Cork playwright: ‘I think it’s ok not to be the perfect feminist all the time’

Up-and-coming Cork playwright Alison Teahan’s debut play, Warm Regards, is neither rural nor involves any alcoholics. And it doesn’t include any major conversations about the Catholic Church.

This is how the 25-year-old writer, originally from Ballyvolane, frames her play, indicating what it is not. In other words, it is the work of a young woman who is looking beyond the usual Irish tropes.

The play, directed by Alison’s close friend, Sinéad Crowley, is set in Cork and “centres round the lives and inner worlds of young modern Irish women navigating friendships, family, identity, and ambition in a city that’s constantly shifting around them”.

The play recently won the Catalyst Award granted by the Everyman and Cork Arts Theatre and is going to be staged in September. The award is for €2,000 plus 100% of the box office revenue.

Not only has Alison written the play, but she also stars in it and is producing it. Being the producer suits her tendency to be a control freak, she says. And acting is something she has been doing since she was just three years of age when her mother signed her up to the Montforts under the guidance of Laurie O’Driscoll.

“I was with the Montforts until I was 18. When I was 14, I did more classes there, so that it was very much my whole life. I was obsessed with it. I made the best friends there and they’re still my friends.”

After her Leaving Certificate, Alison was fixated on a career in drama.

She successfully auditioned for a place at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, for which she won a scholarship. That was very welcome as she thinks the fees were about €20,000 a year.

Alison spent three years at the academy and said it was “an incredible experience. It was tough. It wasn’t the usual college experience. Friends in UCC had Freshers’ Week and might have one lecture on a Monday, whereas I was in every day from nine to six and sometimes rehearsed in the evening. It was very intense.”

For her final year, Alison had to audition to get one of 15 places in the academy company. She succeeded, and this meant she got to act in four off-Broadway shows. One of these saw her playing the role of Hamlet, with the Bard’s play reduced to 60 minutes.

Homesick, Alison – who adores Cork – returned home in early 2021.

“Nothing was open theatre-wise because of covid. That’s when I started writing. I worked to keep myself afloat in jobs as a receptionist in a hair salon and as a freelance researcher with BBC Sounds.”

After a while, Alison wanted more time for writing, so took a part-time job with a digital marketing agency and dropped her freelance work.

“It kept my head above water. I could write more, I created a show reel, I got back into acting, and I got an agent. I can sing as well. I never considered myself a writer. It’s not what I was trained in. I always loved reading books and plays.”

But Alison is resourceful as well as multi-talented. “I had two stories in my head and I wrote two plays; Warm Regards and The Girls’ Room. I kind of have impostor syndrome. But I’m writing my own plays because I want to work. It’s a way of helping to control that situation.”

Alison describes Warm Regards as a love story to the modern Irish woman.

“We have amazing playwrights such as Brian Friel, and Marina Carr writes great roles for women. There are all these roles for women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s and there are great women in theatre such as Fionnuala Flanagan. But I feel there’s a gap for the younger generation because Ireland has changed so much. Warm Regards is a platonic love story between two girls who are best friends.”

The friends are Madeline and Maeve. Alison’s character, Madeline, invites a Derry-born plumber to her birthday drinks. The plumber, Patrick, is handsome and the two friends, who have hired him to fix a radiator in their shared flat, are quite besotted with him.

“Patrick’s decision to accept the invitation eventually ends up changing the course of the friendship between Madeline and Maeve. Both women are attracted to Patrick, one more so than the other. And he is interested in one over the other. A choice has to be made.”

Alison, who describes herself as a flawed feminist, is interested in exploring female friendship in her writing.

“The play is about how platonic love is just as important as romantic love and can give you just as much sustenance.

“Also, there is an undercurrent of competitiveness in female friendships, no matter how close you are. Women are conditioned to be competitive.”

Interested in the hypocrisies of feminists, Alison says she would be reluctant to allow armpit hair to grow.

“Why is that? It’s because I’m conditioned to want to appeal to the male view. There are more important feminist issues like education, sexual rights and the right to age as gracefully, rejecting botox and the crap we’re being fed through algorithms. On a very shallow level, there are daily hypocrisies that I experience in my own feminism. But in a very human way, I think it’s ok not to be the perfect feminist all the time. That is something I want to explore.”

Alison’s second play, The Girls’ Room is about teenagers “because I have great respect and admiration for teenage girls. We don’t take them seriously enough. It’s hard being a teenage girl”.

This show has been developed with the help of the Cork Theatre Collective, including a grant of €3,000. Alison hopes it will be staged before the end of the year.

Clearly, she is in control of her career, making it work far from the bright lights of the Big Apple.

Warm Regards is at the Cork Arts Theatre from September 24-27.