Cónal Creedon: Multi-talented Irish storyteller
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CóNAL Creedon, firmly rooted in Ireland’s County Cork, is a playwright, novelist, short story writer, author of radio dramas and a documentary filmmaker. He first came to Shanghai in 2008 for the Shanghai International Literary Festival and for the past few years he has been traveling back and forth between the two cities as a cultural ambassador.
He was a Shanghai writer-in-residence in 2009, spending 10 weeks experiencing the life and culture of the city. During the World Expo Shanghai 2010, Creedon brought his plays and documentaries produced for the Irish Pavilion. In 2011, his troupe performed at the Shanghai International Arts Festival, and he had a reading at M the Bund.
Creedon’s stage plays include “The Trial of Jesus” (2000), focusing on the last days of Jesus and staged on the streets of Cork City, Ireland. First staged on Good Friday, it included a spectacular re-enactment of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. Patrick’s Hill in the city center was transformed to represent Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.
Other plays include “Glory Be To the Father,” “When I Was God,” “After Luke,” “The Cure” and “Second City Trilogy.” They have been widely performed and acclaimed.
The 53-year-old Irish writer has also written many hours of internationally broadcast radio drama and has represented Ireland in the One World BBC Radio Drama Festival.
“Mr Creedon’s words are enough to create a world that is at once comic and dramatic, poetic and brutal,” said a review by Rachel Saltz of The New York Times.
What’s the best book you’ve read so far this year?
It’s difficult to pick one book, but I really enjoyed the biography of the mathematician George Boole written by Professor Des McHale ... Boole lived in my hometown of Cork back in the mid-1800s. He was a self-taught mathematician whose Boolean Mathematics is generally recognized as one of the primary stepping stones in computer science.
His personal story is also extremely moving. He died at a young age leaving his wife to fend for five daughters under the age of 7, at a time when women had little rights, or career opportunities.
His wife lived on for many years, into the early years of the 20th century (1916). She must have been an incredible woman, as their five daughters all achieved greatness in their chosen fields of science, mathematics and the arts. His daughter Ethel wrote the classic novel “The Gadfly.”
What’s your ideal reading experience? When, where, what, how?
For my ideal reading experience, I would be sitting at my Aunty Kit and Uncle Jack’s kitchen table on the Beara Peninsula, looking out on the crashing wild Atlantic Ocean. In the distance the sound of chickens clucking as they huddled for shelter under the windowsill. Out in the back kitchen Aunty Kit would be rattling pots and pans, and Uncle Jack busy clanging buckets and churns as he related the latest news he had picked up when he delivered the churn of milk to Johnny the Cross earlier that morning. It would be the deepest of a bleak dark winter’s day with sheets of sleet and rain driving hard against the house, and I would sit there lost in my own world reading, comforted by the crackling of a blazing fire, happy in the knowledge that all was at peace and well in the world.
Do you have a favorite classic?
My favorite classic of world literature would have to be “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. It is a book that is charming to both adults and children. It is funny yet so very sad, it is deep and meaningful yet light and whimsical, it is a book of gritty realism, yet driven by surrealism. I think it is an all-time great. I read that book every year — not necessarily from cover to cover, but I believe it is essential reading at Christmas time.
What books might we be surprised to find on your bookshelves?
My bookshelves are full of surprising gems, but I think people in Shanghai might be surprised to find that I have a substantial collection of books, prose collections and poetry anthologies by many current Shanghai writers, far too many to mention by name here. I love, Wang Anyi’s short stories “The Little Restaurant,” Ye Xin’s novel “A Pair Of Green Frogs” and Zhao Lihong’s collection of poetry “A Boat To Heaven” which was actually published here in Ireland. Over the past number of years I have come to meet, know and form friendships with many of the Shanghai writers, some have visited my home here in Ireland. The Shanghai Writers’ Association was a very welcoming and generous host when they invited me to Shanghai back in 2009, so I have a very strong personal attachment to my Shanghai collection of books.
Do you have a favorite childhood literary character or hero?
Obviously, I have read “Tom Sawyer,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “Oliver Twist,” “Artful Dodger,” “Mary Poppins” — all big favorites here in the West — but to be honest my favorite childhood character is a comic book hero known as Desperate Dan. He was really an anti-hero who always bumbled his way through a crisis, and his strength and creative thinking always won the day.
If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know?
I’d like to meet James Joyce, and ask him if there was anything in “Finnegan’s Wake” that he would like to change.
What’s the highlight in the past year? And what’s next?
My play “The Cure” opened in Shanghai in 2011 and that set the wheels in motion for my highlight of 2013. The play was very well received in Shanghai then returned home for a highly successful production in Ireland at the Cork Opera House.
In September, “The Cure” was performed in New York. It was a great success, it received rave reviews from the New York Theatre critics, and won and was nominated for a number of awards at the 1st New York Theatre festival. Next year I hope to finish my novel “Begotten Not Made” and proceed with a translation project.
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