Fin Keegan

My play Grace of the Median, a comedy of Hiberno-American errors, got a public reading, with actors, in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, on July 19th:

I am an Irish rock. Whoever treads on me–Norman or Gael, peasant or prince, child or crone–is all one to me. Civilization itself is but five minutes old in my day-long life; the British Empire, the Irish Republic, Eurovision, the blink of an eye…

It was a really useful exercise for me: I cut quite a bit of the text as the week progressed and have since, as a direct result of feedback, inserted 2 new scenes, made innumerable microcuts, and plan to redraft before I submit the play for a full performance.

The event was produced by Painted Filly Theatre Company, directed by Louise Lowe, and featured a great cast: Christopher Samuel Carroll, Derval Cromie, Mark Gordon, Brian McGovern, Sarah-Jayne Quigley, and Lorna Quinn. (Thank you to all–and to any of you that came on the day.)

Image: ‘The Road to Ragged Mountain’ by Chris Seufert on Flickr

My short story “Ursula’s Ghost” is in Crannóg Magazine’s summer issue (affording me the great pleasure of reading it at the launch event in Galway). The piece is a spooky little number about a returned emigrant with blood on her hands…

Was she thinking of the man she had just killed? No. She was back living in Ireland after twenty years away in America and, perhaps to take her mind off things, was idly flicking through the changes she had found.

What had she noticed? The cracked pavements, with their teeming weedlife, for one; washing lines and lace curtains; the smell of rain and the sight of rust; the smokers stooped about doors; the Slav and English accents everywhere; the stone and the grey and piped music and yes the damp, the mist, the rain.

You can get a copy via the Crannóg website.

Image: ‘Welcome, ghosts’ by The Devil is in The Details on Flickr

I just got some nice reviews of my short play Sing, Hibernia, courtesy of the excellent Painted Filly, the theatre company which produced the piece at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, a little while back.

All credit, while I’m on the subject, to Director Duncan Molloy and lead actors Sarah-Jayne Quigley and Colm O’Brien, all of whom did sterling work: I was whisked off after the performance by family and friends and wished I could have shaken them all by the hand.

Here are some choice quotes from the papers:

Fin Keegan’s Sing, Hibernia is the brilliant one, an exuberantly satiric and acid-edged jab at the pleasure-sated offspring of the Celtic Tiger. A couple lie in fine clothes, literally eating the heads off each other with spoons, while a line of black-clad servants–”our friends from the accession states”–leap to push the shuffle button on their iPods and clean stilettos with a tissue.
-Daily Mail

The sardonic zenith has to be Fin Keegan’s riotous Sing, Hibernia which somehow manages to send up middle-class drug-taking, attitudes to immigration and globalisation, all in a rich Synge-like English.
-Metro Dublin

The Irish Times also made a passing reference in its review of the evening to “Fin Keegan’s amusing Celtic folklore update”

Image: ‘Broadway’ by Timothy Neesam on Flickr

My political satire Utopia Closes is currently was recently a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The winner will be decided by reader response. You can download a sample chapter at

www.amazon.com/dp/B00121WDG0

The best reader review will be given a $2000 token by Amazon so, beside my undying gratitude for your support, you may get a free shopping spree!