A few years ago, while researching my memoir Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?, I thought I'd have a go at writing a short play based on aspects of my family's history.
The play was written as a 45-minute radio drama, but it has not been performed or broadcast - yet.
It is fiction, based on several facts from my life.
A 60-year-old son tracks down his 89-year-old father to question him on why he left the family home, a wife and seven young children. In the quest to find out about the 'missing years', the son finds it hard to suppress simmering anger and the father clings to hope of reconciliation.
In mid-2015, I sent the play to BBC NI radio producer, Heather Larmour, who declined it because a daughter/father drama had already been commissioned. She said:
“Thank you so much for sending ‘Shaking Hands’, it’s a very thoughtful, emotional and intelligent script which I very much enjoyed reading. I thought your treatment of the relationship between father and son was very interesting and viscerally drawn - you really could feel the anger and frustration and hopes and vulnerabilities of the characters as they negotiated the stages of the meeting. Although I was secretly hoping for a happy ending, I also very much admired how you left the piece, with no resolution possible given the past, but perhaps some understanding for the characters. Unfortunately however, we have recently had a piece commissioned, which tackles the story of a daughter tackling her father about the secrets of his past, and although the two pieces are of course very different, we just felt that the subject matter was too similar at the moment and that Radio 4 would be unlikely to be looking for another piece in the same territory.”
I post this because I love these words of encouragement. Makes the writing effort worthwhile.
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