Atlas (1984)

Atlas was my first play.
It arose out of a conversation with Brent Hearne one night in the Terenure Inn: we were looking for one-acts to take on the Amateur Drama League circuit, but we were not familiar with many scripts, so we thought we'd have a go at writing one ourselves.  We agreed to take a stab at it and see what happened.  I went into work the next day and found (?) some spare time to put down a few ideas, and "Atlas" began to take shape.  I wrote a first draft, and we had a reading for ourselves, with Brent, Peter Shannon and Johnny Reynolds, all members of Yew Troupe at the time, in Peter's house.  I think Frank Byrne might have sat in as well out of curiosity.  We agreed that it needed more substance, so I went away and wrote some more, creating the woman's character, which Sandra Burke (no relation/different spelling) played.
I directed the show and we took it on the circuit.  Maybe we did a performance for the local audience first, in St. Joseph's Parish Hall in Terenure; that was our base.  Johnny drove a butchers' van which we used to transport the simple set.  The two performances that stand out in my mind are the night in the Moat Club, Naas, when Betty Ann Norton took a shine to the script, and my parents came up from Quinsboro - they were there for the weekend - to see it, and the trip to Maudabawn near Cootehill, through endless dark, and a busy night afterwards in The White Horse - I'm also thinking of a night when Des Braiden adjudicated in Maudabawn, but I think that might have been a couple of years later.