It's called learning it the hard way in this biz called show, but the coiners of the phrase would have revised their opinion if they had to go as the lone female performer into the drunken male cauldron of London's Comedy Store. It was here and in other such bear-pits that English-born but Irish-based Michelle Read learnt her craft from the bottom up. Becoming a comedienne because it was the quickest and easiest way to get an Equity card, Read knows what it's like to be groped, fondled and implored to "get her tits out" for a bunch of leering half-wits whose intellectual refinement consists of calling women performers "dykes".
It all makes even the Edinburgh Fringe seem like a spot of tea followed by a game of croquet but it was there two weeks ago, after years of chipping away as as an comic, actress and writer, that 32-year-old Read finally had her first sip of critical success when her acclaimed play, Romantic Friction, won a "Fringe First" award. Suddenly all the doors that had been Yale-locked shut began to creak open for her.
"It's silly that it should come down to some award or another," says Read, "but that's the way it works in this business and the sooner you get used to it the better." Now that there's a very good chance of her play transferring to London, along with the possibility of another run in a Dublin theatre following the current nationwide tour, Read knows that in the mercurial world of independent theatre you take what you're given and make what you can out of it. "To be perfectly honest, the majority of people don't know what a Fringe First award is and even if they did know, they wouldn't care. What it is an award handed out to a few theatre companies at Edinburgh by The Scotsman paper, and the crucial thing for my company is that the award is widely respected within the industry and it means you get a fair and eager hearing if you approach theatres like The Bush or The Donmar in London wanting to put your show on. Of course from a financial point of view, it's completely useless - you don't get a penny out of it".
In a classic case of coming to Ireland for a few weeks but ending up staying eight years, Read played to her stand-up strengths in her first few years here but soon wanted to flex her creative wings through more conventional creative means. "Ever since school I've been interested in the theatre and interested in writing for it, so I studied Performance Arts at Middlesex Polytechnic but at the time of graduating, there was little support for theatre groups, and "alternative" comedy was really on the rise so I got diverted in that direction for many a year," she says.
It was only on arrival in Ireland in 1990 that she managed to wean herself off comedy: "I know this sounds wanky but it was only the help and encouragement I got when I arrived here that finally motivated me to sit down and do my own work. I started off with the theatre in schools group, Iomha Ildineach, which was a great grounding as we used to go around the country reenacting Celtic folk tales for school children. We didn't actually write the stuff ourselves, but we called ourselves "devisers" as we worked on and modified the original texts."
A small side-project during this time, called Liz 'n' Margi, in which she performed alongside Carol Egan (now one of The Nualas) as one of a pair of demented day-time television presenters, became a firm favourite. There were weekly appearances at The City Arts Centre and they appeared on British nationwide television. Read also wrote and acted out comedy sketches for Network 2's late night programme The End, but the desire to write her own play meant her comedic work had to take a back seat.
"My first play was The Lost Letters Of A Victorian Lady, which I did for the Dublin Theatre Festival Fringe in 1996. It was a sort of camp, Victorian affair which I really enjoyed doing and got reviewed well. Out of that I decided to set up The Read Company with the specific intention of producing and writing work from the female perspective," she says. An important issue for you? "Without sounding bombastic, yes it is," she says. "I really want to get some gender discussions going with my work. I mean, I write and have always written from a female perspective and I've always found that I work well with other women."
It is this very interest that informs the text of Romantic Friction, a very well thought-out piece of work which features Read as a none-too-happy Mills 'n' Boon type bodice-ripper writer who has a crisis of conscience while writing her new book. Her stock bosom-heaving character in the books comes to life in the play and the two of them enter into a dialogue about the whys and wherefores of the representation of women in literature. Although she can't resist the temptation to play it for laughs, Read also infuses the work with some trenchant criticisms of the women's romantic fiction genre and sharply highlights the contrast between idealised and real romance from a female perspective.
"The play actually started off as a monologue for my stand-up set," she says (she still performs as a comic and holds the distinction of having been "banned" from the Sligo Arts Festival due to the earthy nature of her material), "but when I started to introduce other characters I realised it had to be extended into a play. I kept doing bits of acting work and left the original idea alone for a few years but then I eventually went up to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig to tie the whole thing down."
The play opened at last year's Dublin Fringe Festival and such was the response that she knew she had a viable touring project on her hands. "I think it was the whole idea of addressing the cultural phenomenon of women's fiction that people enjoyed, because as someone once pointed out to me, that genre really is the equivalent of soft porn for women. Also you'd be very surprised by how many women actually consume this sort of material. I would have thought that most intelligent women would dismiss it sniffily out of hand, but I was proved wrong in that regard. This sort of material really does have a place in some women's lives, believe it or believe it not," she says. After a few previews in the Andrew's Lane Studio in Dublin last month, she brought the show to Edinburgh and was thrilled to sell out all 140 seats of her venue for 10 nights in a row. "It just felt like a vindication," she says, "and we were all happy that the play travelled so well and stood up so well among so much fierce competition on the Fringe."
What now? "We'll hope to tour further afield with it. At the moment we're talking to different people in different venues abroad. It's only a short play; there's no interval in it but the next one I write will be bigger and better, I hope. Over the last seven years, I feel I've paid off a debt in terms of performing and now I'm ready to move on."
Romantic Friction is on national tour. Tonight it plays at The Museum, Dundalk, tomorrow at Drumlin House, Cootehill, Co Cavan, Saturday at the Hawk's Well, Sligo. The tour continues next week to the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, (September 15th-17th), the Village Theatre, Kilworth (September 18th), the Courthouse Centre, Tinahely, Co Wicklow (September 24th), the Half Moon Theatre, Cork Opera House (September 25th and 26th), Egan's Night Club, Portlaoise (September 30th), the Town Hall, Kiltimagh (October 1st) and the Galway Arts Centre (October 2nd and 3rd). For further information contact the Read Company on 01-472 2285.
