Jake Mace
Dreaming of being a writer, struggling to face the realities of being an adult – Stevie is caught at a crossroads. Her mother is trying her best to help but herself is hitting roadblocks, how will a diagnosis affect their relationship? Ella McCormack and Molly McFarlane’s new play Ripped Out By The Stem lands at the Hope Theatre tomorrow.
We caught up with the pair to discuss diagnoses, motherhood, parent-child relationships, growth and regrowth. Join us for a pixelated pint in the Binge Fringe Digital Pub.
You can catch Ripped Out By The Stem at the Hope Theatre from the 13th-14th January at 20:30 (70 mins). Tickets are available through the Venue’s Online Box Office.
Jake: Hi Ella and Molly, your debut play Ripped Out By The Stem explores maternal illness and mortality, and the impact of those upon our sense of self. Tell us a little about what inspired you to write the play.
Ella: We both have had our own experiences with maternal illness and found it had a significant impact on our lives and our own perspective. As young people, we can get so caught up in growth and striving for more that sometimes we neglect to appreciate and value what we already have. Being confronted with something so awful as having a parent diagnosed with cancer, whilst devastating, can have a surprisingly awakening effect and we wanted to create a character that encapsulated this feeling. We were also keen to explore a truthful mother daughter relationship and how nuanced and complicated this can be.
Molly: Yes, mother/daughter relationships are often one of the most complicated relationships we have in our lives but something that I have rarely seen truthfully explored. The relationship is extremely special yet can also be very challenging, especially when the roles of dependant and carer are reversed. We also love exploring juicy, complicated romantic relationship dynamics so wanted to explore the highs and lows that come with this as well as what happens when your romantic relationship and your family relationships conflict, which is where my character (Anna) in the play comes in.
Jake: The show follows a Mother and Daughter, Jane and Stevie – tell us about them, how you developed their characters, and a little teaser of the journey the audience will see them go on.
Ella: The audience will see Stevie go on a journey from being stagnating and in a slump without direction to regaining her creative motivation and a sense of responsibility through difficult circumstances. One of the key things she needs to confront being the issues in her relationship with Anna. There are definitely parts of both of us in all of the characters, it is really lovely to write out our “dark passenger” in a way to kind of look at those parts of ourselves and our loved ones from a place of understanding.
Molly: We enjoyed making all of the characters have strong motivations and character traits and putting them in direct opposition from each other. A lot of Jane and Stevie’s conflict comes from their frustration with each other that is born out of love. It also comes from due to their similarities, which they themselves perceive as differences. This is how we developed the characters along with the conflict that comes from Jane’s dislike of Anna, who Stevie will unwaveringly defend. We also enjoyed exploring the more playful and comedic moments within the piece, recreating how this naturally occurs in our real-life relationships.
Jake: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?
Ella: I hope that they can come away from it feeling that these tragic moments in our life do not have to be entirely tragic, there is also room for growth and finding lightness in these moments. This is not to downplay or dismiss the devastation surrounding a cancer diagnosis but about finding strength through the devastation. To know that if they are “Ripped Out by the Stem”, there will always be regrowth, at whatever rate this happens.
Molly: I’d like the audience to see a bit of themselves in the characters. I love theatre that enables you to reflect on your own life and allows you to connect on personal level. Whether it motivates an audience member to get up and pursue a passion they’ve always had, as Stevie struggled to do, or whether they go away and text their mum to say “I love you”, both are equally meaningful.
Jake: Tell us about your relationship with the cast and crew of the show, and how the show has developed into being performed as part of Write Club at the Hope Theatre.
Ella: I have been to a few of my friends shows at The Hope and have always thought of it as a space that is so encouraging and nurturing of early career artists and as debut playwrights, we wrote the piece with the space in mind. I’ve worked with Toby and Laurel previously on 21 Round For Christmas at the Park Theatre and was so thrilled when they were appointed as co-artistic directors and am so pleased to be a part of that journey and their inaugural “Write Club” festival. We were just over halfway through writing the piece when the opportunity came up and being selected for the festival was great motivation for us in finishing the piece.
Molly: Ella and I have known each other a long time and have always been keen to act with each other. We also love writing so this opportunity was perfect for us to put our heads together and come up with a piece of work that we are both extremely passionate about.
Jake: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?
Ella: This is a really fun question because Lilly, our director, always kicks of rehearsal with a check-in that is along these lines (if you were a weather, ice cream flavour etc.) but we haven’t actually done beverage! I think Ripped Out by the Stem would be a cup of tea. Comforting, assuring and well needed.
Molly: Interesting, I was going to say an espresso martini. A bit moody, a little dark, but has a nice kick to it. A drink that definitely makes you want to come back for more.
You can catch Ripped Out By The Stem at the Hope Theatre from the 13th-14th January at 20:30 (70 mins). Tickets are available through the Venue’s Online Box Office.
