The writer Micheál Lovett and the director Geoff Gould work well together, as their latest project shows, reports Mary Leland

Micheál Lovett could have a grudge. Both of us remember that I reviewed his first play, The Deadman's Beard a couple of years ago and didn't like it at all. We acknowledge this politely and move on to talk of his new play, This Ebony Bird, which opens at the Half Moon Theatre in Cork this day next week.

Lovett, a former altar boy, has chosen a sacristan as his main character; the setting is a small church in the Cork countryside on the eve of the Pope's visit to Ireland. "I know, I know, I was only four at the time, but my parents brought me and my sisters to the Phoenix Park, and all the commotion impressed me: getting up at three in the morning, the drive up. It was my first big gathering. I remember all that to this day."

Born and brought up Cork, Lovett has always felt a need to write. It was while working as a copywriter with an advertising agency in Dublin that he finished The Deadman's Beard, which toured Ireland. He then spent 18 months as writer-in-residence at the Everyman Palace Theatre, in his home city. "I think I was trying to follow something that would not dishearten me. As a copywriter I found that most of my best ideas went into the bin, but, with writing, while not everything works or is accepted, the focus changes: you keep trying, and there's the chance to fight for things. The pursuit is where you learn things. The journey makes you a better writer, whether publicly successful or not. And if it fails you're dying by your own sword at least."

Nowhere near dying, Lovett decided to join forces with Geoff Gould, the Everyman's former artistic director, who has spent the past few years in London, first training as a director at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, then working with Lovett on scripts, productions and plans for their theatre company, Blood in the Alley, which they formed with the actor Michael Patric.

Perhaps they both have a grudge, I think as we negotiate the labyrinthine corridors of Lough Community Centre to find their rehearsal room. In its former life this was an orphanage, and it is therefore resonant of a time and a tradition recalled now as penurious, possibly brutal and, in a way, inescapable.

But no hard feelings are perceptible in our meeting. Both men - Lovett at 30, Gould at 42 - embrace even the recent past with curiosity rather than accusation. It is their field - not of dreams but of harvests. Gould especially has a sprightly approach to life: a forthcoming production with Cork Opera House of Romeo And Juliet prompts the comment that when Shakespeare called it a "most lamentable tragedy" he had his tongue firmly in his cheek.

The Gould method is anatomical and searching: no presentation so far has eclipsed for me his revitalisation of The Playboy Of The Western World at the Everyman a few years ago, in which this groaningly tired play was found to balance wicked humour with devastating, totally relevant compassion. He also directed Lovett's version of Richard II, called Tricky, which ran for four weeks at the Courtyard Theatre in London.

Gould's acoustic for the inner voice finds particular satisfaction in This Ebony Bird, given that the sacristan's dialogue is with two aspects of his own consciousness, or conscience - here called Benson and Hedges.

"Sacristans I've seen in the past have been strange men," says Lovett. "By their very nature they fascinated me. I see them as the engine of the physical church, the keepers of the shrine."

For him the family way of life was that of practising Catholics, a practice from which he has now moved away, although he thinks he still has a faith of some sort.

For Gould, who remembers being left in charge of a pharmacy during the Pope's visit, the theatrical strength of the piece lies in the conflicting voices, the manifestation of thoughts on stage and their revelatory connection with the Ireland of the 1970s. "I think this is a very important play; the conflict within it is unusual and sometimes very funny, almost innocent. And the first night will be 25 years almost to the day since the Pope's visit: think how much has happened, how much has changed, in the Church over those years."

Neither Gould nor Lovett has found the streets of London to be paved with theatrical gold. Both work at other things, Lovett for an Internet sales agency, Gould for the Rugby Football Union. Both believe that it doesn't matter what you do to earn money, so long as you stay true to the profession, and that if the profession isn't paying you it's not your fault.

The plan for both men after This Ebony Bird is a series of productions of Shakespeare in repertory, paired with Tricky. Macbeth is the project for next summer, along with a proposed "Shakespeare on Sherkin".

Is this a proposal, perhaps, invited for Cork's programme as European Capital of Culture 2005? "No - sure, nobody knows us," says Gould, who is giving himself one more year in London before coming back to Ireland. "But we will continue. At this stage I can't do anything except work in theatre. People here are still surprised at that."

This Ebony Bird opens at the Half Moon Theatre, Cork, on September 13th; Romeo And Juliet opens at the O'Reilly Theatre, UCD, on November 1st