INHALING a deep breath of country air and making everything bigger - her stride, her gestures, her dreams - in Brian Friel's Translations feels very much like "coming home" for Co Tyrone actress, Zara Devlin.
The now Dublin-based performer, who returned to Kildress from New York "heartbroken" after Covid brought the curtain crashing down on her Broadway debut in 2020, says playing Maire in Friel's masterpiece - opening at the Lyric this weekend - has seemed a little like art imitating life.
"I came back from New York where we were due to open the musical, Sing Street, in 2020 and found myself talking to the cows in the fields at Kildress while still in my pyjamas," she recalls, with good humour.
"It was surreal - one minute I was living near Times Square and looking forward to my Broadway debut and the next I was back in the countryside living with my parents and talking to cows.
"But playing Maire has very much reminded me who I am and where I come from. It is the first part in my life that I have played that reminds me so much of myself.
"I think it is being from the countryside - your kinesphere is so much bigger. I walk wider, I stand with my legs further apart... I take up more space and it's something I do naturally. It has been very liberating."
And, as in real life, her stage persona, Maire, also harbours dreams beyond her immediate environment - swap Kildress for Baile Beag/Ballybeg, Friel's fictional townland in Co Donegal where, in 1833, change was coming to the Irish-speaking community.
The scene is set as pupils gather at a hedge school and tensions grow while a group of Royal Engineers arrive to map the area ahead of plans for a new English-speaking national school...
Friel's three-act play about language, identity and culture finds a new potency in 2022, argues Devlin, who has been revelling in the "hilarious" exchanges between Maire and her new English love interest, Yolland (Aidan Moriarity).
"Maire is in a relationship with local man, Manus (Marty Rea) but she meets this Lieutenant Yolland and falls instantly in love," explains the Lir Academy graduate who recently featured in Amazon Prime series, Modern Love, with Minnie Driver.
"Unfortunately, Yolland can't speak Irish and my character can't speak English, so the dialogue becomes very funny.
"Translations really is such a masterpiece and has a lot of say about people and language and what we perceive to be barriers between us. It is smart and funny and I think it is the most beautiful play I've ever read. For me, it really captures the magic of Ireland.
"It celebrates all these amazing little tucked-away places that still exist in the Irish countryside and which many people never see and also the amazing characters who live there.
"I know so many great characters from where I am from and often I think it would be great to just put them all in a play and celebrate them. There is no artifice or pretence; there is an honesty and an openness that we can all learn from."
A new collaboration between the Lyric and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Translations has been in rehearsals for several weeks in Dublin before opening at the Lyric - where Devlin first contemplated an acting career through the theatre's drama studio.
She had previously attended the Hazel Wand Theatre School in Omagh - an after-school activity initiated by her mother in a bid to overcome her daughter's crippling shyness.
"My mum sent me to drama because I was so shy and my brother just went along too - probably to get us both out of the house," Devlin reveals.
"I was cripplingly shy and just really odd and awkward. I found it hard to talk to people and I was always by myself in the school playground, so my mum sent me to gain some confidence.
"I can still be awkward as a person, in real life, but there is something about having lines to say and getting inside a character on stage or in film, that changes me.
"You have this feeling of freedom - the freedom to be whoever you want to be. I remember the first time I landed a big role in a musical feeling the most confident I had ever been."
The rush of living someone else's life was taken to extremes lately when the versatile actress juggled daily rehearsals for Translations with live evening performances of Martin McDonagh's play, The Lonesome West, at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre.
"I was rehearsing for Translations during the day and then I would get my dinner and then rush over to do the show at the Gaiety," she says.
"I did that 'double-jobbing' for about two weeks and it was funny because I spent more time being other characters - Girleen ["a schoolgirl who sells poteen out of her schoolbag"] in The Lonesome West and Maire in Translations - than I did being myself.
"I had about an hour to just be 'Zara', but even though it was busy and mad and really hard work, I felt so alive. It was one of the best feelings ever in that even though I was tired, I was happy even more because I got to play two characters in one day which is even better."
Her enthusiasm is commensurate with her gratitude and even though rural Kildress cast its own peculiar charms during the first lockdown, she was keen to shake off the New York disappointment and get back to city life in Dublin.
"I was very lucky, actually, with film and TV work," she admits, "and I was also very grateful. It took the sting out of missing my Broadway debut - just a little bit.
"I got a part in Modern Love and was in season two with Minnie Driver which came out of nowhere. They were shooting scenes of me and Minnie in a convertible driving around Wicklow which was kind of mad because I am such a big fan of hers.
"Then I was in Irish horror film, Nightman - currently in post-production - shooting in Brussels. That was a lot of fun - I can't speak any other language but everyone was speaking in different languages on set, so it reminds me of Translations a little bit. It's funny where a job can take you."
In terms of recent theatre, she has appeared in Dear Ireland, an Abbey online production made during lockdown - just two years after she tread the Abbey boards in On Rafferty's Hill, winning an Irish Times Theatre Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actor for her trouble.
Other recent theatre credits include There Are Little Kingdoms by Decadent Theatre Company of Galway and Enda Walsh's acclaimed Medicine which premiered at Edinburgh International Festival in 2021.
"I don't know what it is about theatre," she muses, "but there is nothing in this world better than standing on a stage and experiencing those magic moments when you could hear a pin drop and everyone is alive and waiting... everyone is in the moment with you.
"That is why I do theatre - just for those moments. There are many great moments in Translations and I'm so excited to be part of the team bringing them to the Lyric and Abbey theatres this season."
Translations runs at the Lyric Theatre from April 23 to May 29 and at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, from June 13 to August 13. For Belfast performances, visit lyrictheatre.co.uk
