‘I see these people in the world with us who are barely viewed as human beings. And I think it’s weird that we’re okay with that’

Q&A:GRACE DYAS Writer of 'Heroin' for TheatreClub company

How did you first become involved in theatre?I grew up on Thomas Street in Dublin's inner city. My uncle is an actor and my sister was a member of Dublin Youth Theatre. I joined DYT when I was 16. My first acting role was playing the part of Eva in Enda Walsh's Chatroom. From the very beginning, I liked the process of making theatre. I liked being on stage. I just loved everything about it.

What was the first play you wrote and do you cringe when you look back on it?It was called A Play on Wordsand it was full of all mad things that you wouldn't even see the like of in American daytime soap operas. There's one character and he's someone's half-brother but they don't know it yet. There are people having heart attacks, two or three abortions and a big "Did she kill him, did she not kill him?" mystery. Looking back, I don't know . . . It was mad.

How has your writing developed since then?I suppose, to begin with, I was a bit restricted by the form I was writing in. The play had a beginning, a middle and an end. It had a story, characters and a believable – well, semi-believable – plot. Being exposed to videos of contemporary performance from the UK and Europe opened me up to the idea that you can create form for your content. You don't have to master a specific form and find content to match it. Does that make sense?

Er, yes. What's this about you getting fired from a mobile-phone shop?Haha. Well, I was accepted to do Drama at Trinity, but I didn't get the points. I studied Arts in UCD for a term and then I worked in a Meteor mobile-phone shop for nine months. I really liked it and I was really good at sales and all. I tell people they sacked me to be all dramatic about it. But actually I'd just come to the end of my contract and they told me it wasn't working out.

You should have offered to help them with their Christmas ad campaign. You could have got to work with Annoying Man With Beard!No I didn't, but I did love working there and I'd really like to have kept doing it. But I just wasn't able to commit to it, I kept being late. I was devising my first show for the Dublin Fringe Festival at the same time, so I was trying to do two fulltime jobs at once.

Tell us about TheatreClub.It was founded in November 2008 by Shane Byrne, Doireann Coady and myself. We'd all been in Dublin Youth Theatre together, we enjoyed working with each other and we were interested in the same stuff. The name started as a joke. If we ever went for coffee, we'd call it Coffee Club. If we went to a show, we'd call it Theatre Club.

Oh, so it's not club as in nightclubs?It's that too. I'd certainly like if it had the same connotation of energy and rebellion. We'd like people to look at theatre a bit like going to a nightclub. Obviously, you're not going to cop off with anybody while you're watching one of our plays . . . But you might afterwards.

Your last two plays have tackled cocaine and heroin addiction respectively.TheatreClub would have a strong leaning towards – well, I hate to say social issues – but things that are of consequence to us in society. A Line in a Storywas very personal to me. The background that I have, the people I grew up with . . . this was 2008. Cocaine was everywhere. Lots of young, working-class, career drug dealers were up all night driving around the city, selling the stuff. There's obviously drama in that. Then you get to the sadder part of it, the anger and the violence it bred among young men.

You did a tremendous amount of research for your next play 'Heroin'.Yes, I worked on it for two years. That included a year in which I spent two days a week with the Rialto Community Drug Team, which is based near the street where I grew up. They were really open to anything that helped raise awareness of the issue. And I suppose, being from the area gave me a certain cachet. I also did a tone of reading and meetings with the health board and so on.

It received great acclaim at the Fringe Festival this year. Were you nervous about tackling such a broad subject in such a head-on manner?A little bit. There's a sort of otherness in society. Junkies are different to us. It doesn't affect us. So we ignore them. We do the whole tunnel vision thing. We treat them as a different species almost. Now I don't have any answers. I don't have any solutions. But I see these people in the world with us who are barely viewed as human beings. And I think it's weird that we're okay with that.