Good evening, Mr MacIntyre

Ramor Theatre and The Cavan Arts Office, along with the family of Tom MacIntyre, have put together an evening commemorating one of the country's finest playwrights.
Dubbed 'A Memorial Celebration of the Life of Poet, Playwright and Man of Letters - Tom MacIntyre' this is an evening in The Ramor Theatre, Virginia honouring the literary legend.
The show takes place on Saturday, November 30 and will be presided over by Master of Ceremonies, Michael Harding, who was a friend of Tom's. There is an impressive array of guests lined up to take part in the evening lionising the memory of Tom.
Joan Sheehy, Bríd Ní Neachtain, Derbhle Crotty, Sean Rocks, Karen Ardiff, Brendan Flynn, Tommy Tiernan, Malcom Adams and Patrick Mason will all be part of this special event.
Actor and director Joan Sheehy was only too happy to be involved.
“I was in six of his stage plays,” she told the Celt of her links with Tom. “I also did a radio play. I worked with him a lot through the late '80s and early '90s.”
Joan works with the Abbey Theatre, Gate Theatre, and Project Arts Centre as well as performing in a number of television and film roles. She toured Moscow, Leningrad, New York, Paris and the Almeida Theatre in London with the Abbey Theatre’s acclaimed production of The Great Hunger.
“He was a true visionary when it came to theatre,” the actor said of Tom. “He loved language. He loved being playful and provocative with it. He was influenced by modern dance companies he saw in Europe and the States. So when he started to make work for the theatre in Ireland he wove that into his work.”

Artistic precision 

The playwright's gift for innovation is part of his legacy: “He was always pushing forward. He was not satisfied to have a narrative theatre, he wanted to have an more imagistic theatre.”
The universal appeal of the writing was never more apparent that the show Joan toured with across Europe and America: “It's the story of the Monaghan farmer, but it could be understood everywhere. He had a way of distilling an emotion or a situation into a gesture and a handful of words. He was so accurate, he had an artistic precision about his writing.”
That talent was married with a deep understanding of the human condition: “He was so interested in the psychological. What you are saying, what you are doing onstage is revealing the inner life, the troubled soul, the hurt mind. That is the area he was interested in.
“He would talk about 'the emotional weather' of a scene or a character,” Joan said of the playwright's philosophy.

High esteem
Padraic McIntyre, theatre manager at the Ramor, spoke of the need to recognise the passing of one of Ireland's greatest contemporary dramatists.
“We at The Ramor Theatre and Cavan Arts Office feel it is really important to have this memorial celebration of Tom’s life and work. He was one of theatre heavyweights and his death is a huge loss to all the arts community in Cavan and beyond. The quality of the line-up we have on the night shows the high esteem Tom was held in by actors, writers and directors alike.”
A Memorial Celebration of the Life of Poet, Playwright and Man of Letters-Tom MacIntyre takes place on Saturday, November 30 at 8pm in The Ramor Theatre, Virginia.