Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.
Chapter 2: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Now, are the arts inclusive enough? Well, two people trying to make it more so are Aisling Byrne, writer and director of the new short film Mary is Missing and actor Derek McSweeney, who stars in Mary is Missing. And they both join me now and you're both very welcome to the show. I'll start with you, Aisling. Can you tell me a bit about the film?
So Mary is Missing is a short film. We're very proud to say it's now an Oscar qualifying short film after winning the Grand Prix down in Cork back in November. But the roots of the film went back many years prior. Derek and our other actors at Run of the Mill worked together every Friday at Maynooth University.
and we tend to make projects that are led by the artists' ideas, brilliant ideas, and by their talents. We had made many theatre productions. We had done a small foray into short film a few years ago, and we decided that we wanted to do something quite ambitious. So we ran a writer's room back in 2023 for 13 of our actors with intellectual disabilities, and the seed idea was
imagining that a key worker called Mary from a day service, from an Irish disability day service provider, had gone missing. But her fate and what had become of her was left entirely in the hands of our actors. So we improvised. We ran writers' workshops with Katrina Daly. We brought some outside actors in.
And from that, we cobbled together the idea for this short film, which had to be scripted then after the writers' workshops.
OK, well, that's really interesting. I didn't know that. Derek, I knew that you were a star of the Mary is Missing short film, but I didn't know you were involved at the very start, were you, with the idea? Yes. So you all sat together. Talk to me about that, how it worked and you fired around what you'd like to see in the film.
When I saw the film, it was just an amazing opportunity to see myself on camera.
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Chapter 3: How did the film 'Mary is Missing' come into existence?
And it was amazing. It was amazing. But you've been an actor for a long time now, haven't you? Yes, I've been an actor since I was very young. And I was very proud. I was very proud doing Mary is Missing.
And what do you love about acting? What is it about getting up on, let's say if you get up on a stage now in front of an audience, most people would be absolutely petrified. For you, how do you feel when you stand on the stage?
When I stand on stage, when you go on film and when you go on T-shirt, I go very subtle and that brings a lot of my acting into it.
Okay, so you don't go mad with a big demonstrative performance. You're all about the little subtleties. Yes, yes. And have you nerves when you step out there?
So when I'm going on stage, I feel I'm proud and I feel I do lots of different things. I was in real life. I was the main character in real life.
This was a stage production in Project Arts Centre last year where Derek played the lead.
And I was so happy to be there. And then when you go on theatre and film, you go very subtle. So you make it small.
You make it small, Aisling. That's a particular skill, isn't it?
Yeah, very much so. And I think what Derek is really highlighting so brilliantly there is the sort of the nuances between stage performance and screen performance. And Mary's Missing was Derek's first short film and it was the first step into screen acting for a lot of our artists at Run of the Mill.
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