With all the wit and wisdom of a 20 year old
by Emilee Jennings
It was a typical wet and windy afternoon in Galway. On approaching the Roisin Dubh I see a tall dark haired bearded man shaking the excess rain from his umbrella. As we went inside the mysterious film noir character removed his long black jacket and immediately to my surprise and delight gives me a firm but open hand shake. And a strategically placed air kiss.
Jack Kavanagh, a producer, a script writer and an ex-actor, is at twenty years of age wise beyond his years. Son to well known script writer, director and actress Marion Quinn and producer Tommy Weir, Jack’s talents were nourished from a ripe age.
His parents have produced many short films and a very successful feature called 32A, which starred Aidan Quinn – Jack’s uncle. It was during the filming of this movie that Jack learnt the depths of his trade. Although he was acting as a prominent character at the time he veered off into the production side and as he was already writing scripts he explains “it felt like a natural transition”.
He does however insist that considering his production background is theatre based, while his parents are focused in film making, that he has got here by his own merits. “I do not like to talk about my family background; it’s one of those things I try to avoid”. So much so that Jack even uses a separate surname to the rest of his family.
At 17, Jack wrote his first play – “Never Trust a Vixen” – “My English teacher made us write a lot of short stories and this script just sort of arrived out of one,” he proclaims in his American twang. “It was full of black humour and had a lot of sexist overtones” the Chicago born, Sligo resident says rekindling the memories.
At the time Jack had just left the County Sligo Youth Theatre and was in that “transitional part” of his life. “I stole a lot of the actors from the youth theatre, set up a small production company called Armkav Productions with a friend, and we put the show together.”
That was how it all started for Jack. But what does he make of these earlier scripts looking back now? “I’d burn them all!” He then softens his tone. “They were a decent starting point, I guess, but there are a lot of changes that I would make now”.
He had become so disillusioned with his script writing that he was considering focusing primarily on production work. That was until he was hit with a bout of inspiration in the form of a new script – Troika – which he had created. “Troika is quite an interesting piece; I used a lot of the stuff that I learned in History”. The second year history student says “the material for Troika had nothing to do with my history studies in NUI, Galway, because none of my lecture specialise in Russia which is unfortunate.
“Russian history has just always been an interest of mine” he explains. “I have loads of books at home on Stalinism and Lenin and I found an interesting thread in them, it was almost like economics, if you look at the numbers of people who were killed and the numbers of things that were made, it all matches up.”
In saying this he still wished to make the script as neutral as possible. “There were hard lined communists who thought that it was a magnificent showing of Stalin’s great work, and there were human rights guys, who thought that it was a great showing of how human lives were vanquished.” He pauses for effect, “I wanted people to take their own perception of it. I wanted them to go home and think. And they did.”
This was shown in the Town Hall Theatre in Galway on January 19th – 22nd this year, “we had a couple of sold out nights and a varied crowd. All in all it has been my most successful show so far”.
According to Jack, the biggest mistake of his career to date was the second play that he wrote and produced.
“‘Three halves’ was a huge, huge mess”. Jack then raises a hand to his forehead and says, “The script was constantly re-written because of me and the director having issues. We replaced the whole cast three times”, he says emphasising his next point, “They walked! They just couldn’t handle the stress. And I can’t blame them for that”.
They were forced to find a new venue on two occasions and had great difficulties financing the play.
