The Laughing Boy
The Laughing Boy was given its first stage production at The New Theatre, Dublin, from 31st August to 11th September, 2021
Dublin 1963 and Brendan Behan’s song The Laughing Boy has become the inspirational anthem of the political Left in Greece. Alexandra, a student and political activist, has travelled here to seek out the writer of the song and invite him to Greece to boost the struggle for Socialism.
Her search comes to an end in a Dublin pub but what she finds there is strange in the extreme. This is not the Brendan Behan she was expecting. In fact she is totally bewildered when two characters claim to be Brendan Behan, each with a different take on the legendary writer.
The play draws on Jack Harte’s engagement with Greece. In 1974 he was there to witness the fall of the Military Junta, and 40 years later he was back in Athens and discovered the huge impact of Brendan Behan’s song – The Laughing Boy. The play is an absorbing tale of theatrical and political history as well as an imagined portrayal of Brendan Behan at the end of his life.
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The Pleasureometer
When the Covid Lockdown closed the theatres of Ireland, the New Theatre in Temple Bar commissioned a series of 15-minute plays to be streamed live within the strictures of the Covid Guidelines as a festival called Acts of Defiance. Jack Harte’s play The Pleasureometer was one of them.
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Killing Grandad
Killing Grandad – a new play by Jack Harte, directed by Gerard Lee and featuring Michael Judd and Kevin McMahon was staged at The New Theatre, East Essex Street, Dublin 2, from 3rd to 14th March 2020.
The battle between good and evil, heroes and villains, is as old as time. Hector & Achilles, Darth Vader & Luke Skywalker - and, in Irish Mythology, Balor of the Evil Eye and the young Lugh! This satirical anti-war play attacks the very foundation stone of war – the concept of heroism.
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Lugh and Balor
The Theatre of Komotini in Thrace, Northern Greece, decided to mount a show that highlighted the engagement of the area with the Celts, also referred to as Gauls and Galatians. The nearby Ancient Theatre of Maroneia dates from around the time of the Celtic invasions. It is a hugely important archaeological site (see here) but they allow one night each year for a dramatic production, and in 2016 that night was allocated to the Theatre of Komotini for this particular show. They invited local writer, Christos Chartomatsidis, and Jack Harte as an Irish writer, to provide short plays based on Greek and Celtic mythology. The resultant show, We Call Them the Galatians, was mounted on 20th August, 2016, before a packed audience in the Ancient Theatre of Maroneia - 2,300 years ago it would have hosted the plays of Sophocles! Afterwards the show moved indoors to their own theatre in Komotini.
Jack Harte's play dealt with the confrontation of Lugh and Balor at the Battle of Moytura. It was translated into Greek and also published in the magazine Mandragoras.
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The Mysterious History of Things
This play was first produced at the Viking Theatre in Clontarf, Dublin. It ran for two weeks from 25 July to 6 August, 2016. Directed by Bairbre Ní Chaoimh, it featured actors Seamus O'Rourke and Zara Burdon Yeates.
The Mysterious History of Things takes a wry look at the current obsession with fame and celebrity. Vanity drives millionaires and vandals to inscribe their names on our city buildings. The desire of people to see their names inscribed in History leads to even more intense and devious stratagems. When two people arrive at the cottage of the Historian, it is clear they are each on a mission. Can history be written to order? Can it be re-written? This light-hearted but provocative comedy pokes fun at the vanity of the rich and powerful and at the most revered accounts of our national past.
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Language of the Mute
Jack Harte made his debut as a playwright with Language of the Mute, which ran for two weeks -24 August to 5 September, 2015- at the New Theatre, Dublin, to full houses and to general acclaim. In May 2016, the play toured theatres throughout Ireland
Directed by Liam Halligan, the play is exciting and holds the audience on the edge of their seats from beginning to end. It opens with two ex-students invading the classroom of their old teacher, taking him prisoner, and setting up a Kangaroo Court to try him for alleged offences. While the play deals with an historic incident of child abuse, it takes a broad look at how idealistic people can be exploited and abused through their idealism. It illustrates how someone with great charisma can use that charisma for unscrupulous purposes. And, as the title suggests, it is about our inability to use language to communicate.
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Other plays ready for production are:
On the Dark Side of the Moon
There are five male characters ranging in age from 30 to 60, and one female, a tomboyish girl of 16 approximately. Running time 100 mins approx.
The behaviour of individual sub-atomic particles is totally random and unpredictable. However their behaviour collectively delivers an outcome that is predictable and as close to certain as makes no difference. Does human behaviour replicate this?
Five men have established a social framework based on card-playing. They recognise the challenges presented by the randomness of the activity, but they have agreed parameters to deal with the element of chance. However, when the irrational is injected into their highly-organised random with the arrival of the young girl, the stability of their world is threatened.
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Bonds
There are four characters, two female (one late thirties, one late twenties) and two male (both late thirties).
Tension is running high in a small Irish Midlands town. The imminent closure of their perfectly viable local factory spreads panic. The anxiety and hurt are compounded when it is revealed that the vulture capitalist, planning the sale of the factory, was born and raised in the town. Back after 20 successful years in the US, William is now at the helm of a Hedge Fund determined to capitalise on Ireland’s vulnerability in the wake of the economic collapse. However, re-engagement with his two closest childhood friends, Sean and Gabrielle, ensures that the transaction becomes only too personal. They both have a stake in the factory now and will stop at nothing to keep it open. And William has personal scores to settle too. In small-town-Ireland the past is always present, nothing can be kept cold and dispassionate, everything happens at blood temperature.
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| The Island of Love
This play can be performed by six actors, four male, two female. Running time 100 mins approx.
We are our stories.
A brother and sister run a hotel they have inherited from their parents on an island off the west coast of Ireland. But the enterprise is sinking, and if they go so does the last of the island's traditional cultural life. Their particular culture is manifested in their stories. The arrival of two paramilitaries on the run and a researcher bring the dilemmas to a head.
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