When she was just nine years old, Grace Dyas found a syringe in her garden. That experience led her to travelling the country in her early twenties to find out more about addiction, which culminated in the Theatreclub play Heroin.
Now that its recent national tour has been completed, a very special once-off Heroin event will take place on Monday. It will see the director of Love/Hate, Stuart Carolan, and other experts gathering to discuss the issue of heroin in Irish society at the Liberty Hall.
This level of debate is something that Grace Dyas wants to stoke up through her hard-hitting play. “It’s different drugs, same old story,” she says of the lie of the land today. “You’ve probably heard the crystal meth reports.”
Drug use in Ireland
The play itself tackles the issue of drug use in Ireland head-on, taking in a wide sweep of decades across Irish history. Grabbed by the throat is the period from the 1960s to present day, and shaken to see what the years have in common.
Monday’s discussion will be about “where are we now in terms of addiction, and have we moved on,” says Dyas, adding: “Unfortunately a lot of the answers are no. Things are the same.”
During her research for the play, Dyas travelled around Ireland. “Two sentences I heard in every estate in Ireland I went to were ‘there is no heroin here, it’s only a Dublin thing’, which is complete lies. Then the second thing is that they started to find needles in the estates.”
Source: Aoife Barry, thejournal.ie, 04/02/15
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