I’m Cork to the core and I grew up in Doneraile, but then Dad got a job as a storeman in Moore Park Research Centre so we moved to Fermoy. In time I went on to marry Jacinta in 1988, whose father, Jim Kiely*, also worked in Moore Park, as a grassland scientist.
My mother’s side of the family were farmers from Clonakilty and my mother was a teacher.
I had wanted to be a soldier, but I failed the cadet medical because of being colour blind, so I got a job with TSB in 1983. I worked for them for 15 years and looked after their agricultural lending portfolio. When I started, I didn’t know the back end of the cow from the front, but I learned by going out to farms one day a week for tuition about the different enterprises, about leasing milk quotas and so on. The 80s were a difficult time for farmers, with very high interest rates. Going out to farms gave me a great flavour of farming and the farmers really respected the fact that I did that.
A dramatic leap
By 1992 I was falling out of love with banking and falling in love with theatre, however. At that time, the banks took lending central into Dublin, so it became more city-structured, and got really complicated because you’d be there trying to explain what somatic cell count was over the phone and that a new milking parlour was required and so on. I got really frustrated with it.
Before that I had got involved in musical theatre in Mallow. It was in my blood really as Dad was an actor with the Doneraile amateur group and Mum was the make-up lady and that’s where they met. I went on to be director with Mallow Pilgrim Players and we did loads of shows.
In 1996 I made the jump out of banking after seeing an ad for an artistic director/financial controller with the Everyman Theatre. After five years with them, I went to the London Academy to do a director’s course and I spent four years teaching and working there.
Travelling theatre
I’d always wanted to establish a fit-up [old style travelling] theatre company though, and in 2005, after returning home, I set up Blood In The Alley along with playwright Micheál Lovett, lighting designer Elizabeth Powell and actor Michael Patric [the actor who played An Cailín Ciúin’s real father].
We chose that name because handball alleys were always dramatic places when we were growing up! We started touring with a show featuring Joan Sheehy, an actress and lifelong friend. From the start the company’s focus has been on the staging of new and original theatre, as well as exciting and vibrant adaptations of repertoire theatre.
Joan is now directing the Mary Lavin short story that she has adopted [not adapted] for stage and I am producing it. Its final performance will be in Mary Lavin’s home town of Bective, Co Meath from 1-5 August.
Geoff Gould, founder of the fit-up theatre company, Blood in the Alley
Building
The fit-up shows only happen in July/August so, for work after we came back, I spent two years mixing concrete on a building site. I wasn’t the greatest builder, but as one of the lads on the site used to say ‘at least you’re entertaining.’
A few tough years followed when building went to the wall after the Tiger and the pandemic was difficult also, but we’re still here. In the 1990s there were 56 independent theatre companies and now there are only nine. We are grateful to Cork County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland for all the support they give us.
We now run nine venues in west Cork and we go out to the islands as well. Lately I’ve been mentoring drama groups in Galway and Clare about setting up their own fit-up theatre companies too.
Further education
I set about learning Mandarin in 2010. That was after Cork twinned with Shanghai and we’d taken three of Conall Creedon’s plays there in 2009. None of us were even able to say hello over there. I thought it would be useful, work wise, because of the developing contacts with China and now I’m the only person in Ballydehob that can order a Chinese without looking at the menu. I studied it as part of my degree course, along with English, in UCC and spent a year in Shanghai for further studies after that. Since then, I’ve completed a masters in Irish film and theatre in 2017 and am still working on a PhD in contemporary theatre.
Country life has involved a dramatic move recently for my wife and I back to Clashmore, near Dungarvan in Co Waterford, to her dad’s family farm where the house had a tree growing up through the middle of it. We spent 14 months doing it up with the help of the builder who’d found me entertaining. I had worked with lime builders from Cornwall and that knowledge was very useful during the renovations too. We have a beautiful home now. I think when you build a house you almost become part of it. We have a veg garden and bee hives now on the 10 acres and I have a tiny vintage tractor, a Mitsubishi Izeji tractor /1980, that gives local farmers the opportunity to slag me at the annual tractor run!
in the Middle of the Fields
In The Middle of the Fields by Mary Lavin is an evocative story that centres around a young widow who displays a strong, independent spirit in running her farm. An encounter one night with a neighbouring farmer becomes emotionally charged and unsettling, posing provocative questions about past passions in a shifting and surprising story.
Kathleen McMahon, Mary Lavin’s granddaughter and a writer herself, has given the production her stamp of approval.
“I saw the production in Kilmallock, Co Limerick in 2021 and it was magical. It will be just amazing to see it travel to Co Meath, where Mary Lavin lived and wrote, and where the story is set.”
eventbrite.ie/e/bringing-mary-lavin-to-life-in-the-middle-of-a-field-tickets-649140485667
*Jim Kiely passed away earlier this summer.
Read more
Stone Masonry in west Wicklow: meet Petra O’Flaherty
Celebrating 60 years of showing ponies in Killusty
I’m Cork to the core and I grew up in Doneraile, but then Dad got a job as a storeman in Moore Park Research Centre so we moved to Fermoy. In time I went on to marry Jacinta in 1988, whose father, Jim Kiely*, also worked in Moore Park, as a grassland scientist.
My mother’s side of the family were farmers from Clonakilty and my mother was a teacher.
I had wanted to be a soldier, but I failed the cadet medical because of being colour blind, so I got a job with TSB in 1983. I worked for them for 15 years and looked after their agricultural lending portfolio. When I started, I didn’t know the back end of the cow from the front, but I learned by going out to farms one day a week for tuition about the different enterprises, about leasing milk quotas and so on. The 80s were a difficult time for farmers, with very high interest rates. Going out to farms gave me a great flavour of farming and the farmers really respected the fact that I did that.
A dramatic leap
By 1992 I was falling out of love with banking and falling in love with theatre, however. At that time, the banks took lending central into Dublin, so it became more city-structured, and got really complicated because you’d be there trying to explain what somatic cell count was over the phone and that a new milking parlour was required and so on. I got really frustrated with it.
Before that I had got involved in musical theatre in Mallow. It was in my blood really as Dad was an actor with the Doneraile amateur group and Mum was the make-up lady and that’s where they met. I went on to be director with Mallow Pilgrim Players and we did loads of shows.
In 1996 I made the jump out of banking after seeing an ad for an artistic director/financial controller with the Everyman Theatre. After five years with them, I went to the London Academy to do a director’s course and I spent four years teaching and working there.
Travelling theatre
I’d always wanted to establish a fit-up [old style travelling] theatre company though, and in 2005, after returning home, I set up Blood In The Alley along with playwright Micheál Lovett, lighting designer Elizabeth Powell and actor Michael Patric [the actor who played An Cailín Ciúin’s real father].
We chose that name because handball alleys were always dramatic places when we were growing up! We started touring with a show featuring Joan Sheehy, an actress and lifelong friend. From the start the company’s focus has been on the staging of new and original theatre, as well as exciting and vibrant adaptations of repertoire theatre.
Joan is now directing the Mary Lavin short story that she has adopted [not adapted] for stage and I am producing it. Its final performance will be in Mary Lavin’s home town of Bective, Co Meath from 1-5 August.
Geoff Gould, founder of the fit-up theatre company, Blood in the Alley
Building
The fit-up shows only happen in July/August so, for work after we came back, I spent two years mixing concrete on a building site. I wasn’t the greatest builder, but as one of the lads on the site used to say ‘at least you’re entertaining.’
A few tough years followed when building went to the wall after the Tiger and the pandemic was difficult also, but we’re still here. In the 1990s there were 56 independent theatre companies and now there are only nine. We are grateful to Cork County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland for all the support they give us.
We now run nine venues in west Cork and we go out to the islands as well. Lately I’ve been mentoring drama groups in Galway and Clare about setting up their own fit-up theatre companies too.
Further education
I set about learning Mandarin in 2010. That was after Cork twinned with Shanghai and we’d taken three of Conall Creedon’s plays there in 2009. None of us were even able to say hello over there. I thought it would be useful, work wise, because of the developing contacts with China and now I’m the only person in Ballydehob that can order a Chinese without looking at the menu. I studied it as part of my degree course, along with English, in UCC and spent a year in Shanghai for further studies after that. Since then, I’ve completed a masters in Irish film and theatre in 2017 and am still working on a PhD in contemporary theatre.
Country life has involved a dramatic move recently for my wife and I back to Clashmore, near Dungarvan in Co Waterford, to her dad’s family farm where the house had a tree growing up through the middle of it. We spent 14 months doing it up with the help of the builder who’d found me entertaining. I had worked with lime builders from Cornwall and that knowledge was very useful during the renovations too. We have a beautiful home now. I think when you build a house you almost become part of it. We have a veg garden and bee hives now on the 10 acres and I have a tiny vintage tractor, a Mitsubishi Izeji tractor /1980, that gives local farmers the opportunity to slag me at the annual tractor run!
in the Middle of the Fields
In The Middle of the Fields by Mary Lavin is an evocative story that centres around a young widow who displays a strong, independent spirit in running her farm. An encounter one night with a neighbouring farmer becomes emotionally charged and unsettling, posing provocative questions about past passions in a shifting and surprising story.
Kathleen McMahon, Mary Lavin’s granddaughter and a writer herself, has given the production her stamp of approval.
“I saw the production in Kilmallock, Co Limerick in 2021 and it was magical. It will be just amazing to see it travel to Co Meath, where Mary Lavin lived and wrote, and where the story is set.”
eventbrite.ie/e/bringing-mary-lavin-to-life-in-the-middle-of-a-field-tickets-649140485667
*Jim Kiely passed away earlier this summer.
Read more
Stone Masonry in west Wicklow: meet Petra O’Flaherty
Celebrating 60 years of showing ponies in Killusty
SHARING OPTIONS