The odds were against Mary Kate O’Flanagan on the opening weekend of her one-woman show at the Irish Repertory Theatre, “Making a Show of Myself”. She was hoarse, her mic was malfunctioning, and some were calling out from the audience that they could not hear her. This on a night when New Yorkers were warned that to go out was to risk frostbite (in -15° windchills) and when the Rep made the unprecedented move of emailing attendees mid-afternoon to say they could rebook if they wished since the elevator remained broken near showtime. (Make that showtimes, since in the upstairs theatre the gripping drama, “The Honey Trap,” continues its extended run through this weekend.)
But--as O’Flanagan emphasized in her show--if everything goes according to plan in life, there are no stories to tell. “I’m the kind of eejit who’s always losing her keys, locking myself out of my car, broken down on the road… ” she said. Citing far more challenging situations, also, she said, “I’ve learned to say to myself, no struggle no story.”
Her performance was far from the usual one-person show in a theatre, even those that are autobiographical. It felt more like being at The Moth, with echoes of a writing workshop, a self-help seminar, and maybe even an episode of the public radio show, “This American life,” in that her seemingly unrelated stories without chronological order did loosely knit together by the end.
The immediate sense of similarity with The Moth live storytelling series was not imagined. Several of the six stories O’Flanagan told have already been performed. Two on The Moth stage reportedly won her the distinction of being a Moth Grand[story]Slam Champ on two continents.
O’Flanagan reprised an award-winning story told in her hometown, Dublin (although her lovely voice has echoes of time spent in London). An unlikely German pen pal opened letters to O’Flanagan’s grandmother with “Dear, expensive, valuable… ” etc. because he didn’t understand the role of synonyms in the dictionary the grandmother gifted him.
Another Moth winner, the touching tale of how O’Flanagan and her five sisters carried their father’s coffin can be heard here.
That was told in LA, where O’Flanagan works as a film and TV script editor.
On Saturday, she started off nervously, talking fast and with a tight smile, but came across as so likable and thoughtful that she quickly won over the audience. She, in turn, eased into her performance.
The power of storytelling was a central theme. We choose the stories we tell, O’Flanagan said, spinning a bad breakup story, as not, “about how a man I loved humiliated me or [rather a] story about how I’ve got the best friend in the world”.
Though the stories we tell ourselves may still be cruel. O’Flanagan’s mother would not say to her, “It’s not like you have a husband or children” whereas, she said, “the voice in my head has no such compunction.”
O’Flanagan told only one story in which she risked being vulnerable. This, towards the end, after sharing her interesting ideas on writing/story telling. The Irish are “born storytellers” because they had no money, but they had stories. Humankind, “We’re alive and we have no idea why…and so we tell stories.”
“They say history is written by the victors. I think the opposite is true, the victors are the people who keep telling their stories.”
Ironically, O’Flanagan found herself unable to speak at one stage in her life. The cause was psychological, the cure lengthy and hard won.
“The gift of a story [the illuminating ending] reveals itself on its own schedule, as she said, reminding all struggling humans that “the middle is supposed to be difficult.”
Like hoarseness on the night of a performance? "Sin scéal eile." That’s another story.
“Making a Show of Myself,” written and performed by Mary Kate O’Flanagan, runs at the Irish Repertory Theatre until March 1. Tickets at https://irishrep.org/
