Hairy Jaysus - Solo Play

Unique venue - well worth a visit!

Award-winning playwright and actor Donal O’Kelly tours his solo play Hairy Jaysus, about pacifist, feminist and socialist Frank Sheehy-Skeffington, shot dead in Portobello Barracks, 26^th April, 1916. Coming to Athy Community Arts Centre on Thursday 24th April, 8pm. Donal has previously played Athy for the Shackleton School with his show Catalpa and Where A Footstep Lasts a Thousand Years with composer Michael Holohan. 

Following the highly successful Fishamble tour of Donal O’Kelly’s Little Thing, Big Thing, and his 2013 Edinburgh Fringe First Fionnuala, the Hairy Jaysus tour takes place in the calendar week of the Easter Rising 1916 – five venues from 23^rd to 27^th April.

Hairy Jaysus is a view of Sheehy-Skeffington seen through the eyes of a Dublin ATM beggar today. Called “Hairy Jaysus” by James Joyce, atheist Frank was also called a crank. Pleased, he responded “a crank is a small instrument that makes revolutions”.

An indefatigable campaigner, with his wife Hanna, for votes for women, he was a prominent supporter of the workers of Dublin during the 1913 Lockout. Sentenced to two years’ hard labour in June 1915 for making anti-war speeches, he went on hunger-and-thirst strike until released. He was summarily executed in Portobello Barracks Dublin, 26^th April 1916 during the Easter Rising, having been abused and used as a human shield. 

Coming up to the 1916 centenary, Sheehy-Skeffington’s spirit of resistance to accepted norms is needed more than ever, according to O’Kelly. “The man Seán O’Casey called ‘the soul of revolt against man’s inhumanity to man, the ripest ear of corn that fell in Easter Week’ is crucially relevant today”.

Athy Community Arts Centre, Athy, Co. Kildare 8pm Thursday 24^th April. Booking 087 2761156 €12/€10

 

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