Interview #1: Aoife Honohan
I’m delighted to be connecting with friends and other creatives with a monthly interview series. To start us off, It’s my good friend and writer/actor/teacher, Aoife Honohan.
Aoife is a 36 year old actor, writer and teacher from Cork and living in Dublin. She loves reading books in the sun, wandering unknown around new cities and dreaming of visiting yet more new places. She loves, and misses, live theatre. Watching and partaking. She would like to thank Punch and Fable for asking her to be their first interviewee and hopes that her answers aren’t too incoherent or rambly.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into writing/acting?
I used to act out improvised scenes between Bobby and Greg from Home and Away circa early 90s. Aloud. While on the toilet. I truly believe that that was my first foray in creating – as an actor and a writer. I vividly remember doing this often, for what seemed like hours on end! I wrote my first play when I was in 6th class for some Scór competition I think it was. I wrote it in Irish, cast it with friends from my class, and performed it in the local GAA club to a tiny audience and a judging panel of 1 (maybe 2!). I also began writing a film script that summer, which I have yet to complete. A few months later I wrote, cast and performed in a play for our school’s annual Christmas Concert in 1st year of secondary school. It was a comedy…’Blind Date’. We performed it in front of 500 or so people. I had no nerves, no self-doubt, no voice inside me telling me that anything could go wrong. I was so self-assured back then! It’s really amazing to me now. Not that I suffer HUGELY from self-doubt these days, but it definitely plays a big part in why a lot of ideas that I have or scripts that I begin don’t end up being completed, or even begun in many cases. I wish I could somehow find that 12-year-old me who 100 per cent believed in herself and saw only the fun in the thing she was doing. I’m working on it! Anyway, I stopped writing at about 16 and besides some school plays didn’t act again until I was 28, in Melbourne Australia. I did some training in Melbourne and in Dublin and then, I began writing again – first on collaborative pieces and then on topics which were more personal to or of interest to me.
How has this last year impacted your creativity/outlook? Have you gained any insights or created any new work?
I would say that this last year has had a positive impact on my creativity and outlook. That’s not to say that I have created very much but, I have had more time to allow myself “indulge” in my ideas and have brought many of them farther than I had been managing to when I was busy, busy, busy trying to give equal importance and time to everything and everyone else. So, although I haven’t created any one completed piece, I have DEFINITELY become more aware of the the fact that any creative project I undertake needs to be HIGH on my priority list and given the time and effort that these things require. And, I have come a long way in finding out what processes work for me both acting-wise and writing-wise. Nothing fine-tuned yet but still, a positive progression.
What awakens life in you and where do you draw inspiration from?
Em, being out in the elements, as in gale force winds and driving rain – that definitely awakens life in me. As does climbing up and down mountains and through mountain ranges. I draw inspiration from people. My own stories and other people’s stories. From human nature, society, history, the news. And from plays and films. And from other actors and writers. From lots of things really!
What does acting teach you about yourself? and the world?
It tells me that I want to be seen and heard! For whatever reason. More recently though it tells me that I am interested in life. Not just my life but other people’s lives. The lives that millions of people have lived over and over again for millions of years, with the same stories & scenarios, the same emotions being felt for the same reasons by different people in different countries, societies and times. It teaches me that I’m very interested in the shared experiences of humans since the first humans.
And, what it teaches me about the world is that we all love a good story.
Do you have any daily rituals or routines to get your creativity flowing?
I would say that I am not as consistent and routine as I often think I should be or need to be but I did have a bit of a routine going in January and February while I wasn’t teaching and was trying to develop an idea for a play. I would take a 2-3 hour slot every day and head to my partner’s mum’s back garden shed/gym. It’s a great space. I would light a candle, stretch, then turn on whatever sort of music I felt like listening to and would dance to it for 10, 20, 30 minutes until I was sweating and buzzing! Then, that would lead into me exploring the dialogue that might occur between the 2 characters in the play – aloud – like I used to do on the toilet all those years ago! Then I would sit and write on the floor for about an hour. And I often came out with some work that I was very happy with. That felt like progress. I enjoyed that routine and will certainly use it again.
How do you take care of yourself when you are feeling a bit blah, blocked or uninspired?
I can often feel blah and not share that feeling with anyone. I recently began seeing a counsellor/therapist though and so far, it really feels like by doing this, I am taking very good care of myself. When I feel blocked, I give up! But then come back to a thing later. Sometimes much, MUCH later. This is not ideal. As for feeling uninspired – I don’t think that I ever feel uninspired because I don’t think I’m ever looking for something to inspire me. Things just inspire me when they inspire me and then I develop that inspired idea a little but and then I get…blocked! Which is the thing that I need to figure out how to overcome. Writing these answers is teaching me a lot about myself!
What do you enjoy most about food? Do you have any favourite ingredients or recipes?
What I enjoy most about food are the smells and the colours. But mostly the smells. The good ones. My favourite ingredients in no particular order - Garlic, chillies, onions…and nuts.
My favourite recipe – toast, ham, cheese, tomato, onion, butter. i.e. A toasted special.
Can you share with us any books, podcasts or music that are currently inspiring you?
I have been very inspired by almost every episode of Elizabeth Day’s podcast How To Fail. I began listening to it in December 2019 and just love it. Music-wise, I am always inspired by a musician/singer from Tennessee named Valerie June. And I am dipping in and out of Glennon Doyle’s book ‘Untamed’ and enjoying the realisations and reminders that it brings to me. I underline them for when I inevitably forget.
Do you have any future creative projects plans/dreams?
Future/Current creative project is the play that I mentioned I was developing in January and February. Once it’s written (and it will be written!) I look forward to figuring out how to bring it to audiences. Or even just an audience. Maybe I’ll enter it into Scór na nÓg…
As for dreams – to bring a play of mine to a theatre with a live audience again some day aaaand, to work regularly as an actor of both stage and screen. It’s achievable, I know it is. I just have to keep believing in that dream and in myself.
April 2021