By Helen Falconer
Leitrim’s famous son, Seamus O’Rourke, is bringing his new, engaging and incredibly funny play to Ballina Arts Centre on Thursday, June 8.
The Ballad of Mossy Flood brings to life the rain-drenched bachelor who first appeared on social media to argue vehemently against the idea that Longford is the most miserable place in Ireland.
As a carpenter, Seamus was asked to make a set for the Cornhill Theatre in Carrigallen and that’s when the Leitrim man got bitten by the bug.
It was a clip that garnered millions of views and calls from several TV companies, but in order to stay true to the deep and thoughtful character of Mossy Flood, O’Rourke elected to keep the character for himself. That way, Mossy could continue to air his philosophical views without being held up as a figure of fun by a bunch of cynical city types.
O’Rourke grew up in Leitrim on a small farm, where ‘my parents farmed all their lives, as you do if you want to lose as much money as possible’. Entertainment consisted of the neighbours coming in and telling stories around the fire, and ‘the ones that were better at it got the floor for longer’. Still, he was a fiercely shy youngster, and it took a long time for the storyteller to come out.
He hated school – ‘I had a fierce problem with being talked down to all the time’ – and left to be an apprentice carpenter at the age of 15, but mainly his younger years were taken up with the GAA. He was a rising star in the junior team and then joined the senior football team, and in the end, it was the GAA that took him away from Leitrim and landed him in America.
“The club took the team on a trip to New York in 1985, and it was the worse decision they ever made because 12 of them didn’t come back,” he recalls.
It was particularly surprising because the team had managed to visit London the year before without losing anyone – ‘although a few of them were arrested, because they went for a few pints after the game and didn’t realise the pubs closed at ten and got thrown out, then got fighting over sandwiches in the street, and were brought to the police station and asked to turn out their pockets which were full of condoms from the machines in the gents.’
O’Rourke was one of the team who stayed on in New York as a carpenter, but after only a year, Leitrim and the GAA drew him back again, for good. His ‘lofty ambitions’ as a player were dashed by injury, but then his life in Leitrim took another turn. As a carpenter, he was asked to make a set for the Cornhill Theatre in Carrigallen, and ‘the minute I set foot in that environment, I knew that’s what I wanted to do’.
How did he know?
“Well, as they say around here, I had a want in me as big as a cat.”
A cat?
“Or an egg. Like those who feel the urge to perform have a bit of a needy want in them. I’d say people around here are a bit disappointed that a carpenter who played for Leitrim would be standing up on stage talking about their feelings and things, identifying as a person.”
Since O’Rourke got bitten by the bug, he has been acting, directing and writing plays like ‘Padraig Potts’ Guide to Walking’, which have always played to packed houses. He’s also been writing short stories and hilarious poetry (google ‘The Hard Border’).
The idea of Mossy Flood came to him when he was driving home from Dublin after a gig and got a notification that ‘Longford had just been voted the most undesirable place to live in Ireland’.
“And I thought that was quite funny because, usually, it’s Leitrim,” he jokes.
When he woke up the next morning, in his Leitrim house two miles from the Longford border, and looked out at the drizzling rain, the idea of Mossy’s video on behalf of the Longford tourism board was born.
“It came together with another idea I’d been planning to work on for a while, something about the worst storyteller you could ever meet. The idea was based on my mother, who would start on a story then be carried away by the colour of the car, or that someone had on a jumper, and so on and on and on and on…”
The ‘Longford tourism’ YouTube clip was an internet sensation.
“People in the business kept saying to me ‘give Mossy a weekly slot’ but the more people tried to persuade me, the less I wanted to do it.
“I would have grown up with bachelors like that. People might say they were ‘a little bit slow’ but they were usually as intelligent as anyone else, and always the best fun. Probably they had something that made them not quite fit in the world, and back then the parents would say, ‘Oh well, we’ll just keep them at home’ and the community looked out for them, and cared for them, and they went out and about enjoying their lives.”
So O’Rourke is protective of Mossy, even though the play is highly comical.
“I didn’t want him to be used as a weapon of humour, rather than to be seen as a real person under all that fun.”
The Ballad of Mossy Flood has been on the road for a month – a few shows in Leitrim and three weeks at the Viking Theatre in Dublin – and he’s noticed that for the audience, Mossy does come over as oddly real.
“You can see for a minute, they’re not sure…Is it real, real?” and he enjoys seeing the people “edge forward on their seats, totally engrossed”.
For O’Rourke, the reaction of the audience is the last piece in the jigsaw – “they have a very strong influence on how a play evolves” – and he’s pleased with the buzz in the theatre that Mossy Flood leaves behind as he exits the stage.
“It has a good ending,” says O’Rourke, with a smile.
The Ballad of Mossy Flood, written and performed by Seamus O’Rourke, comes to Ballina Arts Centre on Thursday, June 8, at 8pm. Tickets: €18/€16.