John Gaughan is expecting the results of his Junior Cert in mid September, but as of Tuesday, the student of Gort Community School wasn’t worrying about exam results, because he had an opening night looming.

John, from Clarinbridge, is a member of the 19-strong cast of Druid’s production of Sean O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie which had a technical rehearsal on Monday, the day before he talked to The Connacht Tribune. Monday was actually due to be the first preview night, but the technical demands of this play are so great that extra time was needed.

“The dress rehearsal went really well,” he says. “There were a couple of people in the theatre and it’s good to have people there. This is a huge production, the biggest since DruidSynge.”

John knows just how big DruidSynge was, because he and his brother Joe both appeared in that production when Druid staged all of Synge’s plays together. The Gaughan boys shared roles in Riders to the Sea, The Tinker’s Wedding and Deirdre of the Sorrows. It was a project that saw them play Galway, Dublin, Edinburgh and Inis Meáin in 2005 and travel to America, to New York in Minneapolis in 2006.
“I knew it was big,” he says that mammoth endeavour. “But I didn’t appreciate how big it was.”

Now he’s older and “I appreciate more what I’m doing because I see the size of the whole production”.

John is one of five young people who have joined the company for this production of O’Casey’s expressionistic tragicomedy about World War I, which centres on footballing hero Harry Heegan whose life is changed inexorably by his experience of war.

John and his four young fellow actors are stretcher bearers in the play which takes its audience from the tenements of Dublin to the battlefields of France and back to Dublin where Harry witnesses how life will never be the same again.

“We come on, sing a song and carry dead bodies on stage,” is John’s succinct explanation of his work on stage. It’s an extremely powerful scene, he adds. The young cast members also appear in crowd scenes where they play extras.

The teenager doesn’t care about the size of the role he plays.
“To be used in any way I’m happy, as long as it’s something to do with Druid, who are top of the list.”

He’d never seen an O’Casey play before The Silver Tasssie and is impressed. “It’s a really good play, the whole aspect of what’s going on, and what happens to Harry is really sad.”

As a young man in today’s Ireland, John can’t imagine what it was like. “Back then they’d have been sent out and expected to fight for their country and do it, having the knowledge that they were going to die. It’s hard to imagine it now, because our lives are so easy. It makes you appreciate what you’ve got.”

He is really enjoying the rehearsal process.
“Sometimes they are so intense you have to concentrate really hard and then everyone lets themselves go afterwards.”

Initially John had a light rehearsal schedule but as the show has drawn closer “we are needed more and more. If we are not needed we go out to the stalls and watch what is going on”.

It is fantastic training for the young man who is also an accomplished singer and who is having his voice professionally trained.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.