Room to Write - September 17th, 2012
Emma Donoghue discusses The Talk of the Town with The Irish Times ...
Since the success of her novel ‘Room’, Emma Donoghue can write whatever she wants and never what she’s told to. But things changed when she was asked to write a play about Maeve Brennan, the hard-living Irish-born ‘New Yorker’ writer.
IT ALMOST BECAME the story of the producer, the director and the novelist who told them to take a hike. When the author of the phenomenally successful Room, Emma Donoghue, was approached with an idea for a play, her initial reaction was not at all positive. “I bristled slightly,” she admits. “I thought, I don’t write to anybody’s suggestions. I only follow my own particular passions. How could I possibly write a play about what somebody else wants me to write?”
The subject of the play was Maeve Brennan, the Irish-born writer who went to live in New York, wrote for the New Yorker, was the darling of the glittering set around that magazine and then imploded into mental illness and self-destruction. But it was Brennan’s writing that, in the end, won Donoghue over.
“They sent me a batch of her books and I fell in love with the writing,” she says. “For me, it’s not about the glamour, the beauty or the lifestyle. All that is interesting, but what’s really interesting is that she was a truly great writer.”
The Talk of TheTown previews at Dublin Theatre Festival SEPT 27TH-OCT 14TH, in Project Arts Centre.
Talking Theatre: Emma Donoghue and Annabelle Comyn in conversations. Sept 30, Post Show 7.45pm (approx)
Read the Full article: Irish Times : http://bit.ly/QT7UqD
