Page 145 - Gonzaga at 60
P. 145
Throughout my ime in Gonzaga I was always as involved as I could have
been with the various dramaic producions. I donned a dress and lipsick
along with all the other confused 12 year olds for our 1st year opera, a large
false moustache and a false Russian accent for our 5th year opera and the
most menacing expression I could muster for our 6th year performance of
the Crucible. However, my abiding memory is of our 4th year producion
of Roddy Doyle’s “Brown Bread”. Iniially the transiion year coordinators
had been quite scepical and had asked us to tone down the language.
However when we put it to Mr Pots he simply responded “You can’t do a
Roddy Doyle play without the fucking swearing.” A couple of weeks later
we staged a two-hour marathon of expleives to a shocked audience. I sill
count it as some of the most fun I have ever had on stage.
Ater Gonzaga I went on to Trinity to study Business Economics
and Social Studies, though quickly dropped all aspects of business and
economics – the subjects that might make me in any way employable
– and eventually let with a degree in poliical science and sociology.
However the bulk of my ime in University was spent in Players Theatre rather than lecture
theatres. Over the four years I was there I was involved in the wriing, direcing producing and
Above: Comedy performing of about 25 plays, most of fairly dubious arisic merit. I was also a member of the
team Dead Cat embarrassingly named H-BAM, an award winning student comedy group who performed at
Bounce. Below: the Edinburgh Fringe Fesival several imes.
Dead Cat Bounce H-BAM broke up when we graduated and its members all went their separate ways. I
with Shane O’Brien
on the left moved on to DIT, where I sold my soul for an MSc in Adverising. I igured wriing ads would be
an easy way of being creaive without having to live on the breadline. I ended up working as
copywriter for two and a half years, wriing print, radio and TV ads for various big brands. The
most notable of which was a TV ad for Carlsberg featuring Jack Charlton
and a group of other Irish football managers.
During that ime I began wriing sketches the members of Dead Cat
Bounce. We were all living together in Ringsend geing bored with our
jobs. None of us had been on stage since University and we all missed it,
we so decided to put on a show. I am aware of how camp that sounds, but
it’s what we always did with out spare ime in college so it seemed like a
reasonable thing to do. Our irst performance took place in the Project
Arts Centre on 22nd January 2008. As it happened an execuive from
RTE atended the show and we were ofered a development deal almost
immediately. A couple of months later we gave up our jobs to become full
ime writers and comedians.
Since then I’ve been lucky enough to tour to comedy fesivals all over the
world with Dead Cat Bounce. We’ve performed at the Montreal Just for
Laughs Fesival, Edinburgh Fringe Fesival, Kilkenny Cat Laughs, London’s
Big Joke Fesival, the Bulmer’s Internaional Comedy Fesival, the Adelaide
Fringe Fesival, the Melbourne Comedy Fesival and most recently the Sydney Comedy Fesival
where we picked up the Jury Prize at the fesival awards. We made our TV debut in January
of 2009, with our pilot airing as part of RTÉ’s Project Ha Ha. We’ve also started developing
with the BBC and have made a series of online sketches with them that will be released this
summer.
Shane O’Brien
Class of 2001
been with the various dramaic producions. I donned a dress and lipsick
along with all the other confused 12 year olds for our 1st year opera, a large
false moustache and a false Russian accent for our 5th year opera and the
most menacing expression I could muster for our 6th year performance of
the Crucible. However, my abiding memory is of our 4th year producion
of Roddy Doyle’s “Brown Bread”. Iniially the transiion year coordinators
had been quite scepical and had asked us to tone down the language.
However when we put it to Mr Pots he simply responded “You can’t do a
Roddy Doyle play without the fucking swearing.” A couple of weeks later
we staged a two-hour marathon of expleives to a shocked audience. I sill
count it as some of the most fun I have ever had on stage.
Ater Gonzaga I went on to Trinity to study Business Economics
and Social Studies, though quickly dropped all aspects of business and
economics – the subjects that might make me in any way employable
– and eventually let with a degree in poliical science and sociology.
However the bulk of my ime in University was spent in Players Theatre rather than lecture
theatres. Over the four years I was there I was involved in the wriing, direcing producing and
Above: Comedy performing of about 25 plays, most of fairly dubious arisic merit. I was also a member of the
team Dead Cat embarrassingly named H-BAM, an award winning student comedy group who performed at
Bounce. Below: the Edinburgh Fringe Fesival several imes.
Dead Cat Bounce H-BAM broke up when we graduated and its members all went their separate ways. I
with Shane O’Brien
on the left moved on to DIT, where I sold my soul for an MSc in Adverising. I igured wriing ads would be
an easy way of being creaive without having to live on the breadline. I ended up working as
copywriter for two and a half years, wriing print, radio and TV ads for various big brands. The
most notable of which was a TV ad for Carlsberg featuring Jack Charlton
and a group of other Irish football managers.
During that ime I began wriing sketches the members of Dead Cat
Bounce. We were all living together in Ringsend geing bored with our
jobs. None of us had been on stage since University and we all missed it,
we so decided to put on a show. I am aware of how camp that sounds, but
it’s what we always did with out spare ime in college so it seemed like a
reasonable thing to do. Our irst performance took place in the Project
Arts Centre on 22nd January 2008. As it happened an execuive from
RTE atended the show and we were ofered a development deal almost
immediately. A couple of months later we gave up our jobs to become full
ime writers and comedians.
Since then I’ve been lucky enough to tour to comedy fesivals all over the
world with Dead Cat Bounce. We’ve performed at the Montreal Just for
Laughs Fesival, Edinburgh Fringe Fesival, Kilkenny Cat Laughs, London’s
Big Joke Fesival, the Bulmer’s Internaional Comedy Fesival, the Adelaide
Fringe Fesival, the Melbourne Comedy Fesival and most recently the Sydney Comedy Fesival
where we picked up the Jury Prize at the fesival awards. We made our TV debut in January
of 2009, with our pilot airing as part of RTÉ’s Project Ha Ha. We’ve also started developing
with the BBC and have made a series of online sketches with them that will be released this
summer.
Shane O’Brien
Class of 2001
