The Accidental Playwright

At the age of 18, accidents are generally to be avoided! Who needs a car crash or an unplanned pregnancy. But Aaron Rogers’ got lucky with his!

“I consider myself an accidental playwright,” Rogers says with a sweet smile. In his year off, before starting university this autumn, Aaron has written his first play, Fragile, which will be debuting on May 3rd., at the ABSOLUT Gay Theatre Festival Dublin. Not only that: with his co-director Roisin Watson, Rogers has also taken on responsibility for casting, directing, and promoting the play, all under his own production company, I Don’t Care Productions – a hugely impressive undertaking for someone of his tender years.
“I carry a notebook around with me everywhere, and last summer, I was working with my dad and I would just write,” he says of the play’s gestation. “I’d have the notebook with me everywhere, even in nightclubs. I was in my pocket and would fall out on the dance floor. Well, one day I started looking over what I wrote and realized there was something there I really liked. So I wrote a first draft. I sent it to the festival without telling anyone, and it was accepted.”
Fragile is about a young gay man’s search for identity and acceptance, both from the outside world – and from himself. Of course, if any eighteen year old, gay or straight, can really be comfortable with who they are, it’s Aaron. In other words, the play’s not entirely autobiographical, although he admits there are snippets of his own experiences in there.
“There’s one scene that actually happened to me with my mother, where she asked me if I was gay,” he reveals. “I was in a wardrobe and she literally said ‘get out of the wardrobe and speak with me’. It was pretty funny, the connotations of ‘coming out of the closet’ and all, so I had to put that in the play. That’s how I would write the play – from my notebooks. I would take a line I wrote or something I heard and sorta spiderweb it.”
So how exactly does Aaron view his own homosexuality?
“Being [so young] is fantastic, because my perception of gay life is very different from anyone else involved in the festival. Dublin is developing slowly but surely. The Church’s influence is still felt and there are certain places, certain streets, where I would never hold hands with another boy. But my age group is very open. Everyone knows a gay person. For me, I have lots of straight friends and it doesn’t have to be a gay environment for me to find my place.”
Perhaps it’s Aaron’s confidence, allied to his generation’s growing tolerance, that have allowed him to write Fragile at such a young age. He hopes the play will help other Irish gays fell good about themselves.
“I think every gay in Dublin could connect with this story,” he says, “as regards coming out, coming to terms with not having that fairy tale relationship of boy/girl. Of course, those aren’t perfect either, but it’s still part of the fairy tale.”
And having done so much at only 18, what exactly does the future hold for Aaron?
“I’m going to school for acting and musical theatre,” he relates. “I love being on the other side of the curtain. I’ve learned a lot about acting from directing and writing and I think it’s helped make me a better actor. I want to take it slow for the next few years, act more before writing again. I’m starting at the Mountview Theatre School in London this fall, but I’m nervous. I’m having such great things happen over here, I’m in love – but I have to do this. I have to train for acting. I have to be on my own.
“Judi Dench is the president of the school and it would be absolutely amazing to meet her. I know I need to slow down, go to college. When I get out of school, I’ll only be 21, 22 and that’s still so young. And I still have so much I want to do.”
Watch him go!