by Jonathan Curry-Machado
I first met Rodney backstage at the South London Theatre, as I was just embarking on my own short-lived acting career. As I recall, it was a production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I had a very minor part, which barely warranted a credit, and so there was a lot of hanging around waiting for a brief moment in the limelight. Rodney was an assistant stage manager, and I forget how we began to talk – but as soon as we did, we found that we understood one another.
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. A few months later, Rodney was casting for a production of his two war plays, Over The Top and Birds Still Fly – and he surprised me by casting me in the latter. His call came just as I was on my way to another audition, which his offer more than trumped.
The role of Hackett came at just the right moment for me. A character I could pour my nascent thespian impulses into. The wooden owl I portrayed Hackett as carving in the midst of his battlefield quest to find his son still sits proudly on my shelf. And Rodney never fails to tease me about it.
Since then, Rodney and I have continued to collaborate on creative projects. Attempting to kickstart independent cultural ventures and writing projects together. Improvised happenings
in Deptford. A First World War play (Capture The Flag), which as well as having a London fringe run, ended up being toured to schools and prisons. A monologue performance of his Burgundy. Acting and theatre groups, bringing together fellow restless spirits. Countless ideas or films that have yet to be made. And the sharing of life’s trials and tribulations – of which Rodney has had far more than his fair share.
Rodney was born in Dublin, and grew up in Greystones, County Wicklow. After his mother left for London with Rodney’s two siblings, he was left alone with his father. But eventually she came back for him, and his later teenage years were spent in the English capital.
From early on, Rodney travelled around a lot. Backwards and forwards to Ireland: Galway, and later Cork. A Buddhist group in Leicester. Glasgow. Yorkshire. His restlessness has not stopped since. Nor has his ability to strike up conversations with the most unlikely of strangers. Unable to resist cracking a joke, or making an irreverent comment. Collecting in the process the experiences and the human interactions that he channels into his writing.
Rodney started writing in the early 1990s when living in Cork. Being dyslexic and not able to spell, he began messing around with wordplay poems. He didn’t start writing plays until 2004, when he was involved with the Cork Arts Theatre. It was there that he wrote Over The Top and Birds Still Fly – his first plays, and though he went on to write several others, these are the two that have been most performed.
He has been writing ever since, channelling his own demons – and those he can discern in those he encounters – into an ability to turn the darkest of situations into an amusing one.
It is now twenty years since Rodney’s first play, Over The Top, was first performed, at the Cork Arts Theatre. To mark the occasion, Amaurea is now republishing that play, along with his second play, Birds Still Fly – both of which deal with themes of war and peace.
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