Moate's Liza Costello scripts a debut win

By Navjyoti Dalal

A Lithuanian gardener, a laurel tree and a wealthy, lonely and alcoholic garden owner are the stars of this year's winning play, In The Garden, at Scripts Ireland, Birr's famed theatre festival.

Written by Moate writer, Liza Costello the play has won Nurtured New Works, the festival finale on Sunday (July 5). This was the 12th edition of the festival.

The announcement was made at Nurtured New Works finale by guest judges playwright Mark O’Rowe (Howie the Rookie, Terminus, Normal People) and Selina O’Reilly, literary and new work assistant at The Abbey Theatre.

Also present among the audience were Offaly Arts Officer Maeve Mulrennan, and up and coming playwright and actor Ultan Pringle.

Of the 183 entries submitted on this year's theme, desire, three were handpicked and invited to Birr to work under the guidance of Offaly playwright Eugene O'Brien for chiselling.

These included Dublin-based Elaine Maguire O'Connor's Lay Your Hands on Me, and Limerick writer Liam McCarthy's Mam and Love and Woo, and In The Garden by Westmeath's Liza Costello.

A Moate resident, Liza has garnered acclaim as a novelist and short story writer. She has to her credit, a story collection, None Of Us Will Be Okay (Broken Sleep Books), and psychological thriller novels The Estate, and Crookedwood (both Hachette Ireland).

When asked if her town in the middle of the country informs her writing Liza responded, “I grew up in Moate and about seven years ago I moved back here with my family. I wouldn’t say that my surroundings directly inform my writing, and I don’t tend to write autobiographically; however, I do believe that where we’re from and where we live inevitably shapes the way we see the world.

" I like living in Moate – it’s a lively town, with a nice library, art centre, cafes, pubs – and Dublin and Galway aren’t a million miles away. I do a lot of my ‘writing thinking’ while walking the dog on the lovely Athlone–Mullingar greenway that runs just behind our house.”

Having dabbled in other formats, In The Garden was Liza's stage writing debut.

“Writing for the stage is a completely different experience because the story has to live through dialogue, action and performance. There’s nowhere to hide.

"So when I returned to that scene with Marion and Lukas (the protagonists), it was really about them revealing themselves in the way they spoke to each other, in what they chose to say,” she explained.

She added that stage writing is a deeply collaborative process.

“To see other people seriously engage with my work – and challenge it when that was needed – was humbling and wonderful at the same time. That process showed me possibilities in the play that I couldn’t have discovered on the page alone,” she shared.

It is noteworthy that the play is her characters' way of demanding to be written. The characters came to her mind when she began writing her third novel.

While drafts after drafts were binned to the extent of Liza losing interest in the novel altogether, what remained with her were the two characters. She brought them to life for Scripts Ireland.

Thrilled at winning with her debut play, Liza said: “I can’t overstate what an amazing experience Scripts was for me. The first four days were all about us three writers developing our plays under Eugene O’Brien’s mentorship – I learned so much from that process, particularly around the importance of editing, editing, editing when it comes to writing a stage play.”

In The Garden features Lukas (a Lithuanian gardener), who has just finished transplanting a laurel tree for one of his wealthy clients and wants nothing more than to get home in time to take his son to football training.

But Marion, a wealthy woman who has hired him to work in her acre-wide garden keeps stalling him with questions about the tree, and other enquiries to keep him there. What begins as a minor inconvenience slowly turns into something far more unsettling.