'Pucked' to open Clonmel Junction Dome in arts festival

Cathal Ryan comes from The Ragg in Tipperary and jokes that there, you’re born with a hurley in your hand.

Immersed in the GAA from a young age, he ‘lived in that bubble’ until he found theatre at the age of 17.

With a granduncle involved in Thurles Drama Group, he went to plays often throughout childhood, but it never occurred to him that he could do it. Or, as he says, he never did it in case he’d miss training.

Cathal went to NUIG in Galway to study performance and made up for lost time by totally immersing himself in theatre and performance. Cathal was then accepted onto The Lir Academy's BA Acting degree, claiming one of the 16 places on offer.

Pucked as a play came out of a conversation that Cathal had with Brendan Maher, artistic director of the Source Arts Centre in Thurles “Brendan attended an online graduation play of mine that fellow Lir graduate and Clonmel native Jack Reardon directed, and told me to get in touch when I graduated.”

Cathal had always been interested in creating his own work and had started thinking of ideas around a celebration of the GAA and his love of hurling, combined with ideas of masculinity and expectations of young men, particularly those growing up in rural Ireland.

“With Pucked, I don’t want to teach anything but I’d hope that people coming to the play, particularly young men, might feel that there are thoughts in it that they’d share.”

With encouragement from dramaturg Gavin Kostick and Bryan Burroughs, both tutors at The Lir, Cathal approached the Source Arts Centre who funded a first draft of Pucked. ‘My classes with Bryan were a huge inspiration for the show” Cathal says. “He really opened my eyes to the limitlessness of theatre.”

Earlier in 2022, Cathal met up with director Jack Reardon, who directed the enormously successful Hunchback of Notre Dame community musical for In The Open Clonmel and Junction Festival.

Jack is an associate artist with Clonmel Junction Arts Festival and was looking for a script to direct for the launch of Junction Festival Dome as a theatre venue, and which will welcome audiences for the first time at the 2022 festival.

“When Cathal told me about Pucked, I asked to read it, and immediately got on the phone to Cliona Maher, artistic director of CJAF, to say that I thought I’d found a really exciting project” says Jack “I’m really interested in bringing theatricality to the one-man show format, and this script, as well as Cathal as a performer, allows so much scope for that.

2Over the last number of years, I've been incredibly fortunate to have a sensational design team support me. Jack Scullion, Eoin Lennon and Michael Stapleton share my ambition for bringing blockbuster theatre to Clonmel, and we’re excited to be the opening show for the Junction Dome, and the 2022 Festival’.

The play is as fast-moving as the game itself, bringing to life Matty Daly, a young hurler who dreams of making it to the Senior Team, his Mam and Dad, his teammates and arch-nemesis Conor Dooley, the inhabitants of the village where he lives - an Everytown of rural Ireland.

"The highs of playing, the lows of the WhatsApp group you’re not in. Funny and moving in turns, the passion for hurling is clear throughout in a show that puts the audience on the sidelines of a game and a life, written by an actor who knows every move from the inside out.

With Source Arts Centre and Clonmel Junction Festival co-producing Pucked, this is a chance for Tipperary theatre to bring an exciting and topical new show to audiences.