The Resonate Podcast with Aideen

Geraldine Plunkett's Acting Journey From Stage to Screen

• Aideen Ni Riada • Season 1 • Episode 80

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Irish actress Geraldine Plunkett shares her remarkable journey from school plays to becoming one of Ireland's most beloved performers across stage and screen. She reflects on her surprise entry into acting, her experiences with the Abbey Theatre, and her current role in Sheila Forsey's new play "The Memory Room."

• Started acting after being discovered by Abbey Theatre director Frank Dermody during a school production of Hamlet
• Learned acting by working alongside legendary Abbey Theatre performers like Harry Brogan and Eileen Crowe
• Found fame on television in Glenroe, written by Wesley Burrows, which came at the perfect time as her children were growing up
• Performed in numerous acclaimed theater productions including Juno and the Paycock and works by Beckett, Murphy, and McGuinness
• Currently starring as Eileen in The Memory Room, a play about secrets, memory, truth and family
• Drawn to the play's poetic language and the way it explores how past secrets might be handled differently today

Join us for The Memory Room at the St. Michael's Theatre in New Ross – a gripping new play with a wonderful script, director, and cast that promises to keep audiences on the edge of their seats.


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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 Ni Riada and today I'm joined by one of Ireland's most loved actresses, Geraldine Plunkett. You'll know her from Glenrow, the Clinic and Fair City, but she's also had an incredible stage career, from classics like Juno and the Paycock and the Glass Menagerie to powerful new Irish plays. This year Geraldine stars as Eileen in the Memory Room, a brand new play by Wexford playwright Sheila Forsey. I actually spoke with Sheila on a podcast episode last year, so I'm very excited to speak with Geraldine about Sheila's new play and find out more about how Geraldine about Sheila's new play and find out more about how Geraldine got involved in acting in the first place. What drew you to acting all those years ago?

Geraldine Plunkett:

Well, I was at boarding school and I was in a couple of school plays and I was in Hamlet, which was on the leaving cert. At the time. When I was doing the leaving and as it happened, frank Dermody, who was a director in the Abbey Theatre at the time, happened to be adjudicating, quite coincidentally in this was in the Ursuline in Thurles in the town and somebody said come in and see this. So he came in and I auditioned for him and that, and then I had enough. So I was leaving school anyway, I was in my last year and then I went to, I had another couple of auditions with the Abbey and then they gave me a little part and you know, and so forth. So that's that's. The Abbey at that stage was in the Queen's Theatre in Peirce Street where they had moved after the fire in 1952. So I mean that theater is gone now.

Aideen Ni Riada:

So that's where I'm considering any other career at the time.

Geraldine Plunkett:

No, because I like. I just no, I wasn't just thinking well, I'll have to do like millions of people did, I have to do a short on a typing course and get a job, and no so that the option was acting or typist well, it wasn't so much even an option.

Geraldine Plunkett:

It never entered my head for one second that I could be an actor until this this happened. And I mean like, if you know, if you said to me, you know, would you like to be? I mean I loved it, I absolutely loved being in the school play, adored it, but it didn't enter my head that this was in any way a possibility. I mean you might as well have said well, do you want to be a spaceman or something? Do you know what I mean? It was as remote as that. And then and then it just happened, and very gradually, and of course I learned an awful lot from all the actors I was working with and everything else.

Aideen Ni Riada:

So that's how it happened, you know yeah, um, I'm curious um, who influenced you the most at that time when you were working in the um as a young actress well, oh god, it's impossible to say.

Geraldine Plunkett:

I mean there was fun. I mean I, I was in in the era of Harry Brogan and Eileen Crowe were were. I mean, eileen Crowe was one of the original Abbey players and uh, I I just, and there were a huge amount of actors there who were really very, very good and very experienced, fantastic. And I just learned by watching and and they'd say things to me. I mean they would say things like don't do this or do that or whatever. You just learn by watching and working. And I mean Donal McCann was there as well at the same time, donal and I. May he rest in peace.

Geraldine Plunkett:

The same age Des Cave, the same age Clive. There were a whole pile of people, stephen Ray, there were lots of us that were kind of, you know, coming up together young at that stage, and then we all went different ways and so forth, and I got married quite young, and so on, and that did you give up acting for a while when you got married and well, I was sort of sort of on and off acting and I was kind of freelance then and I married Pather Lamb, who was in the Abbey Theatre at the time, and our first child, pather Peter, as we call him, his Pather was born in 1966.

Geraldine Plunkett:

And so I did work a lot when I was pregnant and then I didn't, and it was erratic is the only way I could put it you know, did you ever take any like formal acting training?

Aideen Ni Riada:

Did you ever find any benefit in any of that? Not, specifically.

Geraldine Plunkett:

I mean I didn't go to an acting school but the Abbey at that stage under Frank Dermody did in the afternoons sometimes have. I suppose you could say you know groups of groups of us for well, workshops, school, a set, but workshops, and you know techniques of acting and things like that.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Um, did you have any experience of like self-doubt or, you know, did you feel that was it hard for you did?

Geraldine Plunkett:

I was. I lived in a state of total nerves for years and years and years and years and years, because, having been at boarding school, I will have a school anyway, having been in school plays, which I absolutely adored, it was wonderful, loved it, and I suddenly there, I was thrown into a professional company. And you know, you just realize you don't know anything at all, kind of thing. So, but people were very helpful, but at the same time, yes, you're so terrified that you're, you know, you're just bags of nerves all the time.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yes, I did.

Geraldine Plunkett:

I didn't have self-doubt about whether or not I had talent. I didn't have self-doubt about whether or not I had talent. I know this sounds contradictory, but I had self-doubt about whether or not I was going to be good in specific plays. Ok, which is it? Which, on the wider level, I kind of did feel I had talent. And then the specific level. I thought, oh, I'll never do this. Do you know what I mean?

Aideen Ni Riada:

Well, each part is a new task isn't it, it is, it is yeah. Yeah, what role did you find the most difficult to step into in your career?

Geraldine Plunkett:

Oh gee, it was all of them, I think. And in the early days in the early days, I suppose it's hard to say Parts, parts of roles I thought oh, I'm comfortable with this bit, but I'm terrified of the next bit. So it's really very, very difficult to say specifically because kind of every kind of everything.

Aideen Ni Riada:

So at what point did you end up, you know, auditioning or going on Irish television? Was Glenrow your first TV appearance?

Geraldine Plunkett:

Well, on and off. I have done quite a lot of television plays. They used to do one off plays, you know, oh OK, oh yeah, they were constantly. So I was in on and off in quite a lot of those. And I've done radio plays as well. And then when Glenrow came along and I auditioned for that like everybody else and I got it, and that was how I got into Glenrow.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Was there any point during your time in Glenrow where you felt like this storyline isn't going where I'd like it?

Geraldine Plunkett:

to go. All of us in the cast. We'd sometimes say, well, is this plausible? Is that plausible, or could we say this that way, the other? But generally speaking, no, because no, as a matter of fact, I can't really recall. I mean, I you know, like all long running series, there's always something that's a little bit implausible. But you know, that's, that's the way, that's the way it is. It just the big. You know, the main thing is that you wouldn't have implausibilities in relation to your character. Okay, that's wise. There's always something a little bit off the wall. That's just the nature of the kind of thing you know, to keep everyone interested.

Geraldine Plunkett:

Um wesley burrows was the. It came on the first one, that was the reorderns written by wesley. Then there was bracken, and then there was Glenn Rowe and they were all grew out of each other, if I could put it that way, and um Wesley wrote them and I mean he was just a wonderful writer. Lay other writers, wonderful writers, came in later, but for years Wesley was the, wrote everything and he really, and we never had to say, oh, can we say it this way, that way, he just wrote so well, you know, know, for all the characters he was marvellous.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Did he ever ask you for your input into anything that you did? That he wrote?

Geraldine Plunkett:

Not no, not really, but sometimes towards after a couple of years, towards the end of the each series, we'd all have meetings with the directors and things, and it was very and the executive directors, they'd say anybody any ideas or do you think this or that? And if people had, that's fine, you know, I mean the actors wouldn't have a major input in that sense, but it was just kind of a feeling, you know, to feel things out, you know.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Wonderful In a general way what, looking back, what do you most cherish about that time in glenro?

Geraldine Plunkett:

well, the closeness of the cast to each other I mean that's on a person 11 and the fact, course, that it was so hugely popular. I mean it was hugely popular and and I just and I enjoy the part and the storylines and the scripts and I loved acting. So you're in your happy place. Well, I was just very lucky really, you know, and it came at a very good time. The kids were all young my youngest was three when I started. The kids were all young my youngest was three when I started and the and the eldest I mean even financially the older ones were still at school, but then they were all at college and then there was, you know, so it was, it was great. That's wonderful.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And you've performed in some amazing theatre productions and in amazing places New York you mentioned Jerusalem. What stands out to you as a highlight of your theatre journey?

Geraldine Plunkett:

Well, playing Juno in Juno the Peacock was great. I was in the first production of the House by Tom Murphy. I was in some of Frank McGuinness's play the most recent actually was his version of Tartuffe in the Abbey and then, oh God, I loved the Beckett plays. I liked Gerard Gallagher's plays. I mean, there was masses of stuff that I can't even remember now and there were a sort of small productions of. There were sort of small productions of you know, smaller companies. There was one, bodlea, written by Paul Mercier, and I was also in that, and Pilgrims as well, and Bodlea went to Poland, which was great. And where else did we go? We went to various places, god. But Paul Mercier is just a great writer in my book, you know, a great, great writer. It's very hard to remember, to be honest. I'd have to sort of nearly sit down and go through everything that I did over the years.

Aideen Ni Riada:

When you say someone is a great writer, what did you? What do you mean by that? Like? What are? What are you thinking? Like? Is it because of the way they write the words or the way they put?

Geraldine Plunkett:

the story together. It can be that, but I think it's also if. If, like, a play isn't a play until it's performed, it's a script until that, and if it lifts off the page and engages the audience somehow or other. Oh gosh, I mean, there's so many different types of good writers. Yeah, you know of great writers. I mean, I can't. I wish I could think of like my mind is blank.

Aideen Ni Riada:

That's fine, it's absolutely perfect. That's fine, it's absolutely perfect. But that's just an interesting thing. You've said there that if the play is is just a script, until it's put on stage, until it's performed. Yes, yes, yeah, and sometimes it doesn't.

Geraldine Plunkett:

It mightn't read that well on the. I mean, a play script is not a novel yeah it's, it's, uh, it has to. The actors have to make it come alive, as any writer will tell you. Really, you know, it doesn't live until it's performed, whereas a book, novel can be, is living on the page.

Aideen Ni Riada:

So you're coming to Newroz to play Eileen in the memory room and I know that you came across this quite a while ago. Do you remember it from reading I do.

Geraldine Plunkett:

I do remember. You see, the thing is, when we read it we didn't read the whole play. This, this particular festival of scripts, was just the first portion of potential plays, and all of the actors read these, not extracts of plays, because in some case the plays hadn't even been written. Do you know what I mean? They were just trial things, if you like, read by all the actors. So I do remember, I did like it very much and I thought, oh, this would make an interesting play, and obviously it has done now.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yes, it's exciting now that Sheila has Eric Fraser Hayes directing, because I know he likes to get involved with that process of molding things to flow and, to you know, to really, like you say, bring it alive. Have you met? You haven't met Eric yet, but you do. I have on Zoom, on Zoom and Sheila on Zoom.

Geraldine Plunkett:

We all and Tomás Cavanagh on Zoom. Just the four of us were a few weeks ago.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Was there something in particular about the play that you liked when you first encountered it? I liked the language and the kind of the mystery and the fact there were going to be secrets, which of course we didn't know what they were, or anything like that but the language had a kind of a poetry about it, which I liked as well that's so interesting, and so can you tell us a little bit about Eileen, the character you play?

Geraldine Plunkett:

well she's. She's in a nursing home at the moment. She's had a fall, we gather, and I mean without going into all the plots or why are the ins and outs of it and she's obviously getting a bit confused. But a lot of the things that she says you feel it's not just ordinary dementia or potential dementia. It's kind of something deep, deep, deep inside her that she's reliving and trying to get out. And, as it happens, we do discover later on now she does have a touch of dementia, you know. But obviously this deep, deep, deep, dark secret has. It's not that that would have caused her dementia, but because, possibly because she has the dementia, it's coming out. You know the trauma, the trauma it's so interesting how we store we store everything, don't we?

Geraldine Plunkett:

it's like we are.

Aideen Ni Riada:

All of our past exists within us at any one moment, and some things get, uh, transformed or understood, or we learn a lesson and then forgotten, maybe never to be remembered, but anything that's that's lingering can be yeah, yeah, yeah so interesting how we, how the mind works our bodies actually work as well, because we can hold those things in our physical body too yeah yeah, um.

Aideen Ni Riada:

So I am really excited that sheila, who's a Wexford playwright, is bringing her, you know, new production to New Ross, because she did bring a production to New Ross last year as well. When you met with Sheila, did anything strike you about her? Was there anything interesting about her that you liked?

Geraldine Plunkett:

I just thought she was really really likeable, intelligent and interesting about the play and I was just looking, you know, really looking forward to it and that Now at that stage I'd only when I met them, I hadn't really properly.

Geraldine Plunkett:

I had read the play very quickly on the computer, which I'm not very good at, to be honest. I hate reading things on computers because you just you can't go backwards and forwards. And well, I'm sure some people can, but I'm not very technical. So, but then eventually they sent when the script was final. Oh yeah, the script on computer wasn't finalized, you see, and now it's finalized and they sent it to me in a hard copy. So I've been reading that, you know.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And the play. As you mentioned there, it deals with secrets and memory and truth and family and themes that touch everybody. What do you hope audiences in New Ross will take away from the performance? What do?

Geraldine Plunkett:

you hope audiences in New Ross will take away from the performance I don't know. Well, first of all, I hope they enjoy it and are gripped by it that's the bottom line and that they won't sort of necessarily guess too early what the ins of it are. And also the fact that I think that the realisation that possibly the things that happen in it, the things that happened years ago but are revealed, possibly, we hope, might have been dealt with differently if it was now, you know, because people were much more secretive about secrets, if I could put it that way. I mean, I can't give too much.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, there's more shame, often as well.

Geraldine Plunkett:

All of that kind of thing yeah.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, so interesting. Is there anything you'd like to say to people to encourage them to to buy their tickets?

Geraldine Plunkett:

Oh well, it's going to be a great performance and it's going to be really gripping and lots of secrets, and oh, it's wonderful, and we're all wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful script, wonderful director, wonderful actors.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I'm really excited for the play and I'm really. It's been really lovely to hear a little bit about your your beginnings as an actor as well, how things got started for you. I know you've had an amazing journey. Thank you so much, Geraldine, thanks, Aideen, thanks, thank you everyone for listening. We'll see you again on another episode of the Resonate podcast with Aideen. Goodbye.