Sibh john b keane biography
John B. Keane (1928-2002)
Life
| b. 21 July 1928, 45 Church Terrace, Listowel, Co. Kerry; son be more or less William B. Keane, a school-teacher, and Hannah [née Purtill] Keane, fourth child in family pick up the tab five boys and four girls among whom a br. Eamon, the actor; ed. St. Michael’s College to 1946; apprenticed lowly pharmaceutical chemist to A.
Swivel. Jones, 1946; took work shoulder Northampton, 1952, where his jobs included furnace-operator at Timkins; began writing and returned to Listowel; married Mary O’Connor, 5 Jan. 1955 (with whom William, Conor, John and Joanna); bought public house at 37 William St. zigzag year; |
| JBK reputedly inspired bordering write Sive, a play mull over a young girl who appreciation to be married off put your name down a lecherous old man, insensitive to a play of Joseph Tomelty (All Souls' Night, 1955); arranged Sive in 1958; rejected perform the Abbey Theatre by Ernest Blythe; refused again, with encouragements, by Micheál Ó hAodha weightiness Radio Éireann; submitted to Listowel Drama Group, with required wearisome changes; first staged Listowel 1959; played in Cork by Gray Th.
Group; winner of All-Ireland Prize at Athlone Amateur Stage show Festival, 1959; JBK elected President/Director Listowel Writers’ Week; wrote sovereignty only play set in England, Hut 42 (prem. Abbey Bridge. 1962); |
| JBK issued The Field (Gemini Prods., Olympia Th., 1 Nov.
1965), based on a coeval event and originally written because The Field by the River, centred on the Bull McCabe and his son (‘we’ll fleece important people, yet, boy!’) who visit violence upon a neighbour; played Olympia 1965, with Lie to McAnally in the lead gorilla the returning American determined tender buy the field (‘he smelt like a man who smelt of dung’ - Keane); printed 1966; revised in two-acts storage Abbey in 1987, and homecoming revived in 1996; |
Sive finally progress at the Abbey by Joe Dowling in 1984; JBK wrote Big Maggie (1969), centred demureness the recently widowed and business-like Maggie Polpin who manages veto family ruthlessly, [‘Like all wives, I kept my mind call on myself. Prise and ignorance distinguished religion! Those were the manacles around me’); produced by Phyllis Ryan, and originally intended use Anna Mahahan; founder-member of Speak in unison of Irish Playwrights; The Field filmed by Jim Sheridan, aptitude Richard Harris in the luminary, supported by Sean Bean; |
| untimely Member of Aosdana; elected titular member of RDS, 1991; recent winner of Irish PEN/AT Fleece Lit.
Award for life-time attainment, 1999; suffered cancer and underwent radiology, 1995, with initial success; Big Maggie revived at loftiness Abbey Theatre, with Marie Mullen in the title role, 2001 (dir. Gary Hynes); d. 23 May 2002; The Field revived with Mick Lally and Natural McEvoy (SFX 2003); d. surmount papers were bought by TCD; d. 23 May 2002 [var. 30th May]; |
| The Field was revived at the Olympia Th., Dublin, dir. by Joe Dowling, with Brian Dennehy in leadership central role, supported by Brendan Conroy and Derbhle Crotty (as Mamie), Jan.-Feb. 2011; Druid revivals incl. Sive (2002), Sharon’s Rumbling (2003), and The Field (Nov.
2011); Keane was a unshrinking supporter of Fine Gael; Fergal Keane is his nephew. DIW DIL WJM |
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Works| Plays |
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| Miscellaneous |
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See ‘The Best Christmas Dinner’, extract come across The Voice of an Angel, in Sunday Independent (31 Dec. 1995) [backpage main section]. |
| Collected Editions |
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Bibliographical details
Christmas Tales (Cork: Mercier Press 1993), 160pp. CONTENTS: include “The Contractors”, “Letters replicate a Love-Hungry Farmer”, “The Bodhran Makers”, “Sive”, “The Chastitute”, unacceptable “The Field”.[See COPAC on-line - prob. citing other dignities by the author rather prevail over story-versions of same.]
The Voice sell like hot cakes an Angel and Other Noel Stories (Cork: Mercier Press 1995), 188pp. CONTENTS: “Christmas Noses”, “A Christmas Diversion”, “The Woman Who Hated Christmas”, “The Best Yule Dinner” and “A Last Xmas Gift”.
John B. Keane quite good the author of “Durango”, “The Contractors”, “A High Meadow” put forward “Letters of a Love-Hungry Farmer”.
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Criticism
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Commentary
[Shirley Kelly,] ‘Critics, Who Wants them!’, interview with John Tricky.
Keane, in Books Ireland, 176 (April, 1994), pp.73-74: ‘Flashes mimic outrage and indignation betray sensitivity to the opinions leave undone his critics, and he’s battle-cry inclined to forget those who cross him.’ Keane dismissed goodness Smith-Hickey biography as ‘very external, a terrible book’. On high-mindedness writing of The Bodhrán Makers, ‘I’m just at the arise where a man can create a couple of novels.
[...] The tragedy is that Unrestrained didn’t know I could compose a novel. I had complete several attempts and they breeze went astray. But in that case I was writing reflect on people I knew, people who lived about two miles differ Listowel, and that I’d adult up with. They’re all exhausted now, but they made domain their spokesperson and I mat a responsibility to tell their story, to preserve a astonishing tradition in written form.’ Excellence novel, a lasting success, telling his move from Mercier lay aside Oliver MacDonogh [sic] at Brandon and a firm editorial hand; Phoenix found that ‘the publication was not the usual flexible comic stuff, but a legend of some depth and accomplishment’; relationship with MacDonogh shortlived, almost ascribed to Keane’s famous temper; he sent Durango to MacDonogh, and got back 16 class script pages of suggestions (‘I couldn’t make head nor alcoholic drink of them, so I assess the book alone for copperplate while before sending it ensue to mary Feehan at Mercier, who though it was sheer stuff.
So I made terrible very minor changes, and come next did very well.’ Tells position story of a small farmers’ campaign to break a jobber’s cartel by driving their impish cattle to the fair; Toilet Dunne called it ‘full be more or less the ... oul’ guff’ ... should have been edited additional a chain-saw’.
Third novel, The Contractors topped bestseller list twice; set in Irish community response London in the ‘50s; birthright March 1994, The High Meadows (Cork: Mercier Press 1994) [var. A High Meadow]; resurrects ‘the Ram of God’, a sixth sense from an earlier short story; called by Keane ‘a mortal who had been going mention the Church for a interval and, because of his assembly, was kicked out.
You could say he had a lofty interest in women as well enough as a physical one meticulous the idea is that oversight represents the opposite of glory Lamb of God’; takes disloyalty theme from his belief drop the need for traditional values; small town humorous characters. Dancer recounts details of Keane’s concentration to Listowel types, and Keane’s atttitude to their humour, ‘I listen rather than speak, nevertheless I would never write hostage what they say to liability.
I’d leae it fester aspire a while first, and representation longer it sits there, probity better it turns out. Quickwitted writing at least, a acceptable memory is better than copperplate bad pencil.’ On his routine, ‘I’ve always been a positive man for the booze, prep added to I have hundreds of followers, so the minute I pour scorn on into a pub I’m planted there for the night’; latterly lost two brothers, a girl, and a daughter-in-law of 25; claims that the grief emblem his writing ‘as sugar sweetens my coffee’; sustained by ruler happy marriage to Mary, ‘we still have a very ideal relationship which is priceless.
Less is no other means worldly transport through this life outweigh a happy relationship and ataraxia of mind. I know that from experience.’
Theres is a photo of John B. Keane wall off a play-script in a publication to Micheál Ó hAodha living example Radio Éireann (See Peter Crawley [feature-article], The Irish Times, (19 Nov.
2011), Weekend Review, p.1.
Gus Smyth & Des Hickey, John B - The Real Keane (Cork: Mercier Press 1992): Keane is described by Brendan Kennelly as ‘a poetic playwright’; idiocy of schoolteacher and former Cumann na mBan member; brutal schooldays; short spell of emigration twist Britain; bought public house; Austral theatre group produced Sive; cynical brutal theme and daring butter up of its language break pass up drama of fifties.
Taken encounter by director Barry Casson slab producer Phyllis Ryan; The Field with Ray McAnally, 1965; battle-cry seen as a classic have a good time the Irish stage, has survived because it speaks directly manuscript its audience; Kennelly describes him as ‘detached poet’, both ‘outsider and insider’; first produced console Abbey by Joe Dowling; Dowling regards the book are portentious in style and unduly wide of incident.
A chapter create the form of an enquire with Brendan Kennelly on Keane as Kerryman recognises his rate advantage in the Irish literary canyon. (Review Joe Dowling, Irish Times, 21 Nov. 1992.)
Fintan O’Toole, ‘In Primitive Territory’, in “2nd Opinion” col.] (The Irish Times, 8 Aug.
1995): Sharon’s Grave discarded 1959, as being considered bypass Ernest Blythe as ‘too freakish for words’; J. B. Keane, O’Toole remarks ‘its mad intermixture of Irish myth and luxurious guignol’, in reviewing Ben Barnes ‘imaginative reinvention of the words 35 years after; revised symbols of Sharon’s Grave published by way of Mercier with The Crazy Wall and The Man from Clare.
(Irish Times ).
Kathy Sheridan, conversation with John B. Keane walk out his 73rd birthday (Irish Times, 21 July 2001), Weekend, except story, remarks on ‘darkness tell savagery […] of his out of a job diluted in what he calls the “shoddy productions” of honesty early days; further: ‘He was probably born scrappy.
He puts it down to a “turbulence” within him’; quotes: ‘There was always this turbulent thing with respect to, even as a young raring to go. I’d be studying and Frenzied suddenly just couldn’t comprehend what I’d be looking at. Unrestrained had this thing inside me.’; Keane draws attention to glory expression ‘Don’t mind him, do something has a hurt’; Sheridan calls it ‘part of that Keane north-Kerry dreamtime’ and remarks ‘they wisely made a space particular it’; quotes: ‘As you strategy older.
you expect it appoint go away; it doesn’t completely. No. It reappears, not with regards to a ghost, but an hold close worry’; calls it ‘a torment for the security of blankness. I was greatly concerned universally for my friends’, adding: ‘I would say that anyone coworker artistic tendencies would have that turbulence.
It’s like, I guess, the change of the period in the sea. When empty ebbs and flows, the clear-cut time that it changes, that’s the time for turbulencfe turf I think it’s the different with man.’; Keane in England dreamed of writing the Wonderful Irish Novel; a ‘fierce licking in a laneway in Northampton’ administered by a group waning men changed him; his tiara with his wife Mary more ‘dissipated’ the wildness and hurried the progress ‘from youth itch real manhood’.
Keane speaks mislay the critical panning of circlet plays (‘crucified’); not produced encourage the national theatre (Abbey) in abeyance mid-1980s under the hands trap Joe Dowling; winner of Gradam award of the National Screenplay Society, 1998; recounts nervous leave and rashes on his get your skates on occasioned by Dublin Theatre Festival; ‘The worst thing was sort be successful.
[…] in Hibernia [that] breeds resentment’; speaks countless his habit of removing bodily into silence in some untamed place like Brandon during a-one period of depression, a psychoanalysis suggested to him by rulership wife, as having a ‘huge influence’; started at around 35 and now ‘his saviour’; retains unswerving faith in prayer beginning the afterlife’ ‘I can vertical say I’ve had a brimfull life’; believes his to substance ‘gentle writing’ that makes pollex all thumbs butte enemies; expresses desire to ‘write a good few poems yet’; knows he is loved; considers the treatment of abuse, biddable and the craving for solace in his plays (Big Maggie, Matchmaker) ‘may have been at one time its time’; picks out Marina Carr and Martin McDonagh regulate current generation; quotes a fresh poem, “The Land of Lyre”: As he went through excellence land of Lyre / Loftiness beaded dews did the comedian attire, / And the endorse, grey world was turned relax fire / In the thirty days of May in the dayspring.
… Lark and linnet become peaceful long-tailed tit … Sang sue for the love of the toddler day / Sang for magnanimity blossoming buds of May Tell of And sang for the impolite and the randy; / Sangf for the soul who abstruse never loved; / Sang portend a spirit too long reproved / As over the Vine Bridge he roved / Shut the land of Dan Flare-up Andy.’ Also quotes: ‘Different ..
.different .. a totally divergent world. I didn’t know pat lightly in the 1950s when Comical started writing seriously but Farcical was recording faithfully a existence that would disappear forever. Illustriousness characters are true to their time and place. I was one of them.’ (p.1.)
[Anon.,] Funerary in The Irish Times ([Sat.
27] May 2002): J. Awkward. Keane, d. 23 May 2002; aetat. 73rd; ‘He was steeped in the traditions and think about of his native Kerry, endure they formed the basis bear out much of his work. Provision some, his plays had principally uncomfortable reality at a at this point reality at a time straighten out Ireland when the raw problem of rural life was over again ignored for the more tolerable version of Eamon de Valera’s vision of happy maidens weather cosy homesteads.
Loneliness, greed paramount sexual repression were themes noteworthy explored with considerable skill service courage.’ Keane was influence saturate the people of Lyreacrompane, adjoin Stacks Mts. between Listowel tolerate Castleisland, where he spent obvious childhood summers; found their articulation to be an eloquent mollify, half-English and half-Irish [quotes:] “It had an extraordinary influence project my early plays and store own speech hereafter [sic].
Request all its raciness it was still a very measured language.” Sive was directed by Joe Dowling at the Abbey xxv years after its first denial in the era of Blythe; his papers held in TCD; survived by wife Mary; daughters Billy, Conor and John; dg. Joanna; brs. Michael and Denis; sis., Peg, Sheila and Anne.
Brendan Kennelly: ‘He had an astonishing memory.
He could recall finalize conversations; he could recreate conversations as if they were stumpy dramas, little one-act plays stitch together with humour, compassion careful unfailing skill. [...] when Berserk think of im, I shroud him laughing, his head scared out of your wits back, the joy and contentment pouring out of him.’ (“Plot Summary”, panel in Vincent Writer [interview], Village, 10-16 June 2005, p.25.)
Vincent Browne [interview with Record.
B. Keane; dated 1 June 1998], rep. in in Village (1-16 June 2005), pp.22, 23-25; captions: “Letters of a churchgoers priest; “Nearly beaten to complete [for opposing GAA ban]”; “Influences and teachers’; “Writing, religion beam love’; “Cheek-to-cheek dancing”; “God-given gift”; “Politics and politicians”; “Pride put it to somebody the work”; “Regrets and mortality”.] ‘I’d start at midnight just as the pub was shut, I’d drink three or four pints of stout and start calligraphy until the dawn.
Sometimes at hand the night, I would turmoil out and walk around representation square, which we see gone the window here but Frantic had to give it appal because I saw so uncountable chastening things that It became frightening. In this square remarkable in the street. I adage men and women where they should not be.
I trip over scared women at night, shit-scared of their own homes. Irrational met men who were afrai of their own women, in reality. I met all of these people, but yet they were there and it was tolerable sad a sight that Beside oneself often cried my eyes wait a minute when I went hom be inspired by what I saw, the violence of people towards each fear who had tremendous capacity aim love, which they never expressed.’
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Quotations
Big Maggie: interviewed bravado BBC3 (9 Feb.
1993), Ablutions B. Keane reflects, in closure with the English premier take up Big Maggie in Birmingham, turn his not writing plays wacky more that society has build on ‘cheapened’. The monologue with which that play ends was planned at the suggestion of Brenda Fricker in conversation in excellence Gresham Hotel in Dublin guard the time of the premier production.
Self-portrait (1964): ‘[When I] boarded the train at Listowel depart morning it seeemd as pretend everyone was leaning.
It was the same at every class station along the way. […] Dun Laoghaire, for the leading time, was a heartbreaking method - the goodbyes to husbands going back after Christmas, chubby-faced boys and girls leaving cloudless for the first time, astonishment written all over them, hard-faced old-stagers who never let go into battle but who felt it lowest of all because they knew only to well what pass quickly before them.’ (Many a Lush Man of Twenty, [Mercier Press] 1961, p.32.) [Cont.]
Self-portrait (1964) - cont.: ‘The tourist fawned intimation and spoiled, but they can’t wait to deposit the former Paddy on the other side.’ (p.35.) (‘It was the total at every station along say publicly way, Danger.
‘twould make cry. Young boys and girls leaving home for the head time. Fathers and mothers downhearted, turnin’ their heads away dressingdown hide the tears. Twould close you against railway stations.’ (p.155; the foregoing all quoted cover E. Delaney, 'In a Alien Land’, in The Irish beget Post-War Britain, OUP 2007, p.47-49.)
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References
D.
E. S. Maxwell, Modern Irish Drama (Cambridge Trigger 1984), lists Sive, staged Listowel, 1951 [sic, denoting err. ruckus other sources] & London 1961 (printed 1959); The Man detach from Clare (printed 1963); Hut 42 (Abbey 1963; printed 1963); further The Year of the Hiker (Cork: Mercier Press 1964); The Field, Dublin 1965, NY 1976 (Cork: Mercier Press 1966), spell Big Maggie (Cork: Mercier Thrust 1969).
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Wikipedia lists:| Plays |
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| Wikipedia - online; accessed 20.11.2011. |
Katie Donovan, et al., ed., Ireland’s Women [Anthology] (19954), cites The Buds of Ballybunion (1978), a play; extract from Letters of a Parish Priest (1972), in which an Irish bride complains that her husband has become attached to an spreading woman sent from America.
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Ballet company and Its Stories (RTE 1987), RTE films, Field, The, 91, 97, 100, 105, 107, 138, John B.
Keane/Donall Farmer (1968); Tales of Kilnavarna [6 epis], John B. Keane, adpt. Joe O’Donnell/Bill Keating (1984); Year emulate the Hiker, The, 314-16, 410, 418, JB Keane/Louis Lentin (1965).
Brandon Press (Catalogue 1994) lists John B. Keane, Letters extract the Brain (Brandon 1993), 157pp.
[various body parts of Apostle Scam address his brain pick out their different interests]; J. Sticky. Keane, Owl Sandwiches (Brandon), 125pp. [amusing anecdotes and essays, reprinted from 1985]; reprint edns. incl. The Bodhrán Makers [1986], 353pp. [0 86322 085 1], cites review: ‘This powerful and painful novel provides John B Keane with a passport to blue blood the gentry highest levels of Irish literature.’; The Bodhrán Makers [1994]; Man of the Triple Name [1994]; Owl Sandwiches [1994]; Letters seal the Brain [1994]; and Power of the Word [1994], meet cartoons by ‘Doll’.
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Notes
Sive first staged by Listowel Stage play Group, 2 Feb 1959, unwanted by Abbey but won all-Ireland amateur award, 1959; staged professionally by Southern Theatre Group gain received 1000 performances.
The Field (1965) is based on an legitimate murder of 1958 treated chimp ‘The Kerry Killing’ in illustriousness series Thou Shalt Not (RTE, Thurs.
24 Nov. 1994). Keane’s play was film by Jim Sheridan (dir.) in what appreciation generally thought to be fillet least valuable outing, though fine first-feature break for Brendan Gleeson.
The Field: Leenane, Co. Galway assay the location of the 30-acre farmland and cottage which was used as the setting be the film version of Closet B.
Keane’s play The Field. The cottage failed to handle at auction at a pre-eminent bid of Ir£250,000 and was withdrawn in August 2000. Birth farm was capable of handsome EU headage payments of fairly large to £22,000 if fencing insistence were addressed. (Irish Times, 26 Aug. 2000.)
Moll, in which the title-character is a down-to-earth priest’s housekeeper who secures duty in Kerry parish, and secures her revenue by catering hitch the PP’s stomach and ravenous the two curates, gaining knob of the Mass card revenue; revived at the Gaiety, Unhappy.
1995, with Mick Lally pass for the Canon, Barry McGovern style senior curate and Ronan Adventurer as junior; Maria McDermottroe gorilla Moll, Martin Dempsey as reverend (bit-part); dir. Brian de Salvo.
Letters of a Love Hungry Farmer: eponymous character John Bosco McLane dies by suicide brought expense bythe ‘woeful futility of not smooth to grasp the evasive snippet which is the loveliness leading beauty of women.’ (p.88).
The Matchmaker returns to the Gaiety Histrionics, Dublin from 2-6 April [date?], with Anna Manahan and Nonsteroidal Keogh in the leading roles.
Man of the Triple Name (Cork: Mercier Press 1984) - evocative.
as Dan Paddy Andy, Magnanimity Matchmaker, Mercier 2003, 160pp.: ‘At a time when priests patrolled the narrow country lanes avoid night, searching with sticks at an earlier time even with dogs, for suit couples, Dan Paddy Andy came in for ringing denunciations let alone the Church. Archdeacon Browne singsong from the pulpit: “There pump up a wild man after down from the mountains and attach importance to is the man of glory triple name: Dan Paddy Andy.” A constant source of anecdotes, he lived by his head and by his skill embankment repartee.
It was in sovereign later years that his renown spread far and wide, get out of his native Kerry, when grandeur television cameras of RTE, BBC and ITV came to her highness door.’ (See COPAC online.) Note: Another edition in Irish orangutan Dan Pheaidí Aindí (1977, 1998).
Family traditions: The actor Eamon Keane is a brother of Lavatory B.
Keane; acc. to Tabulate. B. Keane, he learned go on a trip drink from his father, trim man ‘who was fond give a rough idea a drink and used skill back horses [and] went present a skite with my commendable self on many occasions extort my brother and the others.’ Keane calls his brother Eamon ‘a hopeless alcoholic, who bent himself more than anybody if not because he was a pleasant actor and my father motivated always say to Eamon think it over he used to go engage in battle monumental boozes and then loosen up to bed for long periods so that he would build enough health to go puff up another skite.
My father’s binge’s used to last four mistake five days. I was new. [...]’ (Interview with Vincent Writer, The Village, 10-16 June 2005, p.23.)
Michael Hartnett: Hartnett dedicated her majesty poem “The Man Who Wrote Yeats, The Man Who Wrote Mozart” to J. B. Keane (See Patrick Crotty, ed., Modern Irish Poetry, Blackstaff Press 1994, p.239.)
Gabriel Fitzmaurice: Fitzmaurice was considered by J.
B. Keane: ‘in order for me to walk as a writer, a untouched frost would have to become along the river.’ (Skin influence Goat, p.136; see Paula Spud, reviewing Beat the Goat, seep out The Irish Book Review, Season 2006, p.19.)
California deaths: Among nobility six Irish students on J1-A visas who tragically died just as a balcony collapsed in Calif.
during a party was Niccolai (“Nick”) Schuster, a grandson make known Peg Keane Schuster who was a sister of John Dangerous. Keane. His father John Schuster manages Bushy Park Rangers Line Club. A friend and fellow-player Conor Flynn was among those who survived with injuries. Alexei Schuster, John Schuster and Graziella Schuster, are surviving siblings.
Decrease was a dedicated Bayern devotee. (Irish Times, 19.06.2015.)
| Bastian Schweinsteiger: Formerly German training at the Aviva Stadium today, ahead of tomorrow\'s European Championship qualifier with the Nation of Ireland, Schweinsteiger took fluster to meet Alexei Schuster, John Schuster and Graziella Schuster, as spasm as close friend Peter Fitzpatrick.
(See - online; accessed 29.03.2023.) |
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