says that Corcadorca was really his university.

Excited to be directing his hit play, Enda and the production’s casting director, Amy Rowan, saw close to 200 tapes in their search for the cast. When Enda saw Aoise Meaney from Clare and Séamus McLean Ross from Scotland (whose parents are Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh of Deacon Blue) auditioning together, he knew the chemistry was right. “They’re both incredibly special”.

Cork accents are essential for this play. The characters have their own argot. “So the actors had to learn the Cork accent and then bastardise it a little bit.” Dialect coach Irene O’Mara has been working with the actors.

In Enda’s lengthy career, highlights include touring internationally with ‘ Disco Pigs’ and writing the stage musical ‘ Lazarus’ for which David Bowie wrote the music and lyrics.

The late rock star got in touch with Enda, having seen a lot of his work performed at St Ann’s Warehouse in New York. “When we sat down together, there was a similar sense of humour and a love of abstraction and an ease with it. We knew we were going to make a fever dream sort of thing. More than anything, we’re great collaborators. I’m pretty good at finding the right people, similar to what he was.”

Getting a Tony Award for writing the stage musical version of ‘Once’ “was good and surprising, because I’m not of that commercial world. There’s something really interesting about doing something like that. It’s a different part of your brain. A lot of the time, I write from instinct but writing shows like ‘Once,’ you know they are actual juggernauts that need to work for three thousand people a night.”

Enda is still friends with Cillian and Eileen. He is married to Jo Ellison, editor of the ‘How to Spend It section’ of the Financial Times. They have a twenty-one year old daughter, Ada, who is studying English and history at Glasgow University. She isn’t showing signs of aspiring to a theatrical career but is interested in her mother’s journalistic career.

Asked if politics impinge on his work, Enda says they “come out in an elliptical way. I wrote a play called ‘ Arlington’ and I could see afterwards what it was about. It was Trump. ‘ Ballyturk’ was about the Ryan Report (investigating child abuse).”

Enda is writing the screenplay for a new film version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for MGM. He has a film coming out based on a novel by Keiran Goddard, entitled ‘ I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning.’

“It’s a really political piece about people in their thirties who have been stung by austerity in Britain through various Tory policies when they made things really quite impossible for working class people.”

In the meantime, it’s back to the rehearsal room for Enda and his cast of two. ‘ Disco Pigs’ has, he feels, aged well. “As an older writer, I don’t think I could write it now, the freshness and the abandonment of it. The expression of it is pure so I just have to be true to my younger self.”

Disco Pigs is at the Everyman from October 31 to November 14. Ticket details at www.everymancork.com.