ONLY a true optimist could bring light out from the darkness of the power-crazed murder lust that drives Shakespeare's Macbeth but that's exactly what Omagh-raised screenwriter Maire Campbell succeeded in doing last year as artistic director of Youth Action Northern Ireland.
The former actress works with thousands of young people every year for its Rainbow Factory School of Performing Arts' range of drama productions but also has been steadily carving out a name for herself as a screen writer, due to a mutually successful collaboration with film-making charity Cinemagic.
Maire had the pleasure of seeing her first feature film script for Cinemagic's hugely upbeat tale A Christmas Star premiered in Belfast, London, New York and Los Angeles in 2015 before being distributed worldwide. The film had a theatrical run in Britain and Ireland last year again and was broadcast on the BBC, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as well as being made available on DVD worldwide.
She has partnered up with Cinemagic again for its second feature film, Grace and Goliath, produced by the charity's dynamic chief executive Joan Burney Keatings and directed by Tony Mitchell (The Bible, AD The Bible Continues, Primeval, Supervolcano and Flood). It stars Olivia Nash, 'Ma' from Give My Head Peace, and Fermanagh actor Ciarán McMenamin, seen most recently on our screens as a police chief in BBC Northern Ireland production Paula.
Currently in post-production and due out early next year, it's once again set in Belfast and has a transatlantic appeal due to its central protagonist. There’s also the involvement of 11 teenagers from Los Angeles who took up trainee film positions in directing, production, make-up, costume, camera and locations, along with 36 other young film-makers from Ireland, north and south.
"It’s about a big-time American actor, played by Canadian actor Emy Aneke, who comes over to Northern Ireland and falls on hard times. A hotel cleaner called Lily, played by the lovely Olivia Nash, takes him in, even though he’s completely egocentric with a Goliath ego. The story is really how Belfast and Northern Ireland changes him," Maire tells me.
"He thinks that it rains all the time here, that the people are a bit thick, and he has a lot of typical stereotypical thoughts about here. But as he realises that we have a heart of gold, his ego falls and grace floods in.
"It’s a fun film but there are some big themes in it," she continues. "There are broken marriages, we touch on depression, losing your mother young and so on. These are very big themes but they are shrouded by comedy, love and fun in the film.
"For me, there does have to be some centre of morality or message in my writing. It may be just showing the audience something as I’m not going to tell the audience what to think. But I can't imagine me writing something dark without some kind of resolve in it.
"I'm hoping it will appeal to everybody and if you loved Love Actually, you will probably like this."
Although she had set her heart on becoming an actress as a young girl as she developed a particular love of musical theatre, Maire always wanted to write and direct too.
Having trained at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, she was an actress for several years before opting for a career in corporate public affairs for Coca-Cola. Then she decided to go back to her first love, taking up her position with Youth Action several years ago.
Now living in east Belfast, Maire was asked to write five other short films for Cinemagic, including Chancer and A Delicate Thing, before A Christmas Star. With Youth Action, she wrote and directed Domino, a play with the theme of suicide which toured the north earlier this year, as well as directing last summer's production of Macbeth.
Apart from writing a stage play for the Outburst Queer Arts Festival and another screen project for Cinemagic for the autumn, she's also working with 50 young people to stage 1920s-themed musical Bugsy Malone next month.
Her next ambition is to write a Northern Ireland-based musical for stage and screen. But for now, she's perfectly happy with her day job, rather than the potential lure of Hollywood.
"We do brilliant work here with all types of young people from all kinds of different backgrounds," says Maire. "And while we reach a high standard in helping them, it's in the hope that we can change their lives forever."
:: Bugsy Malone will be performed at Youth Action, 14 College Square North, Belfast, August 14-19. For tickets and information call 028 9024 0551.
