Director Jim Culleton on Kinevane’s King and the vast wealth of Irish culture

By Andrew “Boots” Hardy (San Francisco International Arts Festival)

Director Jim Culleton is a man of wit and sincerity, with a musical voice and a disarming humility that draws you in and makes you feel like you are with family. It is a quality that has served him well at the helm of Dublin’s award-winning and aptly named Fishamble: The New Play Company which is bringing one of its latest creations, “King,”  written and performed by Pat Kinevane, to San Francisco in May.

Originally co-founded by Culleton and Fishamble’s Literary Officer, Gavin Kostick, as a student theater ensemble at Trinity College in Dublin in 1988, Fishamble has grown into an Irish powerhouse that champions more than half of the Emerald Isle’s new playwrights each year, and has brought Irish culture to the stage in two dozen countries worldwide.

During the pandemic, the worldwide vacuum of human contact left people starved for arts and culture. In response, the Irish government began to increase funding for the arts, channeling money to artists and organizations like Fishamble in order to keep the creative spirit alive.

Currently coordinating several international touring productions simultaneously, Fishamble—like many Irish artists who tour abroad—is supported by Culture Ireland, a government agency whose mission includes developing platforms to present the richness and quality of Irish creativity to an international audience.

Having just wrapped up performances of “King” in London, the company heads this week to Belgrade. Then it is on to New York and Los Angeles before finally making their way to the San Francisco International Arts Festival in May where the piece will be co-presented with Irish Culture Bay Area.

IN THE SHADOW OF TWO KINGS

About a year ago, Fishamble began their fifth collaboration with veteran playwright Pat Kinevane. “King” is a poignant and humorous one-person play that centers on a man named Luther, born the day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and named in honor of the famed civil rights leader.

A recluse who struggles with mental health issues, Luther benefits from the strength of his friendships in spite of the difficulty he experiences in trying to engage with other people. As a near shut-in, Luther’s psychological condition frustrates him as he prepares to leave his apartment to impersonate another man dubbed “king”: Elvis Presley.

“The play is really about human rights,” Culleton reflected. “And about justice, and about people being entitled to live a full and happy life regardless of who they are or where they come from.”

Like many of Fishamble’s productions, KING bridges an entire spectrum of emotion. Irish theater-goers interviewed on the street after the show’s early performances gushed over the play’s humor, passion, and tragedy, and spoke about being moved to both laughter and tears.

“Certainly audiences so far have felt that,” Culleton agrees. “It’s very, very funny in places, really hilarious. And then suddenly it can turn and be very moving and sad.”

“Life is like that, you know. Tears of laughter and tears of sorrow are not too far away, like in so much of Irish writing. There’s a thin line sometimes between what is tragic and what is funny.”

It is clear from talking to Jim Culleton that he feels an immense amount of pride in KING’s successes so far.

“It’s 80 minutes of high theatricality… You know you’re delving deep into the psyche of someone, that you’re being brought through the highs and lows of their life with them.”

AN AWARD-WINNING COLLABORATION

Pat Kinevane has collaborated with Fishamble for two decades. Their most recent production—a play titled Silent—won a Laurence Olivier Award, the United Kingdom’s most prestigious stage honor.

“Pat Kinevane the writer and performer is very interested in people on the margins of society, and in people who don’t have a voice,” Culleton observed.

It’s perhaps this shared sense of values that brings Fishamble and Kinevane together with such dynamic synergy.

“I suppose Fishamble, as ‘the new play company,’ is interested in—and constantly thinking about—who has a voice, who doesn’t have a voice, whose voice should we help facilitate, and bring to audiences and to the stage… We’re interested as well in people whose voices are forgotten… and who haven’t had the ability to have their stories told.”

Kinevane and Fishamble have won numerous honors together. In addition to the Olivier, other awards include: Fringe First, Helen Hayes, Herald Angel and Argus Angel, LA Stage Raw, Total Theatre, and Offie Awards.

Culleton has worked alongside Kinevane since the latter was a young actor before he wrote his first play. Culleton looks back on their shared path with fondness.

“Every three or four years, we come back to Pat. Luckily, he always has a new idea for a play. He’s a very imaginative, dynamic and unique performer and writer. It’s always very exciting working with him and seeing how we’re going to go on a new journey, a new adventure together.” Culleton laughed, “We hope that every three or four years he’ll continue to have a new idea in him.”

THE IRISH DIASPORA

There are more people of Irish descent living in the United States today than in Ireland. According to Google, in fact, one in ten Americans has Irish ancestry—about 31.5 million, more than six times Ireland’s current population of about 5 million.

Fishamble’s raison de vivre is to bring Irish culture and fresh Irish writers to the world stage. The company’s productions provide a means by which people with Irish ancestry experience their shared folklore.

It is a culture often built on pain and the island nation’s history of colonization, prejudice, and civil unrest. The performing arts, Culleton says, offer an avenue through which the Irish struggle can be expressed.

“There’s a sort of sadness in the Irish psyche, but I think what we’ve done over the years to deal with that is to share stories and laugh and tell jokes and play music and dance. Those are our ways of dealing with life. There’s a great kind of exuberance in Irish life as well.”

That uniquely Irish pairing of joy and sadness has gifted the world with such incredible writers as James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, as well as more contemporary writers like Marina Carr and Conor McPherson—and now, happily, Pat Kinevane as well.

“Pat is in that line of amazing Irish writers who have a lyricism and a poetry, and a kind of visceral quality to their writing,” Culleton said. 

BRINGING THE MISSION FULL CIRCLE

Fishamble brought a Margaret McAuliffe play to the United Irish Cultural Center in San Francisco last May. It was a coming-of-age story titled The Humours of Bandon, about McAuliffe’s own lived experience as a teenage Irish Dancer, and her impassioned pursuit of the Irish Open dance championship.

Returning Fishamble fans will see some similarities with KING: both are one-person plays, with incomparable writing and performing, bringing an abundance of energy and acting that reaches out across the stage and engages the audience.

But “King,” Culleton says, is more provocative and goes into far darker subject matter. Good for both the theater and non-theater crowds, Kinevane takes the audience on a more intense journey, with greater distance between the highs and lows.

Their much anticipated return to Northern California will be a double-boon to the local arts community: Regifting some of Fishamble’s wealth of experience to writers at the ground level, The New Play Company is also bringing their immensely successful “Show In A Bag” workshop to San Francisco this May. Fishamble alumni will be on hand for the workshop, helping new and aspiring Bay Area writers hone and develop their work. “Show In A Bag” has proven to be immensely popular: Tickets to the Washington, DC, event completely sold out.

The mission?

“To help other actors and performers create and generate and make and write their own shows and tour them around in an easily tour-able version.”

In the world of streaming and on-demand entertainment, why should theater and the performing arts remain relevant today?

“Theater is just so magical,” Culleton says wistfully. “You go into a dark room, you pay your money before you know what you’re going to get. You sit with lots of strangers, and you allow yourself to enter into a world and the lives of other people. I suppose I feel it’s even more important, more magical to come together and engage in our shared humanity. And if it’s done well, it can be thrilling and exhilarating…

 “When did you last give your television set a standing ovation?”

 

SFIAF presents the work of innovative artists from the Bay Area and around the world; many of the international artists make their US debut at the Festival. From 2003-23, SFIAF and more than 100 presenting partners have coordinated, presented and/or produced performances by over 600 arts ensembles from United States and 60 other countries, and presented hundreds of educational and community engagement  activities with diverse communities. The 2004 Festival will take place in San Francisco’ Mission District, from May 1st through May 12th. The Testival’s ongoing theme is “IN DIASPORA: I.D. for the New Majority.”

“King,” will be performed the Mission Cultural Center on May 8, 10th, and 11th. For further information click here.

For a full schedule of the 2024 Festival,  click here.

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TheatreStorm is a proud contributing supporter of the 2024 San Francisco International Arts Festival.

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