The Resonate Podcast with Aideen

Irish-American Tale of the Forgotten with Author Sheila Forsey: Episode 61

• Aideen Ni Riada • Season 1 • Episode 61

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Join me, Aideen Ni Riada, as I sit down with the incredibly talented Irish author Sheila Forsey to uncover the twists and turns of her unexpected journey into writing. From a small village drama festival to joining the Watergate Theatre Group, Sheila's story is a testament to the power of following one's passion. Discover how a career shift and a serendipitous connection led her to secure an agent in America, and the importance she places on writing what truly resonates with you.

We spoke abut Sheila's expansion from writing historical fiction to playwriting with her play "Teddy" set in 1980s Ireland and how the journey from script to stage is fraught with challenges, but her collaboration with director Eric Fraser Hayes has been helpful. We also discussed the pivotal role of directors and actors in bringing a script to life.

"Teddy" centers on Rose's return home and the tension surrounding her developmentally challenged son and its rich exploration of family, culture, and responsibility promises to captivate audiences. 

About Sheila
Sheila Forsey is an Irish Times best-selling author of historical fiction. Her work has received many acclaimed reviews for giving a visual and textured insight into Ireland’s complex past in 20th Century Ireland. She is a writer in schools with Poetry Ireland and a Heritage Specialist in schools with The Heritage Council of Ireland. Sheila is a graduate of Maynooth University in Creative Writing and a postgraduate of Trinty College Dublin in Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship.

 A love of theatre and her experience as a former core member of the Watergate Theatre Company in Kilkenny has led her to write for the stage. Her play the Memory Room was shortlisted for Scripts Playwrights Festival.

Her play Teddy was written with the support of Wexford Playwrights Studio funded by Wexford Arts Council and Arts Council of Ireland. It will have its premier at The Eugene O’ Neill Festival in 2024 in New Ross, under the direction of Eric Fraiser Hayes, Artistic Director of The Eugene O’ Neill Foundation at Tao House, California.

Connect with Sheila

Website: sheilaforsey.com

Facebook: Sheila Forsey Author

Twitter: @sheilaforsey

Support the show

Thanks for listening! To book a free consultation with Aideen visit https://www.confidenceinsinging.com/contact/

Aideen Ni Riada:

Welcome to the Resonate podcast with Aideen. I'm Aideen Nereida, and my guest today is Irish author Sheila Forsey. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Sheila and can't wait to see where our conversation goes. Sheila is an author, a creative writing teacher and a heritage specialist in schools with Heritage Council of Ireland. Her passion is sharing Irish history from the last 100 years. She's well known for her best-selling historical fiction set in 20th century Ireland, which explores the themes of emigration to America and the repercussions of separation. With her play Teddy, sheila is the first female playwright featured in the Eugene O'Neill Festival in New Ross, my hometown, fyi, following in the footsteps of acclaimed playwrights such as Owen Colfer and Billy Roach. You're very welcome, sheila.

Sheila Forsey:

Thank you so much for having me Aideen delighted to be here.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, I am excited to talk to you because I know anybody who has delved into a creative pursuit has had their fair share of self-doubt and has had their own difficulties getting started, and I know you teach creative writing as well. Would you be willing to tell us a little bit about your journey as a writer?

Sheila Forsey:

Yeah, it's been maybe more recent than you might imagine. I had a completely different life before I started writing and a completely different road that I was on and that kind of happened by accident. A lot of things seem to have happened to me, kind of that I didn't really choose in the beginning, so kind of. Rather than go back on that, I kind of start where I started writing. Really, I think, kind of I come from a small village that it was a drama festival and there was also a drama group and I wasn't one of these that got involved in sports or anything like that, but I got a part in the local drama festival and that kind of set me on a road of, I think, a bit of a love of words and a love of plays and we're really lucky because we had a small village with all these great plays coming to us and you know. So that was a brilliant thing to have in rural Ireland. And fast forward then kind of many, many years later, when I was married and had children, and just before that, a few years before that I was, I'd moved to Kilkenny City in the Midlands and I was part of the Watergate Theatre Group there and I suppose. Then different things happened and I kind of stopped that and I came to a crossroads in my life of where I was working and everything else. And I came to a crossroads in my life of where I was working and everything else and I decided, right, I would try something else. And there was a course going on at the time, um, creative writing through Manus, and part of it was being held in Kilkenny City and it seemed like you know, it was literally an email you know that I sent off would I be accepted? And I was accepted. And that was really where I began. And that is going back to I'm hopeless with numbers I think it was about would be about 10, 11 years ago. So that's where I kind of started.

Sheila Forsey:

But I really very much wanted to. You know, I had had a business and I had closed that and I really needed a career. I thought this is it, I'm going to be a writer now, you know. So I really went in thinking I'm going to do this and, um, I think if somebody had told me how difficult it was, I might have thought twice about it, to be quite honest with you, aileen, but I'm so glad I did do it.

Sheila Forsey:

But, um, I decided to write a novel. Then, um, for the market, something I would highly not recommend anybody to do but I did that and, um, it was kind of a few years later that I wrote my I was, I was lucky, I got an agent and which is, you're told, extremely hard, yes, but I was very lucky. Different things happened and I got an agent, in America actually, and I got a book deal and it was her then that actually, um, you know, she kind of just said to me what do you really want to write? And and that's when I think, I really started to write what I really wanted to write. And that was my foot was always in the past a little bit, and that's kind of, I suppose, where I really, I feel, started to write what I really wanted to write.

Aideen Ni Riada:

How did you ever get a, an agent in America, of all things?

Sheila Forsey:

It was actually again a funny little story that I had read a book how Do you Get Published, and it was written by Terry Pr prone, and at the back of the book I said I wonder who actually published her book? And it was an agent in america. And shortly after that I went to a book launch and I sent my first three chapters, as you do, over to this agent in america and she actually replied and really liked it and said she was coming to America or coming to Ireland to meet one of her clients who happened to be from Wexford. So isn't it a very small world? Wow. So she actually became my agent then.

Sheila Forsey:

It wasn't quite as easy as that. It took a little bit of time and I sent her the rest of the book and then she did sign with me. But that was actually how I came across her. I was literally reading that book and I looked at the back and saw that that was her agent. I've never spoken to Terry Brown. I don't know anything about her, but that was actually my first of how I actually found her, because a lot of people recommend the artist's yearbook for finding a lot of agents and stuff and there's a small amount of them in Ireland, but what I have found is that Irish or American agents and UK agents really do like Irish writers, so that's a big plus for us that's a great tip as well for anyone listening, and thanks to Terry Prone, obviously.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And I have a great belief that each of us needs to put ourselves forward in the ways we want to put ourselves forward, because that inspires others. And look how that book inspired you to uh check what you could do with it. And there's also the whole thing of you know. You were willing to, almost like a cold call, contact someone who you had no idea if they'd be interested in you at all and and that was something I would not have been very good at in the beginning and sending stuff out.

Sheila Forsey:

And I remember sending out my first ever short story to a competition and I half expected, you know, the postman to return with like the reward, like a few weeks later, you know, and I remember getting a rejection and thinking, oh my God, maybe I'm not meant to do this at all. I must be really bad, Like I wasn't even shortlisted, longlisted, nothing. Oh my goodness, how many times have I repeated that story to give encouragement, because lots more rejections, you know, arrive through your door. As a writer, you know some things you just get and some things you don't. And you just learn, like, I suppose, in any art form, to stop taking it, try to stop taking it personal. But we're sensitive souls, I think anybody that is in into any type of art form. So it always has a little bit of a like, a cut, but it's not as deep as it used to be.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I'm glad to hear that a little bit, a little bit.

Sheila Forsey:

I don't know if you get a tougher skin, but you definitely handle it better, you know.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, yeah, Tell me. You have a specific theme that runs through your books and even your new play, Teddy. That's related to America and related to separation, that longing for home and immigration, home and immigration. So what drew you to that as a subject matter.

Sheila Forsey:

What was it about it that called to you? Yeah, the first book that I feel I really put my heart into was Kilbride House and it was about a Protestant and a Catholic and I really wanted to explore that whole relationship in Ireland and I had fell in love with Dingle many years ago and especially the peninsula, so that was kind of my my area to begin. But when I look back now I know that my childhood, like everybody's childhood, has had a huge part to play and my father used to recite what we say do a recitation, and he would do these recitations at any sort of you know kind of gathering, and there was lots of them. I grew up in one of those houses where there was seems to be gatherings all the time, and he did one particular one called Moriarity, and it was quite a heartbreaking recitation about somebody who had went to London as an immigrant but had never found the path home and who'd kind of got lost in no man's land, I suppose almost in London. And he used to say this and even as as a child I knew all the words, but you know I still used to kind of get sad that Moriarty never got home, you know and and it stayed with me, that story, and then he had also had another one and it was about a Protestant and a Catholic and it was called the Papish on the Prod, and know he used to say this and he had a great way of saying these recitations and I think they had a profound effect on me. To be quite honest with you, aideen, because even today I still hear them in my head. My dad's dead, you know, over 20 years, but you know they're still alive and well with me and they definitely have played a huge part in my writing, and so that theme is has been there from childhood.

Sheila Forsey:

And also their own brothers and sisters, you know, especially my mother's all emigrated to America and most of they all came back with great stories you know of, you know times that they had, but I also heard the stories of what I now know as the forgotten Irish, and it was, it was those people that really interested me, the people who didn't get home and the people who left for another were another and many didn't want to leave. They left, of course, especially in the 50s. So many went and they were, you know. They gave so much to Ireland. They sent back so much money between sending money for in to their families and to their parishes and so many envelopes came home with money when Ireland was possibly on its knees but and they really did help. But some of them got lost and I saw a documentary maybe about 12 years ago on RCE and it was about this hostel in London where some of these men were actually still living and some of them were in their 80s now and they had left at maybe 15 and 16 from a lot from the west of Ireland and they had never got home.

Sheila Forsey:

So they really stayed with me and I kind of wanted to find their voice and see. So so they very much are in a lot of my, my writing. Teddy is different. Teddy is a little bit different to that. I had never written about the 80s and growing up as a teenager. I was born in 1970, so the 80s were really, you know, my, my years as a teenager and so that, like every teenager, they had a profound effect on me, and so I really wanted to explore that time in Ireland as well, because there was different things that happened in it, that that I remember really, really well and and for me they did influence Teddy in a strange sort of way.

Aideen Ni Riada:

So what's different about Teddy? And I mean, first of all, I was really curious what prompted you to write a play, because you obviously have been doing the historical fiction novels for a little while. First, was Teddy one of the first plays that you'd written?

Sheila Forsey:

It actually was. Yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was written. It's funny, my publisher for my book, when she read I think it was my second book she said, sheila, you write um, like the curtain is going across and it's almost like a play. And and I thought about it and I said, but sure, that's what I knew. Really that's what I knew I brought.

Sheila Forsey:

I was brought up with drama, you know, from going to festivals and and seeing festivals and seeing plays and John B Keane and all those kind of plays and and then when I lived in Kilkenny I was, as I said, very much part of the Watergate Theatre Group. So you know, I suppose that was my first kind of love. So, even though I'm new to playwriting, I feel I've kind of gone back really full circle, because I kind of started there really with a love of words. I don't think I was brave enough to write a play before, because theatre for me, you know, is really powerful. I feel like I think I had more room in a novel to maybe find my voice, where, when you're watching a play, I mean it's so alive and it's so real To be black and white about it. If it's not good, I mean it's it's, there's no room for it. You know, it's it's over where I I think I was.

Sheila Forsey:

I didn't feel confident enough to write a play until the time was right that I felt that, okay, maybe I can explore this. And then the Wexford Playwrights Studio set up and I was accepted into that as part of a group of emerging playwrights starting, and we got a lot of encouragement there and the mentorship was really really good. So that really was part of how I started, even though I had kind of dabbled in it when I had done creative writing in Maynooth. I had never said I am going to write a play. It was just I wasn't going to go there because I did not want to write something. I was a play. I think I was too um, I I didn't feel I would be able to write a play, I think.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And it's only now, I feel, I have the confidence. Yeah, it's a more of a vulnerable position because you're being judged moment by moment. I mean, if you sat in that audience you could feel whether there was a response or not. So you're so much closer to the listener, to the person that you're speaking to, that communication is more intimate, um, more raw.

Sheila Forsey:

Yeah, and, and I I'm one of those in a play that are, when I'm in the audience of a play, I find and I've only realized this myself from from going to to plays that you know I will be the one that will. You know I cry if it's sad and I laugh. You know you will hear me laughing and but I will also cry. So you know I and I'll also be bored if it's not any good, you know. So I was going to be my own worst critic. You know I'm I'm quite distracted as a person anyway, so I will be the first person to think, oh my god, will this ever be over? So I knew I was going to be one of my my own worst critic when I was writing a play.

Sheila Forsey:

Where it's like with writing, you know, I've just started a new group of writers and adult writers and they, they always go. I'll write a short story. You know a short story is easy. Where you know anyone that's writing those. A short story is actually quite a difficult thing to do. It's a craft by itself. Where a novel you have more room. With theater I think you have no room it. You know you've got to. You've got to get this right, you know.

Sheila Forsey:

But what I didn't realize was that it is such a collaborative thing really, you know, it's not just you writing a play and and I. That has been the great process that I have learned throughout, from the beginning, from when it was with Wexford Playwrights and then when it was with Eric, who has given me so much, you know, guidance in redrafting and redrafting and even though you work with an editor with a book, you have to get it to a certain degree before you get that kind of help. You know, and I am somebody who loves learning. You know I'm not that writer who will go my, my writing is great and you know, I hope everyone else thinks it's great as well. I, I will be the person who will. I I'm just starving for you know, I love. I love somebody to collaborate with and and helping me with something, and that you were both learning. So I love the process, but didn't realize that I would love it, I suppose.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And Eric Fraser Hayes is a. He's renowned as a director for directing Eugene O'Neill plays. When you started working with him, did you feel that experience was there? What? What was it that you got from him that helped you to see the play from a different angle?

Sheila Forsey:

Working with Eric was has really changed my, I suppose, belief in myself as a playwright I think as well, playwright, I think as well. I think he's such a fantastic director and mentor. But he's so gentle with us. You know, everything was a guide suggestion. You know it was. You know, would you like to maybe perhaps try it from? Look at this, whatever, and he gave me so much room.

Sheila Forsey:

You know, would you like to maybe perhaps try it from? Look at this, whatever, and he gave me so much room. You know that that really really helped. So it was a huge learning process for me and you know I'm really really grateful for that and I know that now I can take that kind of with me as well. But so, working with him, I felt, you know, for a minute, I think that there is this person with so much experience that I don't really have of, of, of, of writing, of, of the position that he was in. But yes, he was just one of those people that kind of met you at your own level and he was just just wonderful to work with, Absolutely, and I just felt I've learned so much from him.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Because the thing about a play is when you hand it over to a director. It'd be like getting one of your books made into a film. It's like they could create something completely different from your vision. So having the right director, a director that is sensitive to what the writer may have wanted, allows him then to go. His interpretation is then guided by your wishes, but then each actor has their own interpretation of the, the characters as well, and a certain look or a certain way of moving can actually completely change how they, how the words themselves, are interpreted, because there's so many layers. Words are all you know. They really are guided by the intention behind the words, and sometimes that's harder to read in a novel and it can be very, you know, more obvious in a play. Was there anything within Teddy that evolved dramatically through Eric's interpretation and through the actor's interpretations?

Sheila Forsey:

Oh gosh, there was a couple of things really, I suppose from the first reading or the first I did have a professional reading before it went to Eric and the actors, especially the female who played the mother yeah, her insight was really significant for me and that changed really in the next draft quite, quite dramatically for me.

Sheila Forsey:

It's strange what you write down first sometimes is a is so key to what comes out at the end, to the end product, and yet as you go through so many, many drafts but it's strange, but by some coincidence, one of my earlier drafts went to Eric first and there was something in that that we had got, we had removed completely, but it was that thing that actually drew Eric to the play. Wow. So, which was really strange, but that has come back in and that was when I look at it now. It was actually that it was the soul of the play and without it it didn't have the soul. So it was a strange thing that, you know, he saw that and he reminded me of why I wrote the play and that was a really personal thing. I think that I'd almost forgotten of why I had written the play and then I went oh, that's actually the whole reason behind this entire play, and if that was gone, the re, as I said, the real soul of it wouldn't have been there. So it was. It was just a really strange thing that happened, um, throughout it, um, so there's there's been lots of little things like that, but that was probably the biggest thing that happened for me, wow, and are you going to reveal what that I can't really because it would be a it would be a spoiler for the play

Sheila Forsey:

yeah, I feel I will actually, because there's, yeah, there is something that kind of runs through the entire play. That, um, that um, growing up in County Wexford, um, and I won't say too much and, and enniscarthy being my local town there was, yeah, there was, there was something there that, yeah, really kind of me is. Uh, just personally, as a child, I was quite I suppose haunted is the word um, I would use, but I can't really say too much more or I'll give away the story.

Aideen Ni Riada:

You're making everyone so curious. Now this is going to boost sales of the tickets. No end, I don't know. It's okay not to say it. They can put the two together.

Sheila Forsey:

Yes, they can put the two together, even when you're looking at the play. What was she even talking about?

Aideen Ni Riada:

But yeah, so there was definitely a reason. Will you tell us a little bit about the play? You know the basic things about the play just in case someone hasn't heard much about it yet.

Sheila Forsey:

Yeah, yeah, so it's set in 1980s Ireland and it's just in my own head it's set in 1987. And it is really, I suppose, even though it's called Teddy and Teddy is such an important character in the play, rose is living in America and Rose returns home to her home for Christmas. Rose is doing really well in America. She was very lucky because she has an aunt and an uncle there, so she got her green card and whatever. Very lucky because she has an aunt and an uncle there, so she got her green card and whatever. And she's um, she's actually went back to school and she's designing her own clothes.

Sheila Forsey:

So this is, you know, quite an unusual thing in 80s Ireland.

Sheila Forsey:

So she's, she's doing really, really well, but she did child when she was 16 and he is living at home with her parents and it's christmas and even though rose's life is going really well in america, teddy, her son, is still living in ireland and being lovingly reared by her parents. So so you know, rose comes home for Christmas, but there is straight away a kind of attention that is there more to Rose's visit than meets the eye. Is she just coming home for Christmas or, you know, does she want to spend more time with Teddy and what will that mean for the family? And I suppose nothing like that happens without a lot of family drama, that she had this child and she left and she went to London first and then she went to America. But also Teddy is challenged developmentally and he's approaching 18. So this kind of changes things a little bit and that's really where we kind of meet the family. And there's also a brother in the play who has a very important role because he's kind of I think he's keeping everyone together.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And he's played by Sean O'Brien, I believe Bobby is the character right?

Sheila Forsey:

Yes, bobby, yes, he is, and Lily is the man. And Lily has lived, you know, quite a normal country life. I think you know from where she came from and they're quite a well-to-do family. They're not like you know, they're quite a well-to-do farming family. They're you know the son're quite a well-to-do farming family. They're. They're you know the the son, bobby, he has horses.

Sheila Forsey:

They go to the point to point it's, it's it's you know they're doing well for 1980s, ireland and um. So. So things should be really, really good within the family and they are. And she's coming home and she has presents and it opens, you know, with a lot of family cheer because she's, she's home for Christmas, beautiful. So, without telling too much about the play, yeah, um. So there's a lot of different themes explored within it. And family, of course, um is is a huge theme and I suppose responsibility and um control as well, I think in a strange way. And religion, because it is 1980s, ireland, religion is still very, very strong within Ireland, and not just religion of 1980s, but I think the strains of religion of the decades before as well, because he was born in 1970, teddy was, so he was born even at a different time now and and it would have been a very religious ireland- so interesting?

Aideen Ni Riada:

yeah, so, and I know that the eugene o'neill festival is is known for bringing together actors, uh, from both America and Ireland. You have playing Lily, margaret Roster, who's well known in New Ross as an actor and director, sean O'Brien, who is a leader in the theatre scene in New Ross as well, and the rest of the actors I know some of them are from America. Isabel Serguza is the American lead actor, and was there anything about working with the mix of cultures that made it easier or harder for you, sheila, going into it?

Sheila Forsey:

Well, andy Doyle actually, who's a Wexford actor and so well known and so well respected in um. Not just I, I'm proud of Wexford as well.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Um, he's actually playing um the father, so um was there um, and Teddy Phelan is playing Teddy himself. Yeah, he is indeed.

Sheila Forsey:

Meeting Isabel has really given another layer to the story, because I think if you were living in America for that length of time, you would become quite Americanized as well, and I think Rose wanted to become more Americanized. So it was really lovely to actually explore that. And also, isabel has a lot of Irish connections as well, so it's a kind of a strange one. It's kind of coming a little bit full circle for us all a little bit. You know so, because she has a lot of Irish connections and that has given her, I think, and myself, that connection that we have together, because who hasn't got Irish relations and Irish emigrants and everything else?

Sheila Forsey:

But you forget about the people in America that they have the stories as well. You know, they have the stories from Ireland and we talk so much about the people that went away, but the people that are away, they have their own stories and they hand them down to the next generation and the next generation. And that is where Isabel is. So she brings a lot to the role that I hadn't really thought about. You know that about those, you know, if you were to put the play into the future of of perhaps another generation, of how they would feel about this, so. So she's brought lots of different layers to it. So it and it is. It's lovely to have the mix of the of the Irish and American actors.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, well, we're very excited that your world premiere of Teddy is happening in the humble town of New Ross County, wexford, and we wish you very well with the rest of the rehearsals and everything that's going on. Are you working on another novel as well at the moment?

Sheila Forsey:

I have completed a novel at the moment yay, that has taken me, yeah, like quite a long time, a couple of years and um, it's a new, it's a biofiction, so it's a biographical story of somebody's life, so it's a way nesting in different publishers at the moment, so hoping that it'll all come to fruition at some stage.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And um, is this a famous Irish?

Sheila Forsey:

person it is well, she's quite forgotten, okay. So you see, I like the forgotten, I like I'm, I suppose, in bringing light to the forgotten. So I came across this story and I'm not allowed to say who she is just at the moment A lot of mystery. But I can say she was really famous in her day and but amazingly she has been forgotten. So I'm hoping the book will give light and I'm hoping she will be happy that her story has been brought back. She's actually she died about 20 years ago Fascinating, yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, and just finally, I'm kind of feeling into this idea that you really love. Finally, I'm kind of feeling into this idea that you really love. It's like honoring ancestors in one regard as well, that you have a great compassion for those who have gone before us, people who suffered through life to give us a better life, and our lives are completely built on the lives of those who have gone before us. But, like you say, they're so forgotten, and I know that their souls will be happy to be remembered in whatever ways we can, and I'm very grateful for you for coming on the podcast today. Is there anything you'd like to say to the listeners, perhaps any listeners who are budding authors or who have a creative outlet that they are not fully exploring yet, or who have a creative outlet that they are not fully exploring yet?

Sheila Forsey:

Well, I can. A few weeks ago I actually started doing an art class, and now I know why people have a little bit of fear of taking up a new art form or maybe even starting one if they've never kind of tried it before. Maybe even starting one if they've never kind of tried it before Feel the fear. I suppose that's a cliche, isn't it? But it's something you kind of have to do. And the one thing that I hear a lot of oh, I'm kind of going to wait till I have a bit of time and then I'll start to write, or, you know, maybe when I retire, or you know, maybe if I could get away for a week or whatever. You know, if there's something that you want to write about, or if you have a story that you want to write or you feel needs to be told, just start it today, just write it.

Sheila Forsey:

Write the first line, start with one word and just begin because there is no right time. There's no right time at all and we have a lot of regrets in life. Who doesn't? Well, I do, anyway, and I think any. Anyone that I know really really well. You know, everybody has a few regrets, so don't allow the untold stories to be a regret. If there's a story that needs to be told, you're the one to tell us, and and we all have our own unique stories to tell. So just don't wait, just go and do it thank you so much, sheila.

Aideen Ni Riada:

It's absolute pleasure to have you on the resonate podcast today. Thank you to everyone listening. We're very honored that you've taken the time to listen in. If you've got something creative that you're waiting to do, please take Sheila's advice Don't wait. Don't wait, start today. And thank you so much, sheila, for being here. That's it for today's episode of the Resonate podcast. Bye-bye.