Empowering Through Theatre: The Inspiring Journey of Ever Unique Productions

Ahead of International Women Day, the County Derry Post talked to two women who built a theatre company which aims to empower teenagers.

Both passionate about theatre, Hannah Reilly and Martina McAfee from the North East of Northern Ireland decided to open their theatre business in Coleraine in 2020. 

It has been four years since Ever Unique Productions was created from a mutual passion for the well-being of teenagers. 

The goal of Martina and Hannah is to help teenagers and work with them to improve their well-being and the challenges they face. 

They offer classes and a safe space for teenagers to express themselves.   

“We realised what our kind of passion was working for young people and the thing that we kind of felt passionate about was the fact that there weren't a lot of opportunities for young people in the actor sector in our location,” said Hannah.

Martina, from Coleraine, and Hannah, from Ballymena, met at the University of Ulster in Belfast. The business idea was born in a small coffee shop in Ballymoney before setting it up in Coleraine in County Derry and Ballymena in County Antrim. 

“You know, we both went to university in Belfast where things were given,” said Hannah. “I was focusing on younger children and I was working in Belfast, and then when I moved back.

“I just really felt that when I moved home there were so few opportunities for young people to get involved in the sort of active industry so that's why we started.”

One of the challenges they had to face was Covid-19. As they opened their business in the middle of the pandemic, they had to be creative to find ways to interact and motivate young people to participate in their classes.

“We opened our doors in August 2020, in the middle of Covid. The first kind of things that we did were predominantly online. We ran a screen acting course and then when we were able to open our doors in person. At the minute we have two locations but we kind of travel all over for different projects.

“What we are really good at is to think outside the box. Covid-19 is such a distant memory because now we are running classes in person and we're doing our performances in person,” said Hannah.

Martina and Hannah are looking to empower young people and give them confidence as teenagers. As an educational theatre company, Hannah said that all of their projects, plays and workshops aim to have an educational element to look at major issues of the society.  

“All the plays, workshops and classes [...] all have an educational element to look at big issues like mental health, social media, anti-bullying. 

“The play we're working on at the minute falls under that category. It's all about pressure, financial pressure, and the pressure we put on ourselves to do well,” they explained. 

“We wanted everything to be meaningful and to hopefully maybe start a conversation and have an impact on the area we were working in because it wasn't something that was readily available, and especially because we are from a rural part of the world.”

They both wanted to create a space where young individuals could learn, foster their talents, and produce theatrical and cinematic works. Since then the business has grown, and they started working with older people with dementia.

“We obviously set up the company with the idea of being focused on young people. However, as the company started to grow, we kind of looked at the other skill sets we had and both of us had skills that we felt would be transferable over to working with the elderly. 

“We set up our own 60+ community class. That is for anyone who's over the age of 60 and it kind of works on memory, on a social place for them to socialise and storytelling."

Theatre, a male-dominated world?

Martina and Hannah explained that the theatre world is dominated by men and often the jobs with the most responsibility are held by men.

“We're both up to the age of 30. We are both women. We are very passionate about empowering people who feel like they are marginalised, whether that be due to gender or other reasons and we always try in the plays we do to focus on not accepting classic tropes.

“Hopefully we will be inspiring younger women that you can follow your dreams, you can set up your own business.

“You can walk into a theatre space and see that maybe the manager is a man, the technician is a man, the playwright is a man.”

Martina and Hannah are the producers and the directors of the company for all productions they do. 

“I know that a lot of a lot of girls who come to us, they kinda always thought they wanted to be actresses but now they are saying ‘I would like to be a director of my own theatre, I would like to write my own theatre, maybe I would like to set up my own company like yours’,” Martina and Hannah explained.

“I hope we are breaking the mould a little by having our own business and walking into a male-dominated industry,” said Martina. 

“The play we worked on in the summer past was a piece of feminist theatre and it was all about consent, the viewpoint of women and sort of catcalling. 

“It was, I guess, a bit risky for us to put on a play because you know it could annoy some people and some of the language that was in the play could be seen as inappropriate. But for us, we felt that because of the current situation with how many women are being attacked and the way they're stripping away on social media, we felt it was really important for our young people. 

“They really enjoyed working on that piece of theatre and getting the opportunity to sort of voice their opinions on how they feel.”

More information on classes Hannah and Martina run is available on their website Ever Unique Productions.