A sting in the tale

CULTURE NIGHT: Little John Nee brings Nettle Horse to Townhall Cavan

The plot of Little John Nee’s ‘Nettle Horse’ is a little bit out there.

Set in the future, it’s billed as a tale where hundreds of dispossessed families travel west after winning a lottery orchestrated by an unscrupulous local councillor at the behest of a mysterious 103-year-old Bostonian benefactor. All roads lead to Gortnapuca where gangs of carpenters sleep ten to a tent in anticipation of a building frenzy, Mink Devine is selling edible beetles, and a small boy finds solace amidst the chaos by befriending a horse in a circus field.

The Celt notes that while the premise is clearly bonkers upon first reading, when you consider the issues we face in the future, the play gradually feels less bonkerful.

“I’m glad that’s how you see it,” John Nee says of Nettle Horse, which he is bringing to Townhall Arts Centre for Culture Night. A recipient of awards and commissions galore, and a member of Aosdána we shouldn’t be surprised that his wild tale resonates with such immediate issues as climate change, homelessness, corruption and the ethics of money.

He approaches such weighty topics with humour, and his work is described as “simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking”.

“That dystopian quality that’s in a lot of stuff set in the future can all be a bit overwhelming in its bleakness and the technology of it all,” he says in a soft Scottish accent, indicative of his early childhood spent in Glasgow where his Donegal parents migrated before returning home. “So I thought, rather than be too heavy, what’s something you could look forward to in the future? Something that would be nice, and I thought, well it would be brilliant if horses came back as a means of transport.”

With that, Nettle Horse was born.

“By the time I decided to start thinking about the practicalities of that, and in what circumstances that would arise, it just seemed the most natural thing in the world.”

Nee recalls walking during Lockdown and horses popping their heads over gates in the hope of some attention.

“I was noticing how good that feels to be among horses, the heartiness of horses,” Nee says.

The Celt quips he doesn’t hold much hope for electric cars.

“I had this idea to tour the country in an electric van, and then when you see the batteries, what that involves in regards to child labour in foreign countries, you wonder is there anyway that the motor industry can be harmless? There always seems to be something.”

The story is brimming with colourful characters such as the heiress Dandelion Ní Houlihan, and the narrator Mink Devine

“I find that in my writing process - sometimes you get the sense of a character before you have even written about them. I write about them slowly at the start without imposing to much information on them. I like to get a sense of their personality before you even know their name and the things seem to evolve naturally.”

On the idea of a script taking on its own life, he paraphrases “a beautiful thing” Clones novelist Pat McCabe said: ‘You wind up all these characters and put them on the floor and see where they go.’

“I like that analogy because when I’m writing like that, sometimes I write a play two or three times and I don’t like it, and then the play writes itself the fourth time.”

Nettle Horse touches on homelessness, and he admits his own political leanings feed into it.

“I thought, what will happen in the future about that? It hasn’t been solved - you still have lots of people living in their cars - and these are the people who are travelling west - winners of a lottery to get this free land.”

Politics-wise he sees himself in “a tradition of Donegal socialist artists” such as Patrick Magill and Patrick O’Donnell.

“I think we do need to move in some ways beyond left in right divisions. Although I would be very much on the left, it becomes very reductionist how we fall into these patterns. There’s lots of people who are going towards the right now - vulnerable people - when really they could have just as easily been coming to the left.”

While Nettle Horse is not aimed at children, young people are welcome to come along.

“I like an audience that has a few people in their 80s in it, and all the way down,” he says, adding that the play’s success has been in part due to its popularity with teens and students.

Nettle Horse by Little John Nee will be in Town Hall Main Theatre on Friday, September 20 at 8.30pm as part of Culture Night. Admission is free but booking essential: townhallartscentre.com or call 049 4380494.