THE POWER OF DRAMA CHANGES LIVES
Derry’s Dee Conaghan was surprised when her law lecturer asked if she’d ever considered acting as a career, but his foresight was prophetic as she’s now been honoured for her work in theatre and education.
Mandi Millar reports
As ‘Carmen’ danced and sang her way through the unique opera production for people with learning disabilities in Derry/Londonderry’s Millennium Forum the audience that night was spellbound… not least her former secondary school teacher.
“I hadn’t even realised she could speak,” the teacher later confessed to the young actor’s mentor Dee Conaghan OBE, co-founder and Artistic Director of the City’s Stage Beyond Theatre Company.
Yet that’s the kind of powerful testimony which earned the Derry woman her New Year’s honour which she’s set to formally receive later this year, and it happens to be a significant milestone both personally and professionally as she also celebrates a big birthday!
Stage Beyond is a progressive theatre company set up over 20 years ago to nurture the creative talents of young people with learning disabilities.
Thanks to the dedication of Dee and small team based in Derry – now also in Letterkenny – the company are inspiring some of the biggest names on the local, national and international arts scene to get on board.
They include award-winning Shakespearean director Conall Morrison; Caitríona McLaughlin (Artistic Director /Co-Director of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre); Kate Guelke (Sparks Opera); playwright Colin Murphy and BAFTA award-winning writer and poet Damian Gorman who have all been rapt by the joy of working with Stage Beyond.
As the driving force behind it all, Dee embodies the power of drama to change lives for the better.
Just over 50 years ago during the ‘Troubles’ her father Judge Rory Conaghan, was murdered by an IRA gunman at the family home in Belfast.
“Drama became a lifeline for me then as it is now for the young people we work with. Those were difficult days, but I know the power of drama through my own life,” says mum-of-two Dee.
“I just came to life when I was acting so when we came to live in Derry a few years after my father died, mum sent me to a remarkable woman, Eithne McCloskey who was a real powerhouse, a woman ahead of her time on the City’s speech and drama scene.
“I studied every Saturday with her and it was a life-saver.
“Back then when the politicians weren’t talking, communities were. Community arts and drama programmes provided a safe space to work through difficult subjects.
“Drama has that transformative effect,” continues Dee though it took her a while to finally find her mark.
“Initially when we came to Derry I went to Thornhill but I wasn’t doing too much work so my mother had the idea to move me to boarding school in Strabane where I didn’t really do much more work.”
After O-levels Dee returned to Thornhill for A-levels and managed to scrape a place at Law school in Leeds where one of the lecturers was among the first to spot her latent talent.
“He’d asked us to explain why we wanted to study Law. The others were all talking about the money and I was horrified so I got up and made a speech about justice,” she recalls.
“He looked at me and replied: ‘My dear you do not want to be a lawyer, you want to be an actress!’
“I was completely affronted but he was possibly right for after a year I gave it up and came home to my mother who promptly packed me off to my sister’s in Dublin who wasn’t that pleased to have been saddled with me either,” laughs Dee.
It was there though she finally discovered her métier, securing a job in the Gaiety Theatre doing everything she could to learn as much as possible.
“I was a stage manager but really a dogsbody. I remember one time having to carry a prop sheep on the bus across Dublin and another time volunteering to take on a dancing role after the dancer was injured – only afterwards to wonder how under God will I do this!”
She did though and after a year on the boards headed off to study drama and English at Liverpool University.
Following graduation Dee worked in BBC Radio Foyle and Derry Media Access before landing a job under Pauline Ross at The Playhouse.
“Pauline was a visionary, a real community woman and set up The Playhouse from basically nothing, transforming arts in the North West in the process,” says Dee who subsequently also gained a Masters in Community Arts and, from Central St Martin’s in London, in set design.
However, now increasingly involved with community arts projects Dee saw the need for something for young people with learning disabilities and the culmination of all that came in 2002 when it was curtain up on Stage Beyond.
“The company membership of 25 in Derry and 26 in Letterkenny is made up of people who have a learning disability whether that’s Down’s Syndrome or a neurological divergence,” she explained.
“We meet two days a week but we also take workshops to schools and colleges so pupils there with similar challenges can see people like themselves succeeding on stage.
“We bring in professionals to help facilitate our projects. Conall Morrison worked with us on Hamlet, Prince of Derry in collaboration with RTE Radio during COVID, which won a New York Festivals Silver Award for Best Digital Programme.
“Caitríona McLaughlin worked with us on our adaptation of Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes.
“So, we don’t just do ‘happy plays’ – we take on subjects which challenge prejudice and misconception which so many of our actors have faced.
“It’s been important too to take our workshops back to the schools they attended so they can say, look at me now and hopefully help educate others about inclusion.
“Stage Beyond is about positive reinforcement, being told you can rather than everyone assuming you can’t.
“Too many people with a learning disability suffer from other people’s low expectations rather even than their own. Our theatre company is about turning that on its head.
“When that happens and these young people blossom on stage it is pure joy.”
