Home to Vote

Linda must prepare her wife’s dead body in the traditional Irish way – and share the job with Nora, a member of her wife’s homophobic family. Meanwhile, the seminal Irish Referendum on Equal Marriage plays out on TV in the background...

  • Maeve Ryan
    Writer
    Compliance
  • Project Type:
    Short Script
  • Number of Pages:
    15
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Writer Biography - Maeve Ryan

Home to Vote is the culmination of a writing method Maeve Ryan has honed and tested with over many creative projects. It relies upon her training in improvisation at The Second City, Hoopla Impro and The Spontaneity Shop, as well as her training in Uta Hagen's Object Exercises while studying Acting under scholarship at Arts Ed London. The dialogue was improvised by her, recorded, then edited over a long period of time. For the film Before, BFI-programmed and funded director Christopher O’Donnell asked Maeve to lead improvisation workshops with actor Ruth Posner - an older actor and dancer, with no previous experience of verbal improv - to help him create a script about Alzheimers. Maeve used this writing method to create the short film Compliance. Maeve was then asked to be Improvisation Consultant on the short film The Man With His Fingers In His Ears, which was produced by Dame Emma Thompson. Maeve scripted the full-length play Aoife and Eve using a blend of Uta Hagen’s Object Exercises and traditional writing techniques, which had an R&D showing at Oxford House, co-produced with Dante or Die theatre, and is now in its final draft. Maeve has devised and written eight new plays with the young people of the charity Dream Arts, over four years, which were performed in professional theatres. She was also an actor/writer on the long-running online satirical comedy British Rationals. Maeve is currently writing a feature about a Girls’ Gaelic Football team she and her friends founded as children.

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Writer Statement

In May 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to approve Equal Marriage by popular vote. Having left Ireland, I was ineligible to vote. So, I wrote this instead. ‘Home to Vote’ is inspired by a member of the my family, and my experience as an Irish immigrant in London. It was written using live improvisation, recording and traditional editing. Home to Vote is a tribute to the people of Ireland who felt it necessary to leave her shores for reasons outside of their control, and who never made it back before the time when it can feel like a 'home' for all.