Donal will use his residency at The Dock to continue work on a novel in progress. This text is a third-person narrative of the interior thoughts of a man in middle age who teeters between insight and buffoonery as he contemplates all aspects of what a life is against what it could be.
The work is composed of a collection of short prose pieces that, when finished and taken together, will add up to a novel. The pieces that have already been written eschew much of the exposition and plotting of conventional storytelling to deliver an intimate portrait of the central character through his innermost thoughts.
Donal is interested in literary readings as performance and plans to use The Dock’s theatrical and audiovisual facilities to help him to explore methods of enhancing the performance of a literary reading through investigating best practice in theatre.
As part of this process, Donal will make short videos of readings to explore the extent to which sound, lighting, facial expressions and intonation can be used to make a literary reading riveting for its audience.
Donal’s writing is influenced by writers such as Samuel Beckett, Anna Burns and Anakana Schofield – or any literature that makes him laugh and think.
