There was this girl a year below me at school who for a while I wanted to be. She was a Billy Barry kid. She had a natural blonde bob. She had been cast in one of the lead roles in a production of Bugsy Malone at the Olympia Theatre. Onstage her name was Tallulah, but really it was Karen,writes Roisin Ingle.
I watched her from afar, as she rose through the Dublin musical scene, landing roles in Cinderella and other pantos. While the rest of us had regular Christmasses, she would be immersed in a world of rehearsals and dressing rooms, flesh-coloured tights and Twink. Snot fair, I muttered a lot around this time. Just snot fair.
When our school did a production of The Sound of Music, I had my eye on the role of the governess Maria, but knew deep down that the part belonged to her. Sure enough, after the producer had whittled it down to me and Karen, her name was posted up and I got cast as one of the nuns.
It wasn't long before she got a part in Grange Hill. I know. Grange Hill. Any thoughts I had harboured of becoming her best friend and getting her cast-off tights and sparkly make-up were dashed, and she was off to London to become rich and famous and possibly marry Tucker Jenkins. It was too much to bear.
It was around this time I joined DYT - Dublin Youth Theatre. I knew I was too old for Grange Hill but I still thought I could be an actress, even if I'd never get to hang out with Twink. My older brother and sister had been in DYT and I remember going to the Project theatre to watch one of their plays and into the Norseman afterwards for Coke. I didn't know why, but I knew I wanted to be part of that world.
DYT was - and still is - located in a crumbly old house on Gardiner Street and for a few years of my life it was the most exciting place to be. There were no Karens, but the place was full of interesting people who loved drama but hadn't found a real outlet for it until they joined.
The talent in the place was breathtaking. But I didn't feel jealous - just glad to be a part of it. It was the best reason to get out of bed on a Saturday morning.
And then there were the boys. I had at least five unrequited crushes during my time in DYT. There was one boy, I'll call him John, who everyone fancied not just because he was gorgeous, but because he seemed oblivious to our attentions as he sat in a corner stroking the house cat and breaking hearts all around him. After the end of every production there were parties back in the house and you might declare your love for a fellow DYTer, only to be told by said person that he was already going out with someone who had a neck as graceful as a swan. Bit too much information maybe, but you got the message and agreed that, of course, it would be better to stay friends.
There was acting, too, in between all this hormonally charged activity. The highlight for me was a production of The Plough and The Stars, which was ingeniously set in the DYT house, a tenement just like those Casey wrote about.
The play began in the house and then cast and audience moved out into the streets around it, which had been transformed to look like 1916 Dublin. I was a Salvation Army woman, preaching God's word as the audience passed by on their way to Tony's pub, where the bar scenes were taking place.
My younger sister, Katie, was in the audience when I wore a crushed blue velvet evening dress and movie star make-up in a production of Tennessee Williams's This Property is Condemned. I had to walk along railway tracks eating a banana. (Katie later joined DYT, too.)
In keeping with the fruit theme, I also appeared in a production we devised ourselves, in which I had to wear awful-looking leggings and a basket of fruit on my head. Enda Walsh, who went on to write Disco Pigs and do brilliant theatrical things in Cork, had one of the main roles in the play.
I never quite made the cut as an actress myself, but plenty of this country's best actors and directors have come through DYT. Veronica Coburn is one of them, and tonight her company Barabbas is hosting a fund-raising gala where proceeds from their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Dublin's Project will be donated to DYT.
I never did hear what became of Karen, but I figured out who I was, and more importantly who I wasn't, in that house on Gardiner Street. And that's what I call a really worthy cause. roisiningle@irish-times.ie
Tickets for the DYT Fundraising Gala tonight at Project, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, cost €30 and include a wine reception before the Barabbas performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Booking: 01-8819613