Midlands playwright Jimmy Keary on his success this year and what's still to come

Jimmy Keary, a playwright based in Westmeath, recently had one of his pieces taken all the way to Fuengirola in spain. Jimmy has been writing plays for around 30 plus years. He has written 26 plays in total and has had plays staged across the country and parts of Europe.

One of his earlier pieces ‘Where There's a Will’ was staged by Longford's own Mostrim Players over the weekend.
‘Where There's a Will’ is one of Keary’s earliest pieces, obvious by it’s one act nature as nowadays Keary sticks to those of a Three Act nature.

Writing his first One Act around 1996 Keary would stick to that layout until 1999 whe he wrote his first Three Act play. The play would then be staged the next year in 2000. For almost 30 years Jimmy has been writing comedies that focus on characters that we all know from living in rural Ireland.

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‘Where There's a Will’ took place in Edgeworthstown community centre and as mentioned earlier, was performed by the Mostrim Players. The play tells the story of a family at the reading of a will.

“They are just a greedy and want everything for them selves. Unfortunately a stranger arrives that they dont know the deceased mentioned in his will,” explains Jimmy, “They’re hostile to her and she ends up playing a big part in everything, and the family dont end up getting what they were expecting.”

His newest play, ‘Marrying Mike’ was taken to Fuengirola in Spain earlier this year by Galway’s Portumna Players.

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The play depicts an older bachelor, Mike deciding to marry but after being set up with his best friends sisters it seems that his new wife and brother in-law had less than savoury intentions.

Jimmy is now working on a new play that he hopes to begin work on after Christmas. He explains his throught process when creating a new play saying, “I start off with a kind of a skeleton of a plot and I bring a couple of the characters together and I start writing for them and when I start writing for them they become alive and so the story builds from there.”

Along with continuing to write Jimmy hopes to get a chance to pass his years of knowledge on to the future generation of playwrights.

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“Something else I'm hoping is that I can interest writer's groups or libraries in having me talk about my years writing, I think because I've kind of reached the point in my life and in my work where I'd like to pass on some of what I've learned to those like who are interested in writing,” he concludes.

This year has seen 35 performances of Jimmy's plays across and outside of Ireland. This number includes the premiere of a new one act comedy of Jimmy's 'No Smoke Without Fire'.

This success will coninue with the premiere of Jimmy's new three-act play 'Wedded Blitz' on November 28 in Co Tipperary.