Joy Coughlan has never been to school, is only 16 and has just directed herfirst play at the Siamsa Tíre theatre in Tralee. She talks to Olivia Kelly
At11 a.m. on a Monday morning, when most people her age are sitting through double French and longing for lunchtime, 16-year-old Joy Coughlan, is busy dismantling a stage set at the Siamsa Tíre theatre in Tralee, Co Kerry, where she has just made her directorial debut with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger.
She is still on a high as she packs away the props. "It went fantastically," she says. "I was ecstatic. It was 10 times better than any rehearsal, I'm so proud of my actors."
Set in Britain in the 1950s, Look Back in Anger is about a society that closes doors on itself and is perpetually trapped. A pretty challenging theme for a 16-year-old perhaps, but Joy says she was determined to stage the play as soon as she read it.
"I'm interested in things that mean something. I read this play and nothing was at fault, it was perfect. It jumped off the page and I immediately went wild, my imagination went wild."
Look Back in Anger is not exactly your standard school-play fare, but then Joy's actors aren't schoolchildren: the youngest is 18, the oldest "in his middle years"; her audience is not made up of doting mums and dads; and Joy doesn't go to school and never has.
"Until last year, I was taught by my mother. Now I just study from textbooks and teachers' handbooks," she says. "I did have a French teacher for a while, but I found it too difficult - I just couldn't remember the words."
Home-schooling has allowed Joy the flexibility to devote herself to her passion, the theatre, as an actor, a producer and now a director.
"I wouldn't be able to do these shows if I went to an ordinary school," she says. "No one ever knows where I'm going to be. I might have to jump out of study and go straight to rehearsals."
Although Joy doesn't go to school, she is committed to sitting her Leaving Cert in 2004 in six subjects: English, geography, home economics, art, classical studies and business studies. It will be her first State exam, as she decided not to do the Junior Cert. "I had a look at it, but I though it was too easy and I didn't really see the point in it."
Children who are home-schooled can often find it difficult to relate to people their own age and become lonely and detached, but Joy says she has never felt that way. Having got her first speaking role in Annie when she was 12, she says she's always been surrounded by other teenagers, often in tiny, cramped dressing-rooms, and has made friends her own age without going to school. "I haven't missed out on a thing," she says.
Although Joy's mother, Veronica, has no formal teaching qualifications, she chose to school both her children, Joy and her older brother Shane, now 21, at home.
"I took Shane out of school when he was six or seven. He was reading Dickens and was getting very frustrated with having to read Anne and Barry." The decision came earlier with Joy, who was found to have dyslexia and dyscalculus.
"She was in Montessori school, but they didn't spot it because she was bright. My experience of school is that all kids are expected to be at the same level at the same time. It's a rather ridiculous expectation. It makes it more difficult for their true characters to come out and people with difficulties can get stuck and lag behind."
Joy's lifestyle does cause some difficulties, says Veronica. The main problem is finding the time to fit everything in.
"Eventually, during the play, I had to tell her to stop studying. She could be juggling three or four theatrical events at a time."
Veronica believes that academic study can be beneficial to some, but only for those who are suited to it. "Knowledge is what's important," she says.
Joy intends to go to college. She would like to do the theatre studies course at Trinity College Dublin and is also considering London and New York.
As to the future, she says: "I will be eccentric when I'm older. I'll be one of those people walking down the street holding a cat."
