Anna Dunlea play for Dublin debut

Anna discusses a scene with Vivian Clarke, John Coleman and Nessa.

When Anna Dunlea of Killarney got a place last May on the Graffiti Playwright Programme in Cork, it was far from the gaze of Kilcullen Drama Group, writes Brian Byrne. But three of the group's members, including Anna's Kilcullen grandmother Nessa, will be performing a resulting one-act play in Dublin next month.

Anna is the daughter of Nessa's son Peter, and is involved with youth drama and musical projects in Killarney where they live. Her play's genesis came from when she visited a friends's grandmother's home some years ago, where she saw a Sacred Heart lamp on the wall surrounded by a large number of In Memoriam cards. "I said, 'Oh, has your grandmother killed all those people?' and it became a running joke between us," Anna told the Diary last weekend during rehearsals in Kilcullen. "When I needed a plot for the playwright course, that seemed to be perfect."

The resulting half-hour play was evaluated by professional actors during the course at Cork's Everyman Theatre and was well received, and that was the end of it as far as Anna was concerned. "But then a friend suggested I send it to an amateur one-act festival planned for November in Club na Múinteoirí in Dublin." When she got an email saying the organisers wanted to talk with her, she was more than surprised. "I had checked my phone at school — I know, I shouldn't have been doing that — and saw the email, and then rushed home to take the call."

The rest is, well, currently in rehearsal in Kilcullen. In addition to Nessa playing the part of a rather unusual serial killer in a small parish, John Coleman and Vivian Clarke play two priests. We won't reveal more here, but suffice to say that it is a quite hilarious dark comedy that suits the exceptional talents of the cast members.

"It's exciting, the first time I've directed," Anna says. It's also the first play she has written, though she says she has been writing ever since she was very little and has recently had some work published. In acting, she had a part in Prom Queen: The Movement (In Concert), developed by a Killarney youth group in late 2022 and which raised a substantial amount of money for Jigsaw Kerry, the local branch of a mental health charity for young people. 

After the play's debut in Club na Múinteoirí in a few weeks time, is there a possibility that it will be seen in Kilcullen? We can say that options are already being explored.

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