Pucked - A show for theatre and GAA fans is coming to Kilkenny

Pucked a fast-paced, comedic, theatrical, one-man blockbuster is coming to the Watergate Theatre in Kilkenny next month.

The play tells the story of the young and ambitious Matty Daly. Immersed in the GAA from birth, Matty has one dream and one dream only, to play on his senior team. When Matty finally gets called up, we join him as he learns the hard way, that playing senior isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.

Pucked tackles issues such as self- confidence, individualism, masculinity and ambition with humour and energy, all the while celebrating the greatest sport on earth, hurling.

Writer and performer, Cathal Ryan comes from The Ragg in Tipperary and jokes that there, you’re born with a hurley in your hand. Immersed in the GAA from a young age, he ‘lived in that bubble’ until he found theatre at the age of 17. With a grand-uncle involved in Thurles Drama Group, he went to plays often throughout childhood, but it never occurred to him that he could do it. Or, as he says, he never did it in case he’d miss training.

Cathal went to NUIG in Galway to study performance and made up for lost time by totally immersing himself in theatre and performance. Cathal was then accepted onto The Lir Academy’s BA Acting degree and completed his training in October 2021.

Pucked as a play came out of a conversation that Cathal had with Brendan Maher, artistic director of the Source Arts Centre in Thurles.

“Brendan attended an online graduation play of mine that fellow Lir graduate and Clonmel native Jack Reardon directed and told me to get in touch when I graduated,” he said.

Cathal had always been interested in creating his own work and had started thinking of ideas around a celebration of the GAA and his love of hurling, combined with ideas of masculinity and expectations of young men, particularly those growing up in rural Ireland.

“With Pucked, I don’t want to teach anything, but I’d hope that people coming to the play, particularly young men, might feel that there are thoughts in it that they’d share,” he added.

With encouragement from dramaturg Gavin Kostick and Bryan Burroughs, both tutors at The Lir, Cathal approached the Source Arts Centre who funded a first draft of Pucked.

“My classes with Bryan were a huge inspiration for the show. He really opened my eyes to the limitlessness of theatre,” said Cathal.

In 2022, Cathal met up with director Jack Reardon, the emerging Clonmel director who recently
directed the enormously successful From Out The Land in Clonmel as part of Art 2023 commemorating the decade of centenaries.

Jack was the associate artist with the Clonmel Junction Arts Festival and was looking for a script to direct for the launch of Junction Festival Dome as a theatre venue, and which welcomed live audiences for the first time at the 2022 festival in July.

“When Cathal told me about Pucked, I asked to read it, and immediately got on the phone to Cliona
Maher, (then artistic director of Clonmel Junction Festival), to say that I thought I’d found our headline production,” says Jack.

“I was excited in bringing theatricality to the one-man show format, and the script, as well as Cathal as a performer, allows so much scope for that. Over the last number of years, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have a sensational design team support me. Jack Scullion, Eoin Lennon and Michael Stapleton share my ambition for bringing blockbuster theatre to regional audiences.”

The play is as fast-moving as the game itself, bringing to life Matty Daly, a young hurler who dreams of making it to the senior team, his Mam and Dad, his teammates and arch-nemesis Conor Dooley,
the inhabitants of the village where he lives - an Everytown of rural Ireland.

Pucked will be performed at the Watergate Theatre in Kilkenny on February 13.

For more information see www.watergatetheatre.com