I had the privilege of meeting storyteller Mary Kate O’Flanagan to talk about her show Making a Show of Myself before its Off-Broadway run this month. O’Flanagan had just finished a two-show weekend at Bewley’s Café Theatre to perform the show before taking on the big apple. Making a Show of Myself celebrates seanchas—the ancient Irish art of storytelling—carrying audiences from laughter through darkness and back into light. O’Flangan kindly welcomed me into her humble abode where we had a good chat over a cup of tea about her career, how she got here and where she’s heading.
“I love the true life stories like my mother would tell me about her childhood and my father would tell me about his childhood.”
O’Flanagan loved stories when she was younger, she remembers following her mother around the book stores. She loved the classics like Peter Pan & Wendy and Watership Down, “books were really my first love”, but also loved stories about her mother and father’s childhood. She is dedicating her show in New York to them to say thank-you for all the times they listened to her “rambling stories.”
After not having performed for five months she was feeling really good after her Sunday show in Bewley’s and felt like that was the show she wanted to perform in New York. She has been working on it with director Will O’Connell who guided her with the length of the show as well as managing how much “story” to tell. O’Flanagan admitted that, surprisingly, the show had never been written down more so formatted structurally and then told the same way over and over again.
“So the stories are pretty much or should be pretty much the same every time but the segues I am – I know what I’m going to say broadly, but I’m extemporising.”
O’Flanagan studied at University College Dublin, but felt like she really got her education in the drama society, Dramsoc. “To the detriment of my degree. I always felt like I got my education in what was then the LG, or the lower ground floor. That’s where Dramsoc was situated.” She wanted to be a theatre director with the Abbey but didn’t know how to make a career as a freelance director so she went to London and became an arts journalist. But her love for stories was always there. When she moved back to Ireland, due to her sister’s career in the TV and film industry, she started meeting filmmakers and soon became a story consultant for television and film.
I was really curious as to how O’Flanagan got into storytelling in the first place. She told me about The Moth, a nonprofit organisation committed to the art of storytelling, presenting true stories told live and without notes, nurturing a deep connection among audiences. She was encouraged to enter one of their Story Slams. The night she went the theme was “Mothers”, and she had one about her mother and grandmother, so she got up and did it and surely enough she won over.
“Now my heart was absolutely beating out of my chest and it was so long since I’ve been on the stage.”
Connecting then and now, O’Flanagan went on to enter and win numerous story-telling competitions. One of her performed stories, about her father’s funeral, was recorded and shared online and went viral. O’Connell spotted it and put it up to the faith of the small Dublin community that he’d know someone who knew her and sure enough they soon became theatregoing friends.
“And one time I said to him, you know, I feel like I’ve got a show in me, and he went, I’ll help you.”
We then got talking about the formation of the show itself. O’Flanagan didn’t want it to be a square wheel of one story after another. There was a different version of the show where the stories were chronological, but she thought the way to weave it altogether was to talk about how stories work, with a beginning, a middle and an end and apply that to her own life. O’Flanagan wanted the first two stories to be classically structured, so then it’d go “status quo, status quo, disturbed, struggle, struggle, struggle, twist, final resolution”, bringing it back to O’Flanagan’s presence at the end. They tried shaping the stories differently and what she realised is the stories start fun and light on relationships but then become more demanding on the audiences emotionally as they render grief and abuse.
“I love talking about stories so much.”
Once the structure was taking on a solid shape, O’Flangan went on to perform the show in Smock Alley Theatre, and then went on tour which included a run at the Edinburgh Fringe. This taught her a lot about audience engagement and interactions, playing to crowds of various sizes each night. It taught her regardless of audience size to give them the same show as any other. “Genuinely one time I think I had 5 people in the audience, but they were so responsive / they somehow gave each other permission that they were going to have the craic.” Doing the show multiple times there helped her get better at it with the muscle memory getting stronger. We talked about what O’Flanagan wanted audiences to take away from the show. “The solace of storytelling.” She wants audience members to be encouraged to tell their own stories.
“This is my gift to the audience.”
While O’Connell felt the show belonged in Edinburgh, O’Flanagan had her sights on the Big Apple. “That was my dream for it, but that did seem like a crazy dream.” She explained regardless of where she’s doing it, O’Flanagan’s top priority was to give the audience something to take from it, a gift, theoretically. This helped her keep connection with the audience but also understand that sometimes she’ll give a gift that isn’t to their taste, and that’s ok. “I hope you will like it, but you don’t have to like it.” Taking this energy to the stage with her keeps the work solid. But there can be moments where it is possible to give the audience too much. O’Flanagans story is about being a survivor of sexual abuse. But through the development of the show, she stopped using the term, sexual abuse, because she felt like it gave the audience too much to hold. “I was like I don’t want to not talk about it. I don’t want to pretend it’s not true, I don’t want to pretend it doesn’t exist because actually one of the things about being a survivor is that you carry shame for something that’s not yours.” It is an incredibly vulnerable moment but she handles it beautifully. She tells this story to show people that not only did she survive, she is thriving. The gift of the story is, she found her voice.
“I want to say to people, if you’ve been through something or you’re going through something where it feels like you’re suffering needlessly. I’m here to tell you that’s because the story isn’t over yet.”
O’Flanagan hopes to tour the show around Ireland after New York and has a TV show in the works too. She is absolutely one to look out for!
