Bob draws on family history for one-man show on IRA
Arts Week with Judy Murphy
Bob Kelly’s grandfather, Joe, was a young man when he joined the IRA in the 1930s, much like another Dubliner who later went on to gain fame as a writer, Brendan Behan. It was the early and troubled years of Irish independence, when these revolutionaries were intent on continuing the struggle for a united and free Ireland. But, when World War II broke out, Joe and hundreds of activists were interned in the Curragh Military Camp in Kildare.
De Valera’s Fianna Fáil government were responsible for this, viewing the group as a threat to Free State security. These internments were widely known about at the time. However, while contemporary Ireland has commemorated the events of 1916 and is currently marking the War of Independence, very little has been documented about that moment in Irish history, according to Bob.
The talented writer and actor has created a one-man show Tintown in a response to that silence, exploring his grandfather’s story and how one young man’s ideals were stripped away by reality.
Tintown, with its central character of Bernard Carroll, was first presented in 2016 as a work-in-progress at Sligo’s Hawkswell Theatre, where Bob, a graduate of the Lecoq Theatre School in Paris, had developed it. Based on interviews with internees, and directed by Niall Henry of Blue Raincoat Theatre, its first full production was in Blue Raincoat’s Factory Performance Space last April.
Tintown captures the story of the ideological conflict between IRA members in the Curragh that led to the organisation’s decline within the camp.
The Irish government had also used the Curragh to intern Allied and Axis prisoners of war from 1939 onwards, something that’s highlighted in the Department of Justice website, where there’s little reference to the local troublemakers, says Bob.
His grandfather was among them – Behan “would have been a contemporary of his at the camp”, he observes, but Joe’s family knew very about this.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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