I suppose I must have been round about eight, maybe nine years old that was my first memory of going to the theatre. My recollection of it at that time was that it was very small and when I think back now it must have been terribly small because I was quite small, I suppose, and young. And things always seem bigger to you when you’re younger. So it must have been small.

But I recall plays like the classics: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Macbeth. Full cast, absolute full cast, nobody doubled up on parts. Everybody was cast as a single person. So I mean you could have a stage not much bigger ten or twelve feet by eight and there might be thirty people on stage, you know. It was quite incredible. They are my first sort of memories of the theatre.

Going along with that would be my father arriving home of a Saturday night or Sunday with a bolt of cloth and bits and pieces of material and asking my mother to make costumes for twenty or thirty Roman Centurions, you know. And my mother patiently sitting making costumes night after night for productions that would occur in the next few weeks.

Mary O’Malley, as I remember, had a great knack of getting people to do things for her. One of her expressions was “I wonder could you ...?” And people invariably did say “Oh yeah, well okay. I’ll do that.” And my mother was one of those people and my father was one. She was very loyal and completely and totally honest. I mean, that’s one thing I recall of Mary. Formidable yes, but formidable only when it came to the theatre. The theatre that meant everything. I mean it had to be done and she did it. I mean when you look back on what she did, on what she set up in this town – it’s quite amazing. Because I mean there was nothing here … nothing! And Mary set this up. She set up the craft shop, the dance studio, the children’s youth theatre. This theatre is all part of what she did. Of course, you can’t forget the input from Pearse O’Malley who was the quiet man in the background and he was very much supportive of what she did.

Louis Rolston (son of Lyric Players actor Louis Rolston)
On recalling the Derryvolgie Avenue theatre at the O’Malleys

My first memory was after I had written a play in Turf Lodge. A couple I knew called Dessie Murray and Marie O’Hare, friends of mine that were married, said “That [play] was good – why don’t you go to the Lyric Theatre and see some plays?” And I said “Where is that?” Because I’d never heard of it and they said that they’d been to see a play called We Do It For Love and if it was still on I should go and see it. And I managed to find out where the Lyric Theatre was, got a black taxi down the road and a bus up Stranmillis and went to see it with my wife at that time, Moira. And eh, the experience was just -- the experience just was very powerful. I was coming from Turf Lodge where – 1976 I think it was, 1975 – it was the height of the Troubles. There was shooting every night. Turmoil your whole life was all of that West Belfast violence and politics and then you get off the bus, walk down the street and go into this utterly, utterly radically different environment. And I remember sitting in the seats during the break and thinking “I like this, this is a nice ... way of spending an evening” or of conducting your life or whatever it was. And I went back and saw a few more plays: The Risen People which had Liam Neeson in it and James Larkin and a few others. And in the meantime I was writing away at Turf Lodge – plays with the Fellowship. And that was really my first experience as an audience member from about, I would say, I think I saw We Do it For Love in ’76. And then I tried to go to the theatre as often as my lifestyle at that time would allow. Probably about twice a year right through until I was appointed resident playwright in 1980.

Martin Lynch (playwright)

At the very start – my God! I actually wanted to be a film star. I always loved movies actually, you know. Growing up in Strabane there wasn’t much opportunity to see theatre, you know. But actually what really made me want to get involved in theatre was going on the bus to Stranmillis College to see a version of Paradise Lost that our English Teacher took us to. I couldn’t make any sense of [reading] Paradise Lost; I was doing it for A Level. Oh my God, you know it’s one of those epic poems. And I just didn’t get it – I just wasn’t interested because the language was so archaic. But we went to see this. Paradise Lost is about the angels who fall from Heaven. And they just had this really clear imagery – the bad angels were like Hells Angels, you know. They were all done up in their biker gear and stuff and the angels were all fluffy and white and it was just such a clear image that it really made me understand what it was all about. And I thought that was very powerful. That was really it for me when I thought “that was really interesting,” you know.

It’s that engagement – I think that’s what is so important. It sort of touches you, it brings you, you know, it makes you feel animated and active. It’s like a switch going on.

Patricia McBride,
former Administrator of The Lyric Theatre and current Board Member

It's important because there are some buildings in Belfast that have lasted the Troubles – the Lyric, The Crown Bar, The Europa. And what’s interesting about all those places is that they are meeting points. Meeting points for people from all over the world, but also for the indigenous population of Northern Ireland irrespective of which side they came from. To meet and be entertained or to talk together and so I think it’s telling that those are the institutions that survived and now in this sort of fresh dawn for Northern Ireland I think the fact the Lyric is moving on is important and exciting. It will be interesting now to see if there’s new writing which doesn’t carry the baggage of the Troubles but which actually carries the baggage of life which is actually often more interesting. And I’m looking forward to coming and maybe playing the new Lyric.

James Nesbitt, actor

Gerald Dawe's new collection, Points West, has just appeared from Gallery Press. His memoir of Belfast, My Mother-City was published last year by Lagan Press. He is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, School of English at Trinity.

(i)

I am not sure now whether we started the Lyric Youth Theatre in Belfast or just took it over for a while. By 'we' I mean a group of students at Orangefield Boys School in Belfast in the mid-1960s. We were taught by a marvellous man called Sam McCready. He it was who directed the fifth and sixth years in a dramatised version of Milton's Paradise Lost, featuring, amongst others, Brian Keenan, author of the international best-selling memoir, An Evil Cradling (1992).

There had been a tradition of staging plays at Orangefield, including a marvellous production of Moliere's Tartuffe, directed by Mr Horner (I still can't bring myself to call him anything else). Also the street-songs and urban ballads of Belfast were preserved in class by David Hammond. And there were dances ('hops') on Saturday nights.

Of the arty generation at Orangefield, though, Sam McCready was the main man. We were into blues, R & B, anything we could get our hands on to read (Keats figured a lot for some reason), as well as dancing and partying. It was a great time. We were sulky know-it-alls, whose hero was Albert Camus, and we loved hanging loose outside the City Hall or the Wimpy Bar or the Steps of either the Linen Hall Library or the Central Library. We listened to Van Morrison on the transistor radio and thought we saw him getting the Gilnahirk bus. We went for what seemed like every day and night to Sammy Huston's Jazz Club, or the Maritime, or Betty Staffs, or the Plaza in the afternoons and thought the world would never end. The bands played on and on and on.

In 1966 it looked that way, at least. In only four years, of course, it was blown apart. But it was Sam

(ii)

McCready who during this time inspired some of us to write. I started to actually show my poems to people under his steady encouragement. We also went to dance classes given by Helen Lewis and eventually staged our first production at The Lyric Youth Theatre. It was Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle.

It was a great success. We played in The Opera House and many from that 'original company went ahead with theatre in one way or another. John Hewitt is acting in Belfast, Peter Quigley is directing and acting; every second advertisement you hear is probably voiced-over by Brian Munn; Gary Williamson went into set-design; Colin Lewis is at the BBC and a host of others kept faith with the ethos Sam developed by writing and acting.

I remember distinctly the little hall we gathered in on Cromwell Street, off Botanic Avenue, and the mystery as Brecht's play unfolded before our very eyes in the winter of 1967. We then took to the road.

In Pomeroy, Co Tyrone, bouncing around in the back of the Ulster Orchestra's truck, it really felt as if this was the true bohemian life. Arriving then into this strange village and building the set, before we were taken to a house and plied with tea and sandwiches. 'Are you whittlin'?' For a Belfast lad I could have been in a foreign country. Geoffrey Quigley adjudicated and in the refreshment room later, before we broke the set down, I remember looking around and seeing all my friends who were now actors and stage-hands and thinking this was for me. I applied to Guidhall but was too young and told I'd get in the next year. I went to London for a while and then returned to Belfast and hung around, but the group had broken up, more or less. My good friend, Gary had gone to Nottingham to study art. I finished my 'N Levels and eventually went to college. I wrote more poems and started to publish and broadcast them.

(iii)

For a young bloke, in his mid-teens, the Youth Theatre at the Lyric was a new world opening out. While my grandmother taught poetry as elocution and singing as 'a good thing to do', the Youth Theatre became a way of life. Walking into the Lyric, going onto the stage, getting in behind the wings of the Opera House; sorting out the set in Pomeroy was for this kid of fifteen the real business. Twenty-five years later the love of theatre is still there, undiminished, though I guess I'm a little wiser about the vagaries of living as a writer.

Gerald Dawe's new collection, Points West, has just appeared from Gallery Press. His memoir of Belfast, My Mother-City was published last year by Lagan Press. He is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, School of English at Trinity.