This summer I had a significant birthday. I’m middle aged. I’m no longer a product of the world in which I reside. The environment of my youth is gone, a distant age symbolised by long dead VCRs, Pac-Mans and Walkmans, smoking in pubs, rotary-dial landline telephones, typewriters, cassettes – and crowds of people socialising sans virus threats.
Me as a 17-year-old art student.
I was the first ever journalist in my home town (Waterford, Ireland) to report on a new phenomenon called the ‘Internet’ – way back in 1994. I’d even travelled to New York and interviewed people who used it regularly. All of that would be impossible now, even the travel.
Technology and younger, hipper and more energetic get it in an instant – and draw upon a slew of apps to fuel and give shape to their creations, their art. And this new world is alien to me. I’ve written a new play exploring this alienation. And, ironically, provided it with a Zoom reading.
How much the world has changed. And how much it will change in the coming years.
From Ireland, Sue Healy is Literary Manager at the Finborough Theatre, London, a full-time Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln. Her book on theatre literary management is published by Routledge, December 2022.
Sue is an award-winning writer for stage, TV, and prose writer.
TV
Her current project, a 6x60minute TV series, is under option. She is under commission with Lone Wolf Media, producers behind PBS’ “Mercy Street”, to co-write the pilot and treatment for a six-part TV series.
Stage
Her most recent stage-play, Imaginationship (2018), enjoyed a sold out, extended run at the Finborough and later showed at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. Her previous stage productions include Cow (Etcetera Theatre, 2017) and Brazen (King’s Head Theatre, 2016), funded by Arts Council England. Sue’s short plays have been performed at the Criterion (Criterion New Writing Showcase), Arcola (The Miniaturists) and Hackney Attic (Fizzy Sherbet Shorts).
Radio
Her radio work includes nine plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4 (Opening Lines winner), WLRfm and KCLR96fm.
Prose
Sue has won The Molly Keane Award, HISSAC Prize, Escalator Award, Meridian Prize and has been published in nine literary journals and anthologies including: The Moth, Flight, Tainted Innocence, New Writer, Duality, HISSAC, New European Writers. She has been writer-in-residence on Inis Oírr, Aran Islands, and at the Heinrich Boll Cottage on Achill Island. She has also benefitted from annual artist residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and at Ginestrelle, Assisi in Italy.
An academic with a PhD in modern theatre history, specifically the Royal Court Theatre, Sue has presented her research internationally. She spent eleven years in Budapest, editing Hungary A.M. She has a PhD in modern theatre history (Royal Court Theatre) and is a UEA Creative Writing MA alumnus.
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