PM O’Sullivan
Derek Dooley knew olden voices.
Just the way for him, a Danesfort native. “I grew up with my grandparents in The Sevenhouses area,” Dooley explains. “John Connolly and Liz Shea. That was my home house, in Graigue Lower. Granddad was born in 1906 and Granny was born in 1916. They were both from the parish of Piltown, Harristown and Mullenbeg, respectively. I was born on Christmas Eve in 1971.”
He elaborates in compelling terms: “It was very much a country setting. And you’re exposed to older people and to an older generation, because their sisters and brothers would be visiting. They were both from near Harristown, between Piltown and Mullinavat.
“They both had siblings in England. When they’d come home, I’d go down to South Kilkenny with them. And I have vivid memories, as a young lad, of the typical night before my grandaunt, my grandmother’s sister, would go back to London. They’d all meet in my granduncle’s house. The accordion was brought down and a couple of bottles of stout, and they would sing and tell stories and dance in the kitchen.”
Gratitude endures: “So I got exceptionally lucky to get in on the very end of that rural culture, of people providing their own entertainment. In a house. The culture of music, the culture of singing… And all of them had a song.”
He scrolls back, those voices and those gestures. A much older world pressed: “My grandfather, not so much. But my grandmother was full of superstition. The blackbirds on the ditch… Two of them meant something. One of them meant something else. A magpie… You’d see her doing this spit over her shoulder.
“It was, if a bird came in, a sign of something. There was all that sort of otherworld mystery, that there was some other force at play. That nature was giving signs and forebodings.”
This man believes in the virtues of immersion. Derek Dooley is a teacher, a Guidance Counsellor in Thomastown’s Grennan College. He is a longstanding volunteer in his home GAA club, someone who has researched the parish’s history on that front. There will be a book.
“The GAA joins up an awful lot,” he says. “We almost take it for granted.”
Derek Dooley stands as an actor as well, a fine actor. Nearly 40 years creaking boards, he will appear in Lake Productions’ upcoming revival of Conor McPherson’s The Weir (1997). “The part I’m playing is Jimmy,” he details. “Jimmy is in his forties, a mechanic who works part time, doing bits and pieces with Jack, who’s the local businessman.”
This play’s setting, five people in a pub, represents another aspect that holds close. Dooley feels McPherson mined the Irish psyche: “The opening scene of people coming in, after work, having a drink, the normal banter that goes on, is familiar to us. Just the small village/rural village background. That’s probably a lot of the attraction for audiences and why the play has been such a success.”
He slants back towards home ground, his own slice: “The Weir plummets deep into that Irish story telling tradition. Living a little bit up the road from Mowler O’Gorman’s was a massive influence on me. You would have three generations sitting together in that pub, teenagers to elderly men. I had the privilege of knowing Mick O’Gorman until he was over 100.”
Those evenings in that pub scored a groove: “You meet this in The Weir. The whole thing of making connections, of who was who. You meet that tracing. You meet that pishoguery. That whole thing about not going near the sceach tree in May. That’s something I would have been brought up with.”
Maybe closer to 50 years creaking boards, if you count winter days spent in Burnchurch NS. “Our two teachers there that time, Mrs McAlinney and Miss Diviney, were both interested in drama,” he recounts. “Every first day of December, the books would be put away and we’d spend about three weeks singing songs and practising sketches. The parents would come to the eventual Christmas concert, which took place in the school itself.”
Next act in Derek Dooley’s own development? Flick forward to secondary school. He specifies a cusp moment: “In 1986, Transition Year had come into the [Kilkenny] CBS. I decided that I’d have a go, not knowing what it was really about. It was still very new. We did a play, joined with the Loreto [Convent], John B Keane’s Many Young Men of Twenty. I got the part of Danger Mulally.”
Forces began to converge: “During that same year, I had my first work experience in the Kilkenny People office, where I met none other than Ger Cody. And then I got a part time job in the Kilkenny People at the weekends. And Ger would be saying: ‘How are the rehearsals going?’
“I had found drama. I remember on the last night we came out for the bow, and I could hear up from the audience: “A’ boy Danger! A’ boy Danger!” And I knew it was Ger Cody’s voice. And now he is putting on The Weir in Thomastown, 40 years later.”
Derek Dooley felt launched. A nascent journey had found its horizon. He had played Danger Mullally. He would go on to play the Dame in panto between 2002 and 2018. He would relish working on various forms of community theatre with Dónal Gallagher and Asylum Productions.
But first things first. Back then, all of this experience seemed both impossible and inevitable. Back in 1987, Derek Dooley was 16 and he just saw no other way.
He immersed himself in watching theatre. Excitement still stipples his voice: “At that time, the New Theatre Group were doing great stuff. You’d go to Sive and be mesmerized, blown away. Then, after Leaving Cert, I left the CBS and went up the road to the Seminary in St Kieran’s College, to study for the priesthood. And in my second year there I was made Head of Entertainment, of the ecclesiastical body.
“Every year, the seminarians put on a play. As Head of Entertainment, that task fell to me. We ended up doing Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! It was a major success.”
Gratitude comes in many forms and Derek Dooley knows this truth inside out: “After Seminary, I parted ways and didn’t follow through to ordination. It was a matter of deciding to study for a Bachelor of Divinity, in which I graduated from the Pontifical University in Maynooth.
“After that, I was out and about, and I was trying to find work, not knowing what to do with myself. It was a big decision I had made, a big life decision. I spent a while unemployed. I would always say theatre has saved me in some ways.”
For him, drama equates to life: “Okay, you’re doing the necessary things. The director is showing you the moves on stage. You’re thinking of the lines. You’re trying to give life, to animate – which comes from the Latin anima which means ‘to give soul to’.
“The challenging part – the thrilling part – is where I might be struggling, not getting this person at all. And you’re walking along the street, and you see a mannerism or you hear a comment or you observe a person, and say: ‘Yeah… That’s it. That’s what I need.’ It can be all of it or it can be a part of it.”
He lives for this click: “That’s where the creativity is. That’s the creative part of blending this character, finding this character within yourself. And then giving it animation. And that’s really the part that every actor brings. They all bring their own nuance to it, to any given part.”
Derek Dooley returns to specifics: “I was back in Kilkenny, after Maynooth, and I did a number of plays with the Paul and Anne Coady (Ormonde Players). The Watergate Theatre had opened. I went away in 1997, to do an MA in Pastoral Leadership at All Hallows College [Dublin]. At the end of that year, a teaching spot came up in Grennan College.”
Forces again converged: “One day, in 1998, I happened to meet Ger Cody, now manager of the Watergate. And I knew they were doing Philadelphia. So I said: “How’s Philadelphia going?” And Ger said: “Good. I might have a little part for you.” Couple of weeks later, he said: “I’d love you to play the part of Joe.” I was delighted.”
An arc tightened into a circle: “And then it dawned on me: ‘I’m going to be working with my idols…’ When I was going to the plays back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was looking at Dónal O’Brien, Mary Cradock, Brendan Corcoran, Colette Browne Ger Cody, Marina Boyd, Joe Murray, Ger Paterson, Tom O’Loughlin, Tony Patterson, Liam Conway, Dick Holland.
“For me, it would have been a pipe dream to be involved with them.” And look what happened.
The Weir runs at the Thomastown concert hall from March 12th. Cast includes: Ger Cody, Niall Morrissey, Dereek Dooley, Anne Murray and Joe Murray. Directed by Darren Donohue.
