Land-deal drama set in bathroom bubbles over with savage humour

Date Published: {J}

By Dara Bradley

John McManus is one man who’s delighted the recession hit. The Cavan native worked as a plasterer during the hectic years of the building boom and rarely had the time to concentrate on his passion – writing.

When the building work dried up, McManus’s creative juices began to flow but even during the busy Celtic Tiger era it was clear he had a talent for writing drama.

At a meeting over coffee – he opts for a pint of Guinness instead – McManus is shy, laidback, possibly even insecure or uncomfortable about discussing his achievements and it becomes clear why the 31-year-old needed some forceful encouragement from his mother to pursue writing.

Mammy’s persistence paid off though when his first radio play written back in 2005, No Hate Going To Loss, which was written in a matter of hours, scooped a fairly prestigious national award and was broadcast on RTÉ radio.

“I wasn’t going to enter, it’s just my mother sent away for the form and she made me do it. She knew I was good at it (writing). I didn’t even know there were such things as radio plays – I wasn’t really in the field even in terms of listening to them. One day I just wrote it and had to drive up to Dublin the next day because I’d missed the posting deadline. I didn’t expect to win, I just did it to please my mother,” he says.

Win he did and three years later, McManus, who had no formal writing training, entered another radio play Will You Swap Your Knees With Me? in the same competition and came third.

The two plays and awards brought McManus to the attention of theatre company Druid, who was clearly impressed with his raw talent, and his first ‘big break’ came in July 2008 when his stage play, A Lock of Fierce Roars, received a rehearsed reading as part of Druid Debuts in the Galway Arts Festival.

“It went really well and got good reviews,” recalls McManus, although Druid was not convinced he was ready for a full professional stage production.

“I was working with them (Druid) for a year or so and I showed them my plays but they rejected them all – we kept working on a lot of the shows but eventually they told me I was five years of hard work away from being produceable as a playwright. I’ll never forget it,” he laughs, just weeks away from the opening night of The Quare Land in the Galway Arts Festival, his first play to receive a professional production.

After the Druid setback, McManus “basically gave up and kinda quit” writing but then his second break came in October last year.

“I kind of gave up then but just before I left Galway I saw in the paper that the Galway Theatre Festival had put out a call for scripts. They picked four scripts, including mine, and did stage readings during the Theatre Festival and they picked The Quare Land [to go to full production].”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.