A little over four years ago writer, director and performer Maeve Marsden posted a tweet that sealed her fate.

“I have decided to write a play,” she wrote. “One I don’t perform in. There. I put it on Twitter after some wines so now I have to do it.”

Nineteen minutes later she tweeted again.

“It shall be a lesbian divorce family farce. My mothers will be stoked.”

That tweet set in motion a comedy drama, Blessed Union, about a family of two lesbians and their two children dealing with a divorce.

It also inspired a different focus for Marsden – after years creating, performing, producing and writing productions such as national storytelling project Queerstories and theatre works Mother’s Ruin: A Cabaret About Gin; Fat Musicals: A Body of Work; and Lady Sings It Better – a focus on just writing.

“I realised I always did all the jobs at once,” she says. “I was producing work that I’d written, that I was also performing in. It’s standing backstage, about to go on to perform and the musical director wants to talk about when they’re getting paid.

“I thought, ‘This is not a way to manage my career and I don’t think my creativity is flourishing’.”

She started writing the play, while touring a show and, in 2019, successfully applied for Belvoir’s Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights. Then, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, touring evaporated.