Stage: Topic of cancer

It’s not often you hear a writer/actor admit she and her co-writer didn’t want to create a play that is “worthy.”

But what Mary Kelly means in making such an assertion is that when she and director/actor Maureen White decided to write about a subject potentially as “heavy” as breast cancer, they didn’t want the play to be didactic or boring or, fundamentally, a bad play - even if the subject is one that, arguably, should be dealt with more often in theatre. Either way, the play they have written has turned out to be not only – both believe – “touching and funny” but now is being presented in association with Action Breast Cancer (a programme of the Irish Cancer Society), is sponsored by Avon Breast and being published in book form by a London play script publisher, which clearly proves its credentials as a piece of writing and as a play. So how did that play, Unravelling the Ribbon, as produced by Guna Nua Theatre Company and focusing on how three females in particular, aged 50, 34 and 11 respectively, react to cancer, come about?
“We have an interest in writing non-worthy stuff in general, for the theatre,” Mary responds. “So we didn’t want a play about cancer to be just, say, serious and sad but rather we wanted to make it humorous, while, at the same time, realistic and not moving too far from the main crux of storytelling. So in that sense we wanted audiences to get caught up in this because of the story – where the main character gets cancer and we look at the fallout – rather than feel we are giving them a lecture. But we put an application into the Arts Council for development and research money and we got a few thousand so with that money we went around the country and talked to women who have or have had breast cancer and I really got hooked then. Because we had it in our heads that the play could be humorous, but these groups of women were hilarious! And they had unbelievable spirits. For some their friends had died, so there was that roller coaster they’d been on but, overall, most of these women – though I don’t want to sound ridiculous in saying this – that cancer really improved their lives once they came through it and that their lives changed in a fundamental way in the sense that they really came to care about the important things in life, even though there still is a shadow there and they keep going for the review and wondering will the cancer come back. And that is something they have to carry all their lives. But all of this found its way into the play.”
That said, Mary stresses that the theatrical and narrative nature of Unravelling The Ribbon means it is not a documentary but a play. And the fact that Nick Hearn wants to publish the play is validation to Mary and Maureen that they must have got something right overall.
“Well, I’m talking to you two weeks before we even got to rehearsals," she says, "so his backing in terms of saying he wants to publish this as a script really adds to everything, as far as I am concerned, because this means Unravelling The Ribbon does stand up as a play rather than merely represent the spirit of what we got from those meetings. Then we got funding from Action Breast Cancer and from Avon and that’s how the play can actually go on at all.”
All of this could be a karmic reward for Mary and Maureen daring in the first place to tackle a subject as sensitive as breast cancer, couldn’t it?
“It is all going very well for us,” she says, a little self-consciously, if not shyly. “But, hopefully, yeah it is a karmic reward and I think more people in theatre should at last attempt to tackle something such as this subject in this way. Because I’ve seen a lot of plays where the audience feel they have to stand up and applaud because it was a play, say, about terrorism, or whatever. And I’m thinking, ‘no, if you weren’t drawn into the play because of the story, if it’s not a good play, you are not obliged to. So I really hope that in Unravelling the Ribbon we do have a great story.”

Unravelling The Ribbon opens at The Project, Dublin on October 24