“Ohio has always had productive brothers,” said Steve Johnston.
He’s thinking about the Wright brothers and the wildly successful filmmaking Russo brothers as he relaxes in what looks like a guitar shop. It’s actually his combination mancave/studio in Lyndhurst. The guitarist is taking a break from composing songs for his brother Christopher’s play, “Moonrise After the Mountains Fall.”
“A lot of people ask what comes first, 'the chicken or the egg?'" Steve said. "Do you write the words first? Well, in this case, the chicken's already there. The lyrics are sitting on the page."
The seven tunes range from "haunting" to "catchy Irish pub melodies,” which Christopher said is “appropriate, since the work is essentially a scripted, one-woman show in a cabaret near Dublin.”
“She moves there to play with her brother,” he said. “She tells her story throughout the play. And she’s troubled by something that happened where there was the discovery of mass graves.”
The Johnstons grew up in Lyndhurst and spent much of their time fascinated by stories from their grandmother, who emigrated from County Clare as a teenager.
“She played a significant role in our lives as kids,” Christopher said. “I have also studied Irish writers very closely, so I have a deep affinity for my Irish ancestry and have written several plays set in Ireland.”
Jennie Nasser plays the main character, Maeve Rose, who welcomes an imagined audience of American tourists and performs with her mostly silent brother, played by Steve.
“She's very loquacious,” Nasser said. “She likes to talk, and she likes to tell her story, and her stories adhere to her music.”
Nasser said she sees a lot of herself in Rose, including a shared love of yoga and meditation and a shared heritage: Nasser is one-quarter Irish.
"She's such an Irish 'whippersnapper' who'll say exactly how she feels," she said.
Nasser grew up in Hartville and graduated from Kent State University before moving to New York City. After several years as a working actress, the pandemic brought her closer to home, and she settled in Cleveland. Roles followed at the Porthouse Theatre, Akron Civic Theatre and W. 78th Street Studios' Blank Canvas. She was recommended to the Johnstons by a friend. It’s been a whirlwind of musicmaking and accent studying ever since.
"Instead of 'I,' it's 'oy,'" she said. "Their ‘Rs’ are a bit different. But honestly, I just tried to listen to actual Irish people, like Colin Farrell. Chris didn't want me to have too thick of an accent... where it wasn't believable."
When it came to singing with an accent, however, Nasser had a revelation.
"A lot of people with accents, they actually try to have more of an American accent when they sing," she said. "Our thought was, 'Look at Harry Styles. He sounds very American when he sings, even though he has a British accent.'"
“Moonrise After the Mountains Fall” is the third play in Christopher Johnston’s trilogy of one-woman shows. The first two were set in America, with the characters referencing their Irish roots. He hopes the run at Convergence Continuum arts center in Tremont this weekend will provide feedback before he expands the piece for playwrighting festivals next year.
“I learn a lot just from watching the audience,” he said. “Are they laughing where they're supposed to laugh? Are they quiet where they're supposed to be quiet? Are they singing along to the songs? And we're going to, I think... have some fun with that.”
