WORDS KATHERINE MURPHY

Emerging theatre company, Just the Lads, answer some questions about letter-writing, the post office and homing pigeons.

1)How did Just the Lads come about? And the name?

Erica came up with the name. She’s the biggest lad of the lot of us so we couldn’t really argue with her. We first got to know each other from various different projects within the Drama Department in Trinity College and Players. Even though we spent a lot of time together (admiring one another from afar) we had never made work with all three of us involved before. The more we chatted, the more we realized how much we had in common in terms of the type of theatre we were interested in making, and that was really exciting. Also, the looming deadline of the real world outside of college got us to shift our ass into gear and start the company!

2)Why did you choose the post office to focus on? How has the art of writing and sending a letter informed the piece?

It was letter writing where everything started really, and not necessarily the actual postal system. We got chatting about how we used to all write an awful lot while growing up, to friends, boyfriends, family, random people we met on holidays, you name it we wrote to them! It’s interesting how you don’t hear of kids doing that now due to better technology and we wondered are we, possibly, the last generation of letter writers? We realized the post office was this enterprise we knew very little about and were intrigued by the inside workings of it. We were all curious to explore behind the scenes of post as well as colouring in our grey view of the system with more personal stories from some brilliant post men.

3)Do you still write and send letters in a digital world?

We recently have begun to write them again, mostly to each other when one of us is away! Admittedly, because we are doing this project it has been on our minds quite a bit. Although instant messaging gets us through the day, there is something particularly lovely about getting a written letter or postcard through your letterbox. And that has seemed to rub off on our friends and family too. So you could say we are bringing it back into fashion…

4)Who would you list as your biggest influences on your ideology about theatre?

We all appreciate authenticity and play in performance. In our second year of college, the wonderful Raymond Keane took us for an intensive five-week clowning course, which showed how powerful it is to be present and truthful with your audience. It’s like blowing a layer of dust off theatre when audiences see a production done like that

5)Where do Just the Lads go from here?

We have endless plans up our sleeves. One of them involves homing pigeons and another will be continuing along the theme of communication in the world of radio. That’s right people: the wireless…get excited! Right now though we are totally overwhelmed with the amazingly positive responses we have received from friends, our peers in the industry and in particular the postmen who we worked with. So although we can’t give any definite details of our upcoming projects one thing’s for sure, we will be back very soon. So keep your eyes peeled for our next show!

The Last Post, ends today.