Published in the Sunday Tribune, July 27, 2008

Megan O'Riordan, pro gambler

Earlier this week, I got an email from a writer friend, Simon Doyle. He was writing a new play, he said. It was about the kidnapping of a South Korean film director and his ex-wife actress by North Korean spies in 1978, and their being “forced by dictator Kim Jong-il to make a socialist interpretation of ‘Godzilla’”. It was called ‘¡ZAP!’ He invited me to a staging of some scenes on Saturday, as part of something called Project Brand New.

I couldn’t go, but phoned the Project Arts Centre and asked the publicist what was happening. She paused. “I don’t really know. It’s kind of a secret”, she said. There would be four, short, new pieces of work, each night from Thursday to Saturday. She didn’t know what they were, or who they were by. The Project’s website said they would be “developmental”, showcasing “experimentation”.

I ventured along, nervously, on Thursday. A young woman with an American accent took up a microphone on stage and made us all stand up and perform a “luck” ritual. We turned around three times, and I contemplated leaving.

Luckily, I didn’t. And when I did leave, two hours later, I was buzzing. The young American, Megan Riordan, presented a sharp, gutsy piece of work-in-progress, a sort-of monologue about her life. Megan is a part-time pro gambler. (She recently funded a month-long stay in New York with a $3,700-winning weekend in Atlantic City.) Her piece was an exploration of the nature of luck, and she riffed on the secrets of gambling and her relationship with her father (a full-time pro). The finished work will be in the Fringe in September. Unlike her other job, this should be a sure thing.

Less sure, though with a strong central image, was a piece by Derval Cromie based on a recurrent nightmare about the Leaving Cert. There was a nightmarish quality also to ‘Full Poor Cell’, conceived by David Nolan. This merged moments from ‘The Tempest’ with scenes based on Josef Fritzel’s incarceration of his daughter and their children. The material was risky, but the sensitive performances and careful writing skirted sensationalism and made for deft, if dark, theatre.

And then we met ‘Luca’. A short monologue by actor Nick Lee, performed by John Cronin, this was a fable about a boy who prayed for sunshine. It seemed initially to be on conventional ground, but then it took off: Lee’s writing soared, and Cronin rode it with abandon. It was dark, apocalyptic stuff, in keeping with the zeitgeist, but culminated in a moment of sublime and devastatingly simple beauty. Remember those names.

Project Brand New will be back later in the year with a project called ‘Magic Moments’, and another session of new work – for which they’ll be seeking submissions. The work is all pro bono; the quality, like the gambling, is pro.

“We’ll give you a space to perform in, hopefully a space to rehearse, and we’ll be here for you”, explained co-producer/curator Róise Goan afterwards.

“We will be your springboard.”

Get ready to jump.

Contact Project Brand New at projectbrandnew@gmail.com, or via their Facebook page.