WHO would have thought that a witty autobiographical play on falling in love and coming out as a gay woman would reap intercontinental kudos for a Limerick performer? Stepping out for awards is Ann Blake, better known to music lovers as front woman to her family band, The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra.
On December 14, Mayor of Limerick Sean Lynch threw open Council chambers to fete her and actress/ writer/ producer Joanne Ryan as esteemed Theatre Makers of Limerick.
Catching up with Blake in Christmas week, the poor divil is low with shingles. Mindful of her audience and support base, she is grateful for the timing of the poxy virus: “I caught it when I had a week off and could cancel things. Last week, no, and Christmas week, no, but now is OK.” Yup, that would have been one cold Christmas, forcibly estranged from her parents, pregnant sister and gigs lined up for the Light Orchestra.
Ann Blake MA has a strong history in devising shows. Over years she has sported with Choke Improvisation Comedy; ‘TAN’ comedy with Wildebeest Theatre Company and Maria Boylan; directing youth theatre; written short plays ‘Delicate’ and ‘At a Loss’. ‘At a Loss’ won her the Jerome Hynes Writing Award in 2009. A big City of Culture number was ‘The Unlucky Cabin Boy’, a collaboration with Mike Finn and BPLO that yielded an EP and was directed by Paul Meade.
She got back with Meade and the Limerick man’s Gúna Nua theatre company to create ‘The Morning After the Life Before’.
This is her two-person show that won her Best Production at London of Ontario, Canada on the festival circuit.
On foot of that she returns to Montreal in January “as centrepiece to The WildSide festival – being invited back is part of the Best Production award”.
This hack saw ‘The Morning After’ in Belltable as part of the writers’ professional development scheme Belltable:Connect, operating out of the resource centre/ theatre. Ann Blake plays herself and songs she wrote, guitar in hand, against Lucia Smyth, cast as Blake’s true life fiancée Jenny.
The reference to ‘The Life Before’ is the Irish and international world of gay people being then forbidden to marry. The watershed vote in 2015 liberated this country from that miserable, diminishing convention.
Hers is a fresh, fast moving and funny work. Subtle writing expresses all of our local hero’s confusion at realising she is attracted to the pursuant Jenny and her magnificence. Also the conflicted love and feelings of Blake’s parents, who were going to vote ‘no’ based on their principles and faith.
‘The Morning After the Life Before’ is set in Limerick door to door campaign territory, with Jenny being activist, Ann picking her way through in reflective work.
There’s now a new piece in her laptop gathering storm. She is committed to premier at Limerick Fringe Festival, whose international embrace and pioneering spirit Ann Blake avows fiercely at home and away. Consider “a cabaret show, something that is set in a music venue and that will also appeal to a theatre audience”.
Come that March happy day.
