'Like a drug': Playwright who staged first play in Longford 30 years ago still going strong

A 67-year-old man from Rathowen in Co Westmeath, not far from the Longford border has written 27 plays and is currently working on his 28th. He's told us that he has no plans to stop writing anytime soon. 

Jimmy Keary has been writing plays since 1996, with many being performed all over the world.

‘Looking for Love’ was his first play to premiere, debuting at the Bog Lane Theatre in Ballymahon in 1997.

"That was the first time I sat in an audience and I heard people laughing at something I've written. That was like a drug, really," Jimmy shared.

That was a one-act play, with the playwright having switched to three-acts after some encouragement from his friend. 

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In the beginning, it was "daunting," but in 1999, he started to write 'The Maiden Aunt.'

By February of 2000, it had premiered in Mayo, and continues to be performed to this day.

"There were 45 productions of my plays around the country in one year, which was kind of phenomenal," Jimmy said. 

The road to success wasn't easy though, with Jimmy really putting the work in to get his plays out to the world.

"I used to go to Dublin and buy different local papers from around the country and find the names of drama groups and the names of secretaries and their phone numbers and ring them up and say, 'I have a play, would you like to read it?' That's how the play got out there in the first place," he explained. 

He is currently working on a play provisionally titled 'The Miracle Man,' which is about a woman who would like to be married and settled down, but hasn't found the right man.

She heads on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, praying that she'll meet someone, but her prayers are answered too well and she ends up with too many suitors.

"When you're sitting here at a laptop, it's a very lonely profession. You don't realise how many people you're going to touch with that play, with those lines, with that story, and that's great satisfaction," Jimmy said.

He gets his inspiration for characters from people he has met over the past 40 or 50 years. 

"You take aspects of their character and build it into a story. You wouldn't just take one characteristic, but you use a bit of what you know about the person and then add other traits to them as well," Jimmy explained. 

Growing up as an only child in the 1970s meant that he had to "make his own entertainment." 

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"We didn't have television until I was 10 years old. Around that time too, I started reading comics, and whereas television and comics can have a negative effect on some people, they just stimulated my imagination," he shared.

"I always had a creative mind," he added.

In 1970, when Jimmy was in his final year of national school, he started to write stories in his copybook.

That continued for the next seven years, and by the time he had finished his first year of university, he had written 120 stories, none of which he has ever re-read.

He joined the drama group in university and was in "a few productions" before joining the local drama group, the Rathowen Amateur Dramatic Society, once he got home. 

That was when he started to write comedy sketches for the group.

"I didn't even know I had a gift for comedy, but they were all staged... It's an exhilarating feeling," Jimmy shared.

It's rare he gets to see his productions come to life, but when he does, it's up there with some of the best feelings.

Seeing the audience enjoy themselves and laugh at his work is all Jimmy aims for when writing.

"It's nice just to kind of forget your troubles for a couple of hours and go home with a smile on your face. That's what I like to achieve," he said.

Jimmy added that "as long as the imagination keeps working" he will continue to write because it's "good for the mind."

That's not all the future holds for the playwright though, with him saying he would like to get into talking to writers or drama groups to share the knowledge that he has learned over the years.

27 of Jimmy's 28 plays have been staged in "most counties in Ireland." 

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Some of his most popular works include 'One Wife Too Many,' 'Marrying Mike,' 'The Maiden Aunt,' and 'The Two Loves of Gabriel Foley,' which he says is his most successful play. 

'Marrying Mike,' which was written in 2003, is currently being staged in Prince Edward Island in Canada.

To find out more about Jimmy and his plays, or to see if there is a production near you, visit his website jimmykeary.ie.