Revolted performed by Donal and Katie O Kelly Bailieborough Library 17 June, 7.30pm
REVOLTED is a pair of solo plays for Bloomsday 2015, recalling the connection between Joyce and County Cavan – Bailieboro-born Frank Sheehy Skeffington.
REVOLTED comprises Donal O’Kelly’s JOYCED! about James Joyce performed by Katie O’Kelly, and HAIRY JAYSUS about Joyce’s best friend Frank Sheehy-Skeffington, the forgotten executed man of Easter 1916, written and performed by Donal O’Kelly.
Sheehy-Skeffington was a pacifist and campaigner for votes for women. He was jailed in June 1915, exactly a century ago, for making speeches against recruitment to the British Army.
JOYCED!, which earned Katie O’Kelly a Best Solo Performance nomination from The Stage in Edinburgh, traces James Joyce's odyssey through Dublin up to his departure into exile, including encounters with the tenor John McCormack, Oliver St. John Gogarty, and of course Nora Barnacle.
Joyce was named the most revolutionary writer in English by the New York Times, but Sheehy-Skeffington, dubbed Hairy Jaysus by Joyce and often dismissed as a crank, responded “a crank is a small instrument that makes revolutions”. While Joyce gained worldwide fame Sheehy Skeffington was called by Sean O’Casey “The soul of resistance to man’s inhumanity to man, the ripest ear of corn that fell in Easter Week”.
Donal O’Kelly and Katie O’Kelly, both writers and actors, are coming together to create this father-daughter doublebill of plays. Revolted will be presented in Bailieboro Library at 7.30pm on 17th June, the day after Katie performs Joyced! in the National Library of Ireland for Bloomsday.
Admission €5
Phone 042 9665779 for further enquiries
Sponsored by Cavan Co Council Cavan Arts Office.