Spirit of Eamon Kelly alive in new show at Waterville’s Tech Amergin

A SHARED expertise in carpentry has helped a local actor to effectively take on the role of the much-loved late seanchaí Éamon Kelly in a new show that’s coming to Waterville’s Tech Amergin Arts Centre shortly.

In devising The Tayman, The Tomcast and Others, actor Jack Healy and show director Ger Fitzgibbon drew on Jack’s background in woodwork as a portal into bringing the stories of former carpenter Éamon Kelly to life.

The Tayman, The Tomcat and Others, offers a guaranteed night of brilliant entertainment for Kelly’s legion of fans in these parts, bringing some of his best-loved stories to life in a new light.

Accomplished actor Jack performs it all at Tech Amergin on Friday, March 10, next from 8pm.

“One of the most charming and best-loved figures in Irish broadcasting over a period of thirty years was Éamon Kelly, the Seanachaí,” a spokesperson for Tech Amergin said. “Éamon had been working as a professional actor for many years and drew on his childhood memories of Kerry to develop this story-teller character for radio programmes like Take the Floor and The Rambling House.

“Éamon always claimed that he didn’t really own those stories, that they were part of a living inheritance of folktale and country lore. Actor Jack Healy and director Ger FitzGibbon have long had a plan to re-animate those wonderful stories and, having realised that Éamon Kelly initially trained as a carpenter and that Jack Healy has for many years been an accomplished woodworker, they saw an immediate and compelling way of bringing Kelly’s work to life.”

They are also calling on a new generation too young to have heard Kelly first-hand to come along for an education in the folk tales of their home land. Ring (066)9478956 to book.