This week, the Kilkenny-based theatre group Barn Owl Players presents their most ambitious production: The McGowan Trilogy, written by Seamus Scanlon. This trilogy consists of three interconnected plays, each telling a self-contained story but linked by the character Victor.
The play is directed by Philip Hardy, a veteran director who recently concluded a thirty-year tenure as the Artistic Director of Barnstorm Theatre in Kilkenny.
It stars John Prendergast, Mags Whitely, Rosey Hayes, Eoin Nangle Ryan, Jim Carroll, Seán Hackett, and Ben Nunan, all familiar faces on the Kilkenny scene and known for their skills on screen and stage.
The Barn Owl Players have performed in various venues throughout Kilkenny City and are well-regarded for their dynamic and innovative approach to theatre. This marks the first production at Thomastown Concert Hall. They are excited to welcome new audiences from the surrounding county, regular attendees from Kilkenny City, and people from throughout the Southeast.
The play follows Victor McGowan, a character with a big personality and an air of danger. Set in the 1980s, the play looks at the effects of the ongoing Troubles, and the consequences for the characters caught up in it.
The play’s author, Scanlon, is an award-winning writer from Galway who now lives in New York. He says he never intended to be a writer.
“The McGowan Trilogy play was an accident! My writing as a whole was a pure accident. I had zero interest in writing, art and the theatre. I was from a working-class background in Galway, so engagement with the arts was not on the agenda. I only started writing when I went to live in Belfast.”
The challenges faced by living in Belfast encouraged Scanlon to pick up a pen. “I was impacted by the sights and sounds of daily mayhem – shootings, high jackings, barricades, murals, peace walls, military patrols, checkpoints, Saracens, army helicopters overhead all night. The chaos and incipient violence was overwhelming. I had a compulsion to write about the mayhem going on around me. Therapy was not on the agenda, so writing seemed to help me process what was happening.”
Scanlon won an award for My Beautiful Brash Beastly Belfast, which opened the door for further writing.
“I won the Gemini Magazine competition and was interviewed about it by Marie-Louise Muir on the BBC Ulster Arts Programme. I never had an interview before, so I had no idea what to expect. I also expected some pushback because of the nature of the story, but I was pleasantly surprised.”
Scanlon won a prize for his fiction writing entitled The Long Wet Grass, which ultimately became Act 2 of The McGowan Trilogy. However, he states that he never intended to write a trilogy of plays.
“There was no intention of writing a Trilogy initially. I had written Dancing at Lunacy for Nancy Manocherian and director Kira Simring of the Cell Theatre, New York after she heard me read crime fiction at the Cell. After that, she asked me if I could write a play with a 90-minute running time. So, I wrote The Long Wet Grass and Boys Swam Before Me from scratch and modified Dancing to have three interrelated one acts.”
The Cell first produced the trilogy in 2014 and won three awards at New York’s First Irish Drama Festival. Following this success, the trilogy went on tour and was first staged in Ireland, at the National Irish Language Theatre of Ireland, An Taibhdhearch in Galway.
Scanlon mentions that he began writing flash fiction and found that The McGowan Trilogy presented a unique challenge.
“The flash fiction writing process is usually very short. I almost never know what I am going to write before I start. It’s not very structured and is a bit chaotic. Also, early on, I thought you never needed to edit. It should arrive on the page perfectly. Now I know differently! Writing The McGowan Trilogy was difficult because I had a deadline and a timeline. I had to do rewrites for the production based on the actors hired and the physical layout of the theatre, so all of that was very alien to me and took a lot of adaptation and flexibility by me, which I am not renowned for!”
The Galway writer says that seeing actors perform his work makes him want to be a better writer.
“Actors can make any writing sound good even if it is flawed. They are so professional and invest it with so much energy and dedication that it makes me want to write better, so they won’t be embarrassed by any of the words, ideas, or stage directions the writer includes.”
Many playwrights were immersed in theatre from an early age, but Scanlon says he came to the theatre much later. However, one play did draw him in as a youngster.
“I almost never saw a play as a child, teenager or young adult. I did see Hatchet by Heno Magee in the Jes Hall in Galway as a teenager. I only went because it had hatchet in the title. I was there an hour before anyone else. I mostly avoided all artistic events as they were outside my cultural orbit. But I could get behind a play about a gang in Dublin’s inner city!”
The play has been performed as far away as Japan, and Scanlon expresses amazement at seeing different audiences connect with the trilogy’s diverse themes, despite it being a distinctly Irish story.
“I was amazed that the audience in Japan were taken by Takeshi Eguchi’s production because the settings are so specific to locations in Ireland, but the themes of regret, lost love, missed opportunities, and misunderstandings are universal. The play starred two Japanese heartthrobs, Shuri, and Tori Matsuzaka, so that might have helped fill the venues! It was strange to hear Irish place names like Callow Lake, Divis, Rahoon, etc, amid the lyrical Japanese language.”
He hopes that Kilkenny audiences embrace the play’s many themes. “I hope the audiences in Kilkenny will see that under the violence and black humour, there is humanity and sorrow. And I am sure they will. I am writing a play called To Hell or to Galway based on Cromwell’s siege of my hometown. I know Kilkenny suffered terribly as well. To Hell or to Thomastown has a ring to it, so maybe I will get invited back to do that down the line!”
Scanlon notes the dedication the Barn Owl Players have shown to the production. He states that seeing his work chosen for production validates his writing skills.
“I appreciate greatly how much work and effort that Philip and his team have put into this production. I have only seen passion and professionalism at every turn. For Philip to select the play was tremendous in the first place. I never think I can write well or adequately no matter what anyone says to me, but if a producer picks your play, I can believe for a while that I have written something that audiences find real and relatable.”
He appreciates the cast’s efforts and remarks that Prendergast, who plays Victor, will be fighting fit by the end of the production.
“The presence of Victor in all three of the one-act plays is demanding physically and emotionally. At least John will be super fit at the end of this run after practising the pogo for months on end.”
The McGowan Trilogy by Seamus Scanlon runs from 15th – 17th May 2025 in Thomastown Concert Hall, Kilkenny. Tickets are available to buy online at http://tiny.cc/BOP or by calling 086 855 4128
Words – Cara O’Doherty