MRS C wants a baby, not a Christmas tree. B wants a real hairdresser’s scissors and a wife. D wants a snow globe and “a big head of dirty auld curls”. All of them want their own place in the world, and if they can’t find it, they will create one of their own.
Join B and D in the care home where they are residents, and where Mrs C is a carer, on their special - “very fecking special”- journey towards happiness.
Winner of The Irish Times Award for Best New Play of 2010, B for Baby is a sharp-witted play that tenderly touches taboo topics while inviting audiences to rediscover the joy of make-believe. It arrives at the Town Hall Theatre next week in a touring production from the Abbey Theatre Company.
The play was written by Corkonian Carmel Winters and its 2010 success was matched by gripping psychological drama Snap, the feature-length film she both wrote and directed. While she enjoyed the double-whammy of screen and stage success last year, Winters had long been toiling at her writing craft.
“I served my apprenticeship but much of it was below the radar,” she declares over an afternoon phone conversation. “I was making a lot of work on a small scale or in a community setting, and I was writing screenplays. Then a couple of years ago I decided I would just put the blinkers on and really focus on how films get made.
“I directed Snap myself and that was a great source of pride to me. It’s an unusual kind of story so it was a great triumph for all of us. And it was a remarkable year because at the same time Snap was getting screened B for Baby was in rehearsal at the Abbey. I was overjoyed about that. I love being stretched in two different directions; theatre is more language-based and cinema is more image-based and I enjoyed working in both those mediums.”
B for Baby was initially commissioned by Theatre Lovett but ended up being presented by the Abbey. Winters explains how this came about.
“I went to a children’s show by Theatre Lovett – most of their work is for families – and Louis Lovett really interested me as a performer,” she says. “He’d already created a character with an intellectual disability.
“I wanted to put a character onstage that acknowledged the complexity of that kind of life, which is usually only realised by the person themselves and their family. It’s not something that is seen often on a public stage. I was chatting to Louis afterwards and, typical writer, I was suggesting areas along those lines he might explore and he said why didn’t I write it so I said I would, but it would be an adult play if I did and he said ‘Fair enough’.
“So I wrote B for Baby but then Theatre Lovett weren’t able to get the funding to produce it but in the meantime Aisling O’Sullivan, who was the female lead in Snap, was in a play at the Abbey and she showed them the script. They really liked it and approached me about doing it. I explained I had very much written the play with Louis in mind and they were more than happy to go with that so that’s how it ended up with them.”
There are four characters in the play but only two actors.
“I only ever wanted two actors for the play,” Winters states. “Firstly, I wanted to go against the convention that you have a lead actor and a character actor. Also there is kind of membrane between people of intellectual disability and ‘normal’ society and I wanted to close that gap so having the same actors portray both the disabled and the normal characters does that to a degree. B, who is intellectually disabled, is a great cypher for all of our values. His own values are quite conventional. He is transparent and naïve and acts as a reflection of our values.”
The play also tackles the taboo subject of sexual relations between ‘normal’ and ‘disabled’ characters.
“The four characters in the play all have their own special needs for family and belonging,” Winters says. “Audiences are very vocal about the direction the story goes. The uncomfortable and the hilarious can go side by side in life. As a writer I don’t see it as my job to be conducting moral lessons and so audiences have a lot of choices about how they can read what happens in the play.”
Winters discloses that the presence of intellectually disabled characters in her writing has roots in her family life.
“I noticed that every one of my film scripts includes a character with an intellectual disability or people who can’t get recognition and live on the margins,” she observes. “I think it goes back to my grand-aunt who was our de-facto grandmother within the family.
“She had an intellectual disability and was in a mental hospital until she was in her seventies. She was thus prevented from having a family but she still invested so much of herself into all that she’d been denied through her relationship with us, and she strove to build this sense of a happy family. I’ve always been very drawn to characters like that and want to include their experiences in my writing.”
Winters concludes with warm praise for her two actors.
“These two actors have to be seen, there is a great dynamic between them,” she says. “Michele Moran is an extraordinary actor, she has spent the last few years largely working in the UK so she isn’t so well known here. I’m really excited seeing them perform, they’re like a classic comedy duo, like Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn with a touch of Laurel and Hardy!”
B for Baby runs at the Town Hall Theatre from Tuesday October 4 to Saturday 8. Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
