Suzy Crothers told David Hennessy about her show Troubled which was inspired by growing up in Belfast in a time of conflict.
This weekend acclaimed writer, theatre maker, and performer Suzy Crothers (43) will present Troubled, her one woman that looks at conflict and intergenerational trauma in Northern Ireland.
The two performances at London Irish Centre come ahead of Suzy taking the show to Edinburgh Fringe, Coventry and Sheffield.
Set in a divided city, in a divided place, at a divided time, Troubled follows Alice – a ‘Troubles’ kid – navigating the chaos of her past while trying to build a future. Now an adult, she’s on the verge of finally falling in love, but is unsure if she make a leap of faith while the past still feels all too present?
Troubled sees Suzy Crothers explore the impact of growing up in conflict and comes with the hospitality of a cup of tea and some biscuits.
Are you looking forward to bringing the show to London?
“Yes, absolutely.
“We went through some work in progress development with their community cafe group who were just a wonderful, lovely group of people.
“We got a chance to share the work with them last summer and the reaction just really kept us going.
“I love the London Irish Centre.
“It’s a place where I have felt so welcomed so to get to bring the finished piece of work there just feels like completing a cycle, to bring it to people that I hope will have a positive impact as a result of seeing the show is a real privilege to be honest.”
What moved you to write Troubled? Do you remember where the inspiration came from?
“The idea of writing a show was something I’d always wanted to do.
“I didn’t necessarily know what it was about and I just started writing.
“I get this thing where I have to write.
“I’ve got too much going on inside so it has to go somewhere.
“I’d kind of wake up in the middle of the night and write.
“I’ve always written anyway, since I was a wee kid.
“It was through that process that the bits, because I write in short form, started to join up a bit.
“I don’t think I was necessarily aware of what I was interrogating until we got into the rehearsal room.
“I definitely see myself as more of a theatre maker than a writer because I have to work in conjunction with a good team of people and they are a sounding board and together we create what’s going to go on the stage.
“I fell in love which is always a catalyst for things and sort of prompted me to examine a lot about myself, my reactions in the world.
“I’ve had ongoing challenges with mental health as well and creativity is part of how I deal with that.
“There was just so much stuff, it had to go somewhere and then I showed it to somebody and they were like, ‘This is actually alright’.
“And then it became a process of looking at the past in order to be able to move forwards and live fully in the present.
“That’s really what the crux of the story is about as well.
“There’s parts of the character Alice that are like me and parts of her that are not, but she is on a journey to examine how she interacts with the world, how she interacts in relationships, where that might have been influenced by her growing up, where she grew up, when she grew up.
“If you grow up in a divided city, in a divided place at a divided time, it’s going to have an impact on you and how you approach the world.
“It’s going to have an impact on your mental wellbeing, your relationships, so Alice goes through a process where things get pretty dark.
“She’s fortunate enough to have some encounters and experiences which then lead her on a path to finding a way through that, so it’s about finding a way through dark times.
“It doesn’t say, ‘From dark times we get happy and fixed and then we all live happily ever after’.
“It says, ‘We can get support and help from people and learn to live fairly alright on a daily basis’.
“The world’s a tough place as we all know right now, and division, sadly, in the world is more rife than ever.
“I often think if we can find a kind of peace in Northern Ireland, it gives me hope for the rest of the world.”
How have things changed in Northern Ireland in your view?
“The further I get from growing up, the more I reflect on how strange and odd and weird and not normal that was.
“Northern Ireland is a marvellous place.
“It’s just so beautiful.
“It just would break your heart how beautiful it is, particularly the North Coast and stuff.
“And now things have changed and there’s a great energy but there’s still a lot of problems.
“There’s a lot of social problems.
“Mental health is really bad.
“People in the North are 25% more likely to have mental health issues than those in England.
“Intergenerational trauma has its mitts around the country and it has also been stunted by the assembly not sitting for some time.
“But there’s things that happen that never would have happened when I was growing up and I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, wow’.
“There is a sense of possibility that just wasn’t there and the culture is fantastic.
“But yet there is still a lot to negotiate, still a way to go in a journey towards healing the past.”
There’s more and more coming from Northern Ireland in terms of culture, do you think the place is finding its voice now after the troubles of the past?
“Yeah, I’m really proud to be from Belfast.
“It is a pretty interesting place to be from and you sort of see that in these wonderful TV series.
“Blue Lights is fantastic and does it really well.
“It’s not necessarily at all about The Troubles but you do see echoes and shadows through it of a country that is still dealing with the aftermath, still trying to move forwards and in the middle of it all, people are just living their lives.”
How bad did it get when you were growing up?
“I think it really came to me during the pandemic actually because there were elements of the pandemic that sort of reminded me a bit of the troubles.
“I think there was just always a feeling that something bad was going to happen.
“And that’s a very specific state to be in for an extended period of time.
“It was not being able to go places, or close family members narrowly missing out on getting hurt in certain circumstances.
“It was the pandemic that made me reflect that there was a feeling during the pandemic which was like, ‘We can’t leave the house. We probably shouldn’t leave the house’.
“And like, ‘Something is happening. People are not safe and not well somewhere pretty close by but I can’t do anything about it’.
“That just sort of reminded me a bit of the troubles.
“Actually for me it was just the idea of the news.
“I think if you sort of heard things on the news like, ‘So and so was shot dead down the road’ and then, ‘Such and such was bombed’, it would be like, ‘God, that’s terrible’.
“But it just happened all the time so it just became routine.
“It was an odd time.
“Things were not for me like they were for my parents which was a much darker time, I think, for them.
“I mean it was pretty bad during the 90s and that but not like my parents’ generation when all this kicked off.
“It was really, really bad and significantly impacted everyone that lived there no matter who you were.
“I had the fortunate privilege of growing up in a relatively alright area that was mixed and there wasn’t too much trouble but Belfast is a very small place and there were places you couldn’t go.
“It was a weird time and that didn’t end until..
“I remember being in the year 2000 and it was the 12th of July and there was a massive barricade on the bridge near where I lived. There were just army vans everywhere, there was not a soul in the streets and this was after 1998.
“It was after the Good Friday Agreement but there was still the sense that something was going to kick off and it wasn’t going to be good.”
When did you feel it had ended then? Did it take a long time?
“I think it’s taken a long time and I think that’s it: Time takes time, and it’s only with the luxury of time, actually, that you don’t notice and then one day you just do, you know?
“My younger sister is nine years younger than me and she didn’t have quite the same experiences as me but her life is still significantly shaped by this thing that happened that she didn’t necessarily experience.
“It’s very present but the energy is different, I think there’s a sense of people want to move forwards.
“And that’s what the show is about really.
“It’s about moving forwards.
“Someone once said to me, ‘You can look at the past but don’t stare at it for too long because we’re here today’.
“What I want to do for the audience is offer a nice space.
“We get tea, we get biscuits, we tell a story in the way that people from the island of Ireland do.
“We are storytellers, you know?
“That, I think, has always been this sort of driving force for me.
“In my saddest or darkest of times, the thing that I’ve held on to is the creativity.
“We do not need division.
“I don’t know what we need but I feel like in sharing the story of the character, Alice, and how she comes through things might offer some hope or positivity or at least it should offer a good night out and a cake and a biscuit.”
In the story Alice wants to go to Funderland. Events mean it is unsafe to go but she doesn’t understand any of that.
Even in troubled areas young people want to-
“Live.
“And there was so much of that: Things that we weren’t allowed to do.
“Funderland was amazing, ‘Oh my God’.
“Everyone wanted to go to Funderland.
“I think the experience I remember is it being 1993 and it was a terrible time, both sides bombing and the real fear was like, ‘Actually, what’s going to be hit next?’, so you don’t know where you can go.
“Young people sort of get angry like, ‘Why can’t I go there?’
“And it’s like, ‘It’s not fair’. ‘But dude, it’s because it’s really not safe’.
“That was a weird time.”
Like your own story Alice is looking back on her youth and what was not normal..
“Her parents were from either side of the political divide and that was difficult for their relationship.
“So there was elements of conflict within the home and outside of the home and how that manifests in Alice is that actually she’s quite unwell at times from a mental health perspective.
“She meets this guy Tim and actually thinks, ‘I could actually fall for this person’ but she hasn’t seen examples of unity anywhere in her world and she struggles to act like a reasonable person in a relationship and her mental health struggles get in the way of that.
“I guess it’s thinking, ‘To what extent does where we grow up and how we grow up impact how we approach the world?’
“I suppose, in a sense, we’re looking at intergenerational trauma here and I don’t think any of it points the finger.
“It’s looking at Alice’s parents.
“They had a terrible time in terms of how their relationship was treated and the time at which they got married.
“They had to get a letter from the Pope to have this Protestant/ Catholic relationship, isn’t that crazy?
“And how growing up in a sort of household that was, in a sense, divided, in a town that was divided, a city that was divided, in a country that was divided.”
What have the reactions been? I bet you get poignant reactions..
“Yeah, especially doing the work in progress with the community cafe group at London Irish Centre.
“My dad died in 2020 and there was a guy in the community cafe group that reminded me a lot of my dad actually.
“He was from where my dad was from.
“My dad was from the Shankill and then he left me feedback afterwards.
“He said, ‘The Shankill would have been proud’.
“I believe in all sorts of messages from the universe, I felt like that was kind of like a message from my dad or something.
“And to get people afterwards saying, ‘I remember that, I lived through that’.
“There’s a reason why we have tea.
“It’s set up in a really warm, held way because we’re not there to re-traumatise people and it balances humour with darkness and hope.
“The reaction has been really overwhelmingly positive probably because the character is just a person that’s trying to get well, that’s trying to move through the past. I think we all want to do that in some way, move towards a better version of ourselves maybe.
“We have got these stories that are coming to the fore now like Kneecap obviously, the movie was fantastic: Such an energy. Love their energy.
“Say Nothing was on TV looking at the past, What a great story.
“Obviously Derry Girls.
“We’ve got How to Get to Heaven from Belfast coming up.
“All those people inspire me to keep going and to try and write honestly about what it was like and what it’s like now.
“Thank God we’re not there anymore but conflict hasn’t gone anywhere in the world as we sadly, sadly know so if we forget what happened then we risk the same thing happening again.”
After this Saturday’s shows at the London Irish Centre Suzy will take the show to Edinburgh, Coventry and Sheffield.
“We would love to take it to America, Australia, and places that have been impacted by division like South Africa for example.
“Everything that I make, I make for an imagined character that I keep in my mind who I call Auntie Mary.
“Auntie Mary is a composite of my mam and her friends and the way that I was raised was, ‘Tell your story, tell it well and, for heaven’s sake, don’t bore’.
“That is the central tenet of how I create things and what I always aim to do.
“Auntie Mary came on a bus to see the show, she sits in the back seat and you better give her a good show.
“I think sometimes I can go and see a piece of theatre and I can feel alienated like it feels like it’s maybe uber intellectual or for people not like me.
“That’s not what I’m trying to do here.
“I’m trying to tell a story and tell it well so that everyone goes out and feels a bit more connected to the other people that they’ve seen the story with.
“Bring the joy is what I want to do.”
Troubled is at The London Irish Centre 1.30pm and 7pm this Saturday 21 June. For more information and to book, click here.
Troubled plays Edinburgh Fringe at Summer Hall 31 July- 25 August.
It plays Belgrade Theatre in Coventry on 10 September.
It plays the Playhouse in Sheffield on 4 November.
For more information about Suzy, click here.