Thoughts On Writing with Award Winning Irish Playwright Ronan Noone

At the first meal of his residency, playwright Ronan Noone shared a parking lot epiphany. He was enraged by someone in the theater business who was forcing the business side of art to intrude on the making of art. He recalls the very spot in a parking lot where he realized it was more important to be a craft person than to be known. And he chose his craft over the attention associated with being a playwright. He recognized some selfishness is needed to be an artist – that you must sacrifice something, but not craft.

At the first meal of his residency, playwright Ronan Noone shared a parking lot epiphany. He was enraged by someone in the theater business who was forcing the business side of art to intrude on the making of art. He recalls the very spot in a parking lot where he realized it was more important to be a craft person than to be known. And he chose his craft over the attention associated with being a playwright. He recognized some selfishness is needed to be an artist – that you must sacrifice something, but not craft.

At the end of his stay, our conversation again veered to revelations about writing as he shared what he experienced while here at the Hermitage. As an artist he said he feels a constant desperation because he only has a certain amount of time between teaching, family, and development of existing plays. That desperation affects the craft.

“Staying here at the Hermitage is not just in writing, but seeing who you are as an artist. Here your body slows down and you become aware.” In his life he has experienced the times when the art comes out at its own pace, but often desperation intrudes on the making of art. With age, and with being at the Hermitage, comes an understanding that craft is something that comes from somewhere. If you force it, it won’t work.

He came here to finish a play he started three weeks earlier. Real life disrupted his writing, the desperation set in and “the window to the play closed” with two scenes left unwritten. At the Hermitage he faced a problem with the play’s ending and began feeling desperate again. But as he walked the beach, he thought “What’s the rush?” His years of working with the craft had taught him “The answer is always in the scene”. At his walk’s end he returned to his desk in the writer’s cottage where he typed the last scene.

Ten years ago, when he watched Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, he knew he would use it someday. The play he wrote at the Hermitage was Scenes from an Adultery, based on the Bergman film. After he wrote the end, he viewed Bergman’s film again for the first time in ten years. “ I watched it again last night” he said with a smile that looked like he had eaten something sinfully delicious.
Referring to his Hermitage experience the smile widened “Just in terms of process, I could live off this for two months.”

Find more at RonanNoone.com, including his thoughts on playwrighting called 36 Points or More