Big Interview: Playwright Gary Mitchell talks about his new play, Pride of the Shore, which centres on communities in Tigers Bay, the Shore Road and the York Road and the local flute band

Age (and he’s clearly not old) is a negligible concern, compared to the fundamental issue of his home.

“I don't like to say where I'm living. I don't want to start all that again,” he says, speaking on the phone.

‘All that’ refers to years and years of intimidation, including death threats, being shot at, having his car blown up, his home attacked by men with baseball bats and petrol bombs.

Gary Mitchell is one of the most powerful, prolific and uncompromising authors to have emerged out of Northern Ireland in recent years, but since November 2005, when loyalist paramilitaries intimidated him and his family out of their home in Rathcoole, the sprawling UDA-dominated housing estate in north Belfast, the Mitchells have had to move many times. Understandable then, that he prefers to keep his whereabouts under wraps.

Mitchell’s writing has focused almost exclusively on the urban working-class Protestant community to which he belongs, his theatre providing a unique insight into the closed world of loyalist paramilitarism. But he has certainly suffered for his art.

“All the attacks that ever happened to me, I remember asking the people, when we were negotiating a sort of peace, ‘what have I done that really offended you?’ But none of those people have ever even seen my plays. “One time when I was attacked in Rathcoole it was because I just won an award in Dublin, and they said, ‘If Fenians are giving you an award you must be doing something against us’.

Despite all the horrific incidents, Mitchell said he never felt scared. “Not me personally, because I grew up in Rathcoole. The only person I was ever afraid of was my ma,” he laughs, “when somebody shoots through your window, you have to be logical and think, if they wanted to kill me, they’d just shoot me in the head. But when you see fear in your children's eyes, it changes the way you perceive the world. I don't mind risking myself, but I draw the line at risking children. I think that's one of the things that you learn about life, if evil's prepared to hurt children, good can never win.”

Was he ever tempted to stop writing because of those attacks?“I was tempted. When a policeman turns up at your house and your car's on fire and the first thing he says to you is, ‘do you not think it's about time you stopped writing these things?’ I think it does cross your mind. And I did. I stopped writing for about five years because I was on the run and we were going into hiding. David Ervine (the late leader of the PUP) used to talk on my behalf. He would find out areas where I was allowed to live without intimidation. Then I came back and I kind of reinvented myself as a comedy writer because I'm only good at one thing. I'm only good at writing.”

Mitchell’s new play, Pride of the Shore, is the compelling story of old inner-city, North Belfast communities, Tiger’s Bay, York Road and Shore Road. Centered on one dysfunctional family, when daughter Gillian challenges the traditional views of her loyalist father, Rocco, the scene is set for fiery exchanges about modern-day Protestantism, Brexit, a United Ireland and the future of the local Pride Of The Shore Flute Band. Underlying all this is the modern scourge of suicide and the fate of Shammy and his wife.

The Green Shoot production is directed by Matthew McElhinney and stars Marie-Jones, who is returning to the stage after 10 years, Ivan Little and 30 community actors from the areas.

As research for the play, Mitchell spent weeks interviewing residents to gauge the issues which mattered most to them. At the start, he admits, there was some hesitancy and distrust of him, but people eventually opened up.

“I basically went around the community, listening to all their stories. The play covers everything they were interested in. I said to them, what are your top five concerns about the world? And then they very openly told me how they felt about everything.

"But at the centre of it all, the thing that united everybody was the local band, Pride of the Shore, and how they were all members of it, and how the numbers have fallen away and how support has fallen away, which mirrors the kind of the decline of the area in general.

"The story of the area falling apart is captured in the idea that the band numbers are severely reduced, and interest in Protestant culture has really diminished in the area at the same time as the decline of the outside world's interest in the area, and certainly in terms of investment.”

Mitchell said the play is the biggest production he’s ever been involved with; there’s a huge community cast, all the people who shared there stories, as well as the actual Pride of the Shore band taking to the stage.

“I don't think in all my years, I've ever seen so many Protestants in one place to do a play...other than shouting ‘stop this play’, usually outside a theatre,” he laughs. "I think there are voices and stories that we haven't heard before. Like, for example, when I was talking to the band members, they were telling me about the money that they raised for an incubator in the Ulster hospital. And I was like, what the f**k? No one knows that. Why are you not telling everyone this? I found it fascinating that they do all these great things and they don't bang a drum about it.”

Mitchell, who has written 25 stage plays and 25 radio plays, as well as film and TV productions, said Pride of the Shore has humour, music and a great story.

"I've written a lot of plays, and I think people expect to be hugely entertained, to have a great laugh. The play takes them on a journey, because it does represent very much the history of the area, the decline, and then the pause where people go, ‘you know, we can't rely on someone else fixing our lives and fixing our community, we need to fix it ourselves’. The family represents the community, and that family is hugely dysfunctional. The idea is that as you watch the family fix themselves on stage, they're actually fixing the community. That's not to say this is like a big cheer for the Prods. This is a realistic exploration of Tigers Bay and the people who live there.”

Mitchell describes himself as a “working-class, uneducated, poor protestant person”, who left school at 15 with no qualifications. After school, he said the best thing that ever happened to him was getting “the worst job in the world”.

"It was in the civil service and was mind-numbingly boring. Then I woke up one day and thought, this can't be my life. I can't do it anymore. I'm going to be an actor. I reached out and joined a drama group to become an actor. And then I had a couple of, let's say, bad experiences where people putting plays on would say, ‘if you sleep with me, I could give you the main role in a play’. “Growing up in Rathcool3, before I even thought about being an actor or anything, that's what people told me would happen. They said that the arts was very much Catholic and gay. I suppose that's why it took me so long to get involved. And funny enough, when I joined a drama group, it was all Catholic, and the only guys that were there were gay.”

So, instead of being an actor, he decided to become a writer.

“I always thought growing up that when you leave Northern Ireland, and, of course, sometimes in Northern Ireland, you travel the world and you realise that people really hate working-class Protestants from Northern Ireland. Then you start to challenge people and say, ‘I'm a working class Protestant, and I’m a brilliant person’. So I started really writing stories about that, because what I really wanted was to have a play that I could be in, where I could play the hero who was a Protestant. But those plays don't exist. So I started writing them. That's how simple it is."Mitchell, who comes from a “great family full of stories” said he loves entertaining people.

"That's all I want to do. I just want people to be happy, come and have a great time, maybe learn something and really enjoy themselves. And if you're going to take something away from it, you should take away the idea that we're all poor and we're all in it together, and we should help each other instead of hurting each other. And that's it.”*The Pride of the Shore is at The Mac, Belfast, from June 12 – 23, 2024.