"It's an insane thing, to write a play."

One day, as we all sat around our lounge, sipping cappuccinos, Michael West said to us, "It's an insane thing, to write a play." There we were, aspiring playwrights living in Ireland, about to start the unthinkable - write a play. We must have been mad, loons, all of us. Needless would Michael know that three weeks later he'd be winning the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best New Playwright. An insane thing, yes.

Sitting in my living room now, six months later and living back in New York City, I think I'm fully starting to realize the extent of those words. Being a writer, trying to create a world. It's an insane thing. I have completed two stage plays in my infant career (a one act, and a two act), and now that I am facing the reality of writing my second full length screenplay, I can't help but go back to those words. Have I lost my mind?

The only thing that is keeping me calm is - I think - the fact that I now personally know a successful writer. I spent 18 weeks with him, I drank coffees and pints with him, I talked about Simba and Hamlet with him. And now his success is becoming a reality. Michael's latest work, Freefall, is premiering at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin later this month, and I can't help but sit here in awe. I know him. I know the flesh and blood man that wrote that play, those words. If you don't know, the Abbey Theatre is the end-all, be-all of theatre in Ireland; it's the National Theatre, the hot tamale of the stage world. 

To think, Michael made an insane thing sane. He wrote a play. He did what I dream to do.  And now, all I can think is how much I want to be there to see it come to a reality, to watch that show grace the main stage of the Abbey in it's full fruition. 

Is truly is, an insane thing.

-E

Michael West still dominates my life.

I'm just saying.

Here is his latest interview, describing his play Freefall from Edinburgh ... by far one of the best professors that I've ever had.

-E

Irish Times Theatre Awards

Yeah, that’s my professor in that picture ... holding the award ... with his face all projected on a screen ...

The lovely Michael West just won the Best New Play award at the equivalent of the Tony’s over here in the Eire for his play Freefall. AND his wife, Annie, won for Best Director! Good craic, eh? I’m not going to lie -- we are all pretty excited about it over here! It’s not every day that an Award-Winning writer happens to be your professor ...

-E

Lies Susanne Told Me Number 512: “Michael West is very good.”

Here’s just a little excerpt from the Irish Times write up about the whole shebang ...

Yet the true stars of the evening were winners like director Annie Ryan, who used her acceptance speech on receipt of the award for best director for the Corn Exchange Theatre production of Freefall , to call for some kind of truce between those angered by the cuts in funding for so many theatre companies and the Arts Council members behind those decisions.

“Change is inevitable. There’s nothing we can do about that,” said Ryan, who said the Arts Council and Ireland’s theatre community must work together to find new solutions. “The question is, how do you harness the enormous energy that is released when something falls apart, and use it to create something better?”

Her husband Michael West, who received the Best New Play award for Freefall , also acknowledged the shake-up in Irish theatre that included a 48 per cent cut in the funding for Corn Exchange. “If the last few weeks have taught us anything, it’s how surprising theatre can be and what a privilege it is to work with it,” said West.

“The risk-taking that goes with making theatre is part of what we are and what we do.”