As part of our Edinburgh Fringe 2024 coverage, we are running a series of interviews with artists and creatives that are taking part in the festival.
In this interview, we speak to Sinead O’Brien about her two solo shows No One Is Coming and Hero/Banlaoch.
What can you tell me about your shows?
No One Is Coming and Hero/Banlaoch are both storytelling theatre, not quite a one woman monologue, they flick back and forth between the beautiful ancient Irish storytelling tradition & personal stories about growing up with my parents who struggled with their mental health and addiction respectively. They are both darkly comic in places and gut wrenchingly honest in others. You will laugh, you might cry. You will come away with a new appreciation of just how beautiful and WEIRD Irish myths are! No One Is Coming is a love letter to my mother that I'll never send. Hero/Banlaoch is more about my relationship with my dad as I grew up.
To prepare for Fringe, Hero/Banlaoch has just had a sneaky preview in Fumbally Studios in Dublin. It premiered at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival in 2023. Our dramaturg for Hero/Banlaoch is a very talented storyteller herself, she hosts at Mezrab the house of stories in Amsterdam.
For No One Is Coming, it is directed by the great Sahand Sahebdivani, the founder of Mezrab in Amsterdam, he asked me to make a show for the Amsterdam Storytelling Festival 2020 & he was the first person to ask me if I'd ever tell a personal story. (up until then I stuck to folklore)
To prepare for Fringe I've been wandering the streets of Amsterdam & Dublin muttering to myself & telling stories at The National Leprechaun Museum Dublin. (There are no leprechauns featured in the shows).
Other than your shows what else are you looking forward to in Edinburgh?
I'm looking forward to many cafe visits for tea and cake. I found an amazing lemon drizzle cake being served in the witches museum off the high street last year, baked by a hairy biker looking fella. Lovely guy. So I'm hoping to discover another magical baked goods spot this year. And to visit Arthur's Seat in proper shoes this time. I nearly died last year in my knock off converse.
If your shows were a biscuit, what would they be and why?
If No One Is Coming was a biscuit it would be one of those butter biscuits with the chocolate top, with a picture of a boat stamped on it. As they are ok as they are, but I believe- magically transformed into something else when wiped in tea. Like a lot of the women in the myths. Transforming when landed in hot water.
Hero/Banlaoch as a biscuit is probably more of a simple custard cream or the old style club milk bars wrapped in gold paper. The kind of biscuit offered by grandparents when you visit or what my father claims to have survived on while away at college for the first time.
Can you tell me a random fact about you?
A random fact about me, I started out as a Storyteller working in Irelands National Leprechaun Museum.
I once performed in an aerial dance after half a class. I was suspended upside down from 2 wires, over 12ft in the air with a crowd of 500 people below me. I'm glad my Dad took photos because I will not be doing that again!
I hope audiences leave feeling connected & helps them look back at their own parents and family with a new perspective. I hope these shows are good fun and moving and address that the silence & stigma are real issues surrounding mental health & addiction. We are all the heroes of our own stories, and everyone has a story worth sharing.
Where can people see your shows?
Audiences can catch No One Is Coming at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on Aug 7 and 18 at 8.45pm
And come see Hero/Banlaoch running for the full festival Aug 1-25 (not 7,11,14 or 18) at the Scottish Storytelling Centre at 5.30pm.
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