DANIEL McCabe’s play The Flood features two couples holed up in an apartment in New York as Hurricane Sandy batters the city.
As one of the male characters was a Derryman, it seemed only natural for Derry native and New York-based boxer-turned-actor John Duddy to get the part.
“I’d never seen him on stage but had heard he was doing plays,” says McCabe. “The character of Aidan began as a sketch of a close friend of mine from Derry called Shane Glackin.
“So I reached out to Pauline Turley at the Irish Arts Center in New York to see if she’d connect me with an actor who could pull off a Derry accent. Later that week I met John at a bar on 57th Street at 8pm – and by 3am we were singing Shane MacGowan songs.
“He’s been with the play at every step since its first reading and it’s been a great blessing to have him as the cornerstone of the project.
"It’s a long road from the ring to the stage, and I’ve been privileged to be close by as he’s focused on his new craft with the same ferocity and dedication that made his reputation as a fighter.”
The play makes its Irish debut at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast next week, something McCabe says is a “tremendous honour”.
As well as Duddy’s character Aidan, the play also features James Russell as Charlie, Sarah Stephens as Mary and Kimberlee Walker as Eve.
McCabe, who was brought up in Queens in New York and now lives in Brooklyn, explains how he came to write The Flood after being in the city when Hurricane Sandy hit three years ago.
“The night Sandy hit, my wife Emma and I went to Shane and his wife Erin’s place, just a couple of blocks away.
"So there were two couples in an apartment, as there are in the play, and some of the base characteristics came from those same four people, but thankfully the conflicts and background story are entirely fabricated.
“The next morning I woke to find my city in shambles and that my grandmother had passed in the night, although her death wasn’t directly related to the storm.
“The rest of my family had been affected one way or another, with homes and businesses destroyed. I sat down that week to write a eulogy for my grandmother, and all these stories kept pouring in. By the end of the week I’d finished the first draft of the play.”
The playwright, whose Irish roots go back to Tyrone and Leitrim, has been to Ireland on many occasions.
“I’ve been over a number of times since my childhood, with most trips being to either Belfast or Derry. Last month I brought my wife and daughter to Ireland for the first time.
“In 2004 I spent a couple of months writing in Dublin. While there I wrote a film script about three New York brothers confronting their own rapidly changing city, and The Flood is a continuation of their story.”
He says he’s been happy with how the play has been received by “young Irish men who wouldn’t be too inclined to show any kind of emotion at all”.
“It was written to confront the dysfunction some guys encounter when dealing with emotional difficulties, how that often manifests as anger or shame and lands on the women in their lives, or in self-harm,” he says.
The Flood won the award for `Excellence in Playwrighting’ at the 2014 New York International Fringe Festival and it has won praise from film-maker Terry George and novelist Colum McCann.
McCabe says his literary heroes include Yeats, Salinger, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Joyce, Chekhov, Robert Penn Warren, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, David Mamet and Conor McPherson.
Yet he says the next thing he writes might well be inspired by his daughter.
“I’m looking forward to getting back to my little room in Brooklyn and a blank page. Last week, my seven-year-old daughter challenged me to write the story of 'how we came here'; I think that’s a fine idea.”
:: The Flood runs at the Lyric in Belfast from November 4 to 8. For tickets (£10 to £20), visit LyricTheatre.co.uk or call 028 9038 1081.
