Cork woman brings her provocative, taboo busting, risqué play to the stage

WHEN is it too late to try something new and take a leap into the unknown?

That’s what character ‘Monica’ is about to find out in Bandon woman Pauline O’Driscoll’s new comedy play JUMP!?, set to be performed in Cork Arts Theatre from October 17 to 21.

And that’s what the mother-of-three found out for herself, as JUMP!? is her first solo-written play, in her successful 25-year career.

Pauline is no stranger to the stage or the small screen. Her many roles include playing opposite Pat Shortt in the IFTA nominated drama Smalltown, and as a harried doctor in The Young Offenders.

In recent years, she has performed in several solo plays including The Seven Ages of Mam which she co-wrote and which was nominated for Best New Play at Brighton Fringe in 2019, as well as Extraordinary Ordinary Women and Home Rules by Karen Minihan.

“So, the acting bit didn’t faze me but the writing bit did. It was scary, daunting and then eventually exciting. Finding the time and the headspace to actually write was the hardest part. 

In the end, I holed up in my cousin’s holiday home for four days and the first draft flowed out of me. Two years and countless drafts later and I had a play.

The blurb reads: “From menstruation to the menopause, infertility to vaginal atrophy, the audience follow one woman’s no-holds barred hunt for the perfect cocktail ... of hormones. Between losing her virginity on a waterbed in 1990’s New York, to shagging her way through the United Nations and spending years trying to conceive, Monica has lived quite the life. Now that she’s middle-aged, she’s about to discover her greatest adventure is yet to come.”

Pauline says she likes to write about women, but insists menopausal Monica is most definitely a fictional character.

“ Seven Ages of Mam was about motherhood but this time I wanted to look at the female experience from a different angle. Having recently landed in menopause myself following a lifetime of interesting hormonal incidences, I was inspired to write a play that explores the impact of hormones, the discovering and embracing of sexuality at all the various stages of girls’ and women’s lives. 

The result is this provocative, taboo-busting, a lot more risqué than I’d planned, cringe behind your hands whilst wetting yourself laughing, one woman play!

Born and raised in Bandon, Pauline emigrated to England straight out of B.Comm in UCC and worked in marketing before winning the Green Card in the lottery and moving first to Boston, then travelling all around the USA on a greyhound bus. She settled in Aspen, Colorado for a couple of years “working as a Tequila slammer girl and ski wear model and skiing every black diamond run in the valley”.

She moved to New York to train as an actress, before returning to England where she met her husband, UK-born Irish man Sean Devereux, while playing Maureen in The Beauty Queen Of Leenane.

“If I’d been born in a different country in a different time, I reckon I’d have gone straight into acting,” she said. “In hindsight, the writing was on the wall, but I didn’t have the courage of my convictions. Being an actor didn’t feel like an option back then so I tried to conform.”

The couple moved back to Pauline’s native Bandon to raise their family and are parents to Éabha (16) and twins Aisling and Réiltín (12).

It’s a sexist question, but is it harder to be a female actor?

“Thorny question. It is very tricky to manage a touring schedule unless you have a partner who is willing to do the stay at home/ hands-on bit. That is why when I moved back to Ireland and settled down with my husband, Sean, I took a break from theatre and decided to focus on film and TV instead. 

With film and TV, unless you get a regular series or mega leading role, the commitment is usually just one or two days here and there, so with a bit of logistics management and a supportive husband I could do bits and pieces.

“I also decided to self-represent (not have an agent) for about eight years so I could pick and choose when I worked myself. Even now, when I get a job the initial excitement is very quickly replaced by ‘Oh jeepers, how are we going to manage this? But our girls are older now though so it is getting easier all the time,” she said.

Having said that, in terms of the caring role, Pauline is “at the squeezed middle stage with both elderly parents and school age kids. But that’s life and I’m lucky to have both of my parents still alive at 93 and 96 and lucky to have three wonderful kids.

“Whenever anyone asks me how I do it all, I answer… badly! Just lower your standards and crack on! When the house is a mess and there’s no dinner ready and I find myself about to do a ‘bad mother’ number on myself, I stop and I say ‘No! I am a woman who is modelling career focused, gender blind, self-fulfilment for three daughters who I hope will grow up without that ‘bad mother/bad woman’ voice in their head.”

Despite her career spanning a quarter of a century, Pauline admits that she has experienced uncertainty.

I’ve been ticking along, never giving up, although as every actor will tell you, I’ve had many dark nights of the soul, jealously looking at friends and family who have job/financial security and pensions and other ‘grown-up’ stuff like that, wondering if I should have just jacked it all in long go.

“It’s a tough career, there is absolutely no doubt about that, and when I say tough I don’t just mean the constant rejection. I mean that even when you are lucky enough to land that coveted role – after you’ve learned the lines, researched the role, persuaded an actor friend or, worst case scenario, reluctant husband to read in the other role for you, set up your home studio in the corner of your bedroom and filmed your self-tape audition, gone up to Dublin or over to London (at your own expense) for the in-person audition, back again for the recall audition – unfortunately, unless it’s Hollywood calling the rewards are meagre, especially if you are an actor living in Ireland.”

Actors’ union, Irish Equity, she points out, have just handed a petition into the government trying to make them aware of the unequal treatment of actors living in Ireland and looking for ‘assurance that Irish performers will not be subject to lesser terms and conditions regarding their intellectual property rights than international performers in similar roles when employed on the same project receiving Section 481 funding’.

“It’s an absolutely shocking state of affairs. But when I think seriously about giving up, and I have, I become completely depressed and hopeless, thinking I’ve wasted my life. 

If I can’t act then I don’t want to do anything. I hope I don’t sound cocky or egotistical or just downright corny, but I feel it is what I was born to do.

JUMP!? will run at the Cork Arts Theatre from October 17-21 at 8pm. See https://corkartstheatre.com/event/jump/