Rosie Sheehy was in rehearsals for Conor McPherson’s new play, The Brightening Air, when the stage supervisor burst in with “one thing to say”. There was a pause and Sheehy anticipated a calamity to be introduced. Her co-stars Brian Gleeson and Chris O’Dowd, who play her siblings, had been current however not Derbhle Crotty. “For a second I believed, ‘What’s occurred to Derbhle – has she been knocked down?’”
In truth, the Olivier awards nominations had simply been introduced – with Sheehy shortlisted for finest actress (alongside eventual winner Lesley Manville) for her searing efficiency in Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 expressionist play Machinal, on the Previous Vic in London. “It was exhausting to course of,” says Sheehy, her face nonetheless bearing a few of that shock.
The Brightening Air, set in Eighties County Sligo in Eire, marks a return to the Previous Vic for Sheehy. It’s the place she made her skilled stage debut, in Eugene O’Neill’s The Bushy Ape, in 2015. She was 20 and recent out of Rada. Sheehy has now starred in a number of performs she liked as a scholar, together with Machinal and David Mamet’s Oleanna. She met McPherson when she was at Rada, after being invited to workshop his Bob Dylan musical Lady from the North Nation.
She very practically didn’t turn into an actor in any respect, although. Rising up in a middle-class family in Port Talbot, south Wales, she loved science at college and took ballet, modern dance and faucet classes as a toddler. Her father, a design engineer on the steelworks, can also be a eager cartoonist and harmonica participant. Her mom, a major college trainer, loves the humanities too. Rising up they might watch musicals collectively.
Sheehy noticed her first play at 17: Ready for Godot, staged by Swansea’s Volcano theatre, which was “correctly mind-blowing” for the “expansive nothingness being allowed to occur on stage – a way of nothing happening and every little thing happening”.
She joined the West Glamorgan Youth Theatre, whose graduates embody Michael Sheen, Russell T Davies and Joanna Web page. The humanities, and appearing particularly, maintain a excessive forex in Port Talbot, says Sheehy. “You understand how folks at all times affiliate Wales with rugby? I feel in Port Talbot, appearing has the identical stage of respect. It was applauded as a lot in case you had been within the college play as in case you had been within the rugby staff.”
The city does have a rare theatrical heritage. “I can go and watch the movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – and it stars this wonderful man, Richard Burton, who’s from up the highway.” Because of these predecessors, she thought: “I come from a lineage. Individuals like me can do that.”
Nonetheless, she discovered it formidable to enter an trade through which she had no contacts. Sheehy modified her accent for drama college, self-conscious of her Welshness. “I used to speak in RP loads. I felt I needed to be English to outlive.” Did she really feel that folks would make assumptions if she spoke in her personal voice? “Yeah, on the time.” Tutors or friends? “The entire college. It simply felt like I had higher nail my acquired pronunciation.” Today, she says, “the dialog on variety and illustration has come on, and thank God for that”.
Sophie Melville’s solo position in Iphigenia in Splott, Gary Owen’s acclaimed play which is firmly positioned in Wales, was a watershed second. “It was like, ‘Right here come the Welsh!’ And right here come the city Welsh, not inexperienced hills and nation nostalgia.” By her early 20s, Sheehy had emphatically determined: to hell with RP. “I did a number of theatre in Wales. I did Uncle Vanya at Theatr Clwyd and I keep in mind pondering, ‘Yeah, this makes whole sense. I can sound like this.’ It was just like the shoulders instantly dropped.”
Sheehy’s house is now in London however she is studying Welsh (it wasn’t taught at her college) and speaks pointedly about “hiraeth” – a Welsh time period for homesickness however “additionally the sensation such as you not belong there”.
What has marked her profession is the complexity of the roles she chooses, from Woman Anne in Richard III to Carol in Oleanna and the bullied spouse and assassin (impressed by Ruth Snyder, who was executed for killing her husband) in Machinal. “I like taking part in individuals who aren’t likable. I’m not fearful of being ugly, in character or the best way I look. I’m at all times enthusiastic about that. And the larger the impediment the higher.”
The way in which misogyny manifests within the worlds of her characters is a motivating issue. For Machinal she researched coercive management – a time period she didn’t know when she first learn the play. “No less than we’ve obtained language now to go, ‘Oh that’s that. You possibly can’t do that to me.’”
She is eager to do extra display work and is “obsessed” with movie director Andrea Arnold, whereas her stage heroes are Helen McCrory, Janet McTeer and Sally Hawkins. The roles she wish to tackle embody Woman Macbeth, the Duchess of Malfi, Hedda Gabler and Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie. All girls with immense energy of spirit? “Yeah,” she says. “They’re all excessive stakes.”
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