My short film Two Cats is getting a spin at Toronto Irish Film Festival on February 29th if anyone is knocking about my old stomping ground of Toronto and wants to see us tearing strips off each other. Check out this very cool new poster by the talented and very brotherly Stephen J Morton.
I’m very excited to be performing Running + Walking in the Phoenix Park by Martin Sharry as part of this years Dublin Fringe Festival. It’s a beautiful piece of writing and I’ve really enjoyed working on the piece alongside the brilliant Rachel Ní Chuinn.
A man is running for his life. Running helps the brain to regenerate. Over time, he forgets himself. He grows more interested in the trees, the history, the life of the park. A conversation with a horse chestnut reveals the nature of healthy being.
Then he stops.
Slowly, he starts again…
Four weeks rehearsing done on the show and your boy is limber of foot. Thanks to Deirdre Dwyer for giving me a costume that ensures I won’t get hit by a car in Project Arts Centre for the next two weeks. Here’s hoping anyway. Show runs 12-14 / 19-22 September at lunchtimes. Best audience member gets to keep my sweatband at the end. Book your tickets here.
Look at this pack of legends I got to perform with. I hugged every one of them. No one left unhugged.
Very excited to be dusting down my Eamon De Valera voice for the return of Pulp Injection next week. Two new, pulpy, very live radio plays from the warped mind of Peter McGann with a cracking cast giving voice. The show takes place on Tuesday August 14th in The Workmans Club with doors opening at 8. Entry on the night is €5 and all proceeds go to Pieta House.
I did some acting in the cops and robbers themed video for Brave Giant’s new track Way To Love. Fergal Costello directed the whole shebang with a stellar team on board.
Kate Gilmore, Ian McEvoy, Peter McGann and myself play a really inept band of robbers. The song recently shot to the top of the iTunes chart in Ireland.
You can take a gawk at the video right here.
Currently in the midst of a new run of my play War Of Attrition. We just finished a three night stay in Kilkenny and its up to Dublin from this Monday for a six night run in Project Arts Centre.
The Irish Times previews the piece yesterday and wrote these nice words:
“Devious Theatre returns with its Fringe hit from last year, a comic and darkly subversive take on chuggers, bilious internet bloggers and psychopathy. An unlikely camaraderie develops between a charity worker, an online scourge and a homeless guy, and it disintegrates just as quickly, with hilarious performances from John Doran, Roseanna Purcell and its writer John Morton (below). All are given supple direction by Niamh Moroney.”
That sums it up in a nutshell really. So if you’re looking for some theatre as you approach Christmas week, get thee to Project Arts Centre for some troll hunting, life hacking, online feuding, cyber spills and thrills.
John Doran’s one man show The Centre Of The Universe which I directed is currently going great guns at this years Tiger Dublin Fringe. It’s one of this years Show In A Bag offerings and has garnered a couple of nice reviews since it opened, check them out here and here.
It’s running until this Saturday night so check it out if you want to see a masterclass of physical comedy from a seriously talented performer. You can book tickets here.
Devious Theatre have just completed recording of a brand new radio series written and directed by myself. It’s a 20 part murder mystery detective comedy radio serial called Vultures. Yes, all of those things and possibly some more to come. Based on the web series we once made with Mycrofilms, it’s now going to be a web and radio series which will be released in 2014. It’s being produced by KCLR in conjunction with Devious Theatre. I haven’t heard a peep of it yet but we had a lot of fun in the studio so I’m looking forward to getting into the edit on this one. For more info, do some sleuthing here.
I’ve been writing a short film called Swerve which will be directed by Ross Costigan for Mycrofilms later this year.
Ross and myself have been working on it for quite a while now and we’re currently prepping to bring it in front of the cameras this April. And to mark the commencement of pre-production, Ross took some nice photos of the film’s three leads who he has just revealed over on his blog. The trio of fine upstanding thesps who will be engaging in some springtime ultra violence are David Thompson (The Gent), Eddie Murphy (Teddy Boy) and John Doran (Vaughan). If you think they look mean and moody here, they’re only wearing their own clothes so wait until we get them into the actual costumes.
The story is about a swarm of competing criminals trying to track down a mysterious bag. It will hopefully be a very dark, violent and funny short. Our ‘what if’ for Swerve is if the video game Streets Of Rage was adapted into a short movie written by Martin McDonagh and directed by Robert Rodriguez. That’s doing myself and Ross an awful amount of favours though but fuck it, no harm in aiming high! If we can make something that’s even half as insane as that sounds, then we’re doing alright. We’ve a great crew on board and Ross is currently assembling a seriously stacked thirty strong cast of characters.
Swerve is the third short film from Mycrofilms and keeps our genre hopping escapades intact following on from romantic comedy Hot Water Bottle and family drama Baby Love, both of which premiered in 2012. Swerve is going to be our biggest, baddest and bloodiest yet. I’ll keep the updates coming in the run up to the shoot and if you like, you can read them.
For the next two weeks I’ll be using my acting on the newest production from Dublin based theatre company Sheer Tantrum. The play is A Bucket Full Of Fire by Darren Donohue and this will mark its debut production.
The play has been summarised as thus:
As dawn approaches six people gather around a well and a bed. They amuse, torment and confront each other but only the strongest among them will survive the night…
I play one of the six people, Blic. And I am mostly gathered around the bed. Which is highly relaxing at times. Blic is a blast of a part and I’ve been having a whole lot of fun playing with it over the last few weeks of rehearsals. This is the second of Darren’s shows that I have worked on after last appearing in Voices In The Rubble which Sheer Tantrum produced last year. He’s an amazing writer and his style is so distinct and original that I’m certain it’s going to be produced for many a year to come.
I’m working under the direction of the brilliant Vincent A O’Reilly and a great cast consisting of Simon Toal, Sinead O’Brien, Paul Travers, Vincent Browning, Grace Barry and Sarah Flanagan.
So if you’re looking to see an exciting new Irish company perform some great new writing, then Smock Alley this week is the place to be! It runs from tonight November 12th until Saturday November 24th at 8pm nightly. You can book your tickets at Smock Alley or else right here!
Which is in fact one of the dictionary definition terms for the word smitten.
After my play Smitten finished in Kilkenny on Saturday night after a 7 night run and a trip to Cork for Solstice, I feel pretty much the same. Well stricken. A whole bunch of post show blues that are made all the worse by the fact that we’re finishing up our In The Future When All’s Well residency in Kilkenny Arts Office after 6 months. I feel like a child who’s lost his favourite ball. Or that dog that sits on graves. Having being so busy with Scratcher, Shifting and Smitten, it’s going to be a bit odd to be getting back to being slightly less busy.
But I’ve got some really nice projects lined up and Devious Theatre have some big news coming soon so the future is indeed bright.
And as for Smitten, all I can say is that I’m delighted with the reaction that the show got. The comedy and the musical seemed to mesh really well and people seemed to prefer it to the first production. Which I guess was the point of doing it again. Also, following on from Scratcher and Shifting it would have been a shame to let the ball drop. Especially if you end up looking really stupid while dancing.
I’m not resting on my laurels too much and I’m currently working on the post show 10th draft of Smitten. There’s a lot that needs to be taken out and added in so that’ll be nice little job for the next few days.
So yeah, 3 plays, 6 months… I’m gonna get some rest. The End.
Thanks to Nathanael McDonald and Pat Moore for the photos.
