Veteran activist Michael Kerrigan’s new play ‘Nancy Boy Shenanigans’ set against backdrop of battle for gay and civil rights

It was 1972. Having left school at 15, the young Bogsider had recently returned to full-time education to complete his A-Levels.

His reward was a scholarship to the University of Dublin. That October he was looking forward to commencing college life as a junior freshman.

"I entered the gates of Trinity with two tubs of lard, a chip pan and a bag of spuds. I was completely out of my depth!

“It was strange coming from where I come from but in a way it was a liberation too,” he recalls.

Michael’s university years form the backdrop for his latest theatrical production ‘Nancy Boy Shenanigans’, which will be performed for the first time in The Playhouse on August 23-24 during this year’s Foyle Pride Festival.

The drama focuses on Michael’s central role in the establishment of the gay rights movement in Trinity in the early 1970s. Equally, the play examines his formation as a young gay man growing up amid the turmoil on the streets of Derry in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Trinity was a world apart from the writer and activist’s native Bogside that by the time he set off for Dublin was still in the grip of a popular revolt that had been ongoing since the civil rights movement rose on the streets of Derry in 1968.

“I had been there on the first civil rights march in Derry. I was 22 on Bloody Sunday. I was born at Free Derry Corner, on the third house along, and we moved across the street in 1957. So that was my patch, where I grew up, in the middle of it all.

"I was influenced by what was going on around the world, the black civil rights movement in America, the things that were happening in Europe, in Paris, the revolts in 1968, the burgeoning feminist movement, all of that, all mixed up.

"When I was growing up and doing all the civil rights stuff here I had an international outlook. I felt it was a big international struggle. It was in Derry but it was also on an international level. That's where the play comes from,” he says.

Not long after his arrival at Trinity, Michael became a founding figure in the gay rights movement in Ireland.

The veteran activist acknowledges that amid the maelstrom of civil rights, the Battle of the Bogside, Free Derry, internment and Bloody Sunday, there had been little space to reflect on personal identity. That changed in Dublin.

"The play deals with that whole beginning in 1973. I was able to find myself. I wasn't really able to come out in Derry because there was so much going on.

"There was such turmoil and chaos and you had no time to think about who you are and what you are, never mind anything else.

"That's when I began questioning my sexuality. In 1973 a group of us decided to form a gay rights society.”

In the early 1970s homosexuality remained illegal in Ireland. This presented an early obstacle for the young activist and his comrades.

"Trinity wouldn't let us use the word gay so we had to use the words ‘sexual liberation movement’. Six or seven of us met in an upper room at No. 5 Trinity College,” Michael recollects.

‘Nancy Boy Shenanigans’ revisits some of the internal discussions and disagreements around what direction the nascent LGBTQAI+ movement in Ireland should be taking at the time.

"There were a lot of debates and arguments about the wider world and other things besides gay rights.

"Some of the people who came to the meetings objected to that and wanted to talk about gay rights and gay rights only, nothing else.

"The play deals with some of those splits and arguments.”

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One example, in particular, stands out in Michael’s memory.

"There was an Israeli student who came along and he was talking about the plight of his neighbours, the Palestinians, and how the Israeli government was treating them. I had never really heard too much about this though I soon learned fast.

“This was the sort of thing that was going on. I remember, the arguments, 'oh, what do the Palestinians have to do with gay rights?' All this sort of thing. All this is in there.”

The play’s title references an astonishing encounter with a member of An Garda Síochána following a gay rights demonstration in 1973.

“I was dragged in and taken to Pearse Street Garda Station. The Garda sergeant said to me, 'What you need is a good feed of Guinness to knock those Nancy Boy Shenanigans out of you and if I catch you in here again Kerrigan I will take you up to Aughnacloy and drop you up at the border post'.

"Whereupon he booted me in the arse and I went flying out into Pearse Street. So that's where the title comes from.”

‘Nancy Boy Shenanigans’ is the sixth play Michael has written and the third to have been put on the stage.

His dramatisation of gay activism in support of the miners’ strike in ‘Pits and Perverts’, and of the revolutionary ferment of the late 1960s in ‘Beyond the Barricades’ could be considered companion pieces.

"There is a thread that runs through,” Michael acknowledges.

A major touchstone has been the late Brian Friel, whose universal masterpieces are so solidly grounded in his native north west.

"Friel was a big influence on me as a playwright and Seán O'Casey more than anybody else, Friel, because of his sense of home in this part of the world.

"Friel and Heaney, when they talk of a homeplace, where you are from, who you are, what made you, who made you...they always come back to that and I feel a bit like that.

"So the play, alright, it charts the beginning of the gay rights movement but it also charts who I am, where I'm from and what influenced me and who I am as a person. I think that's important to put that into the work as well.”

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Playing a version of Michael will be the acclaimed Derry actor Andy Doherty who, fittingly, recently tread the boards of the Abbey in Dublin as ‘Doalty’ in a 2022 production of Friel’s ‘Translations’.

"We are lucky to have Andy. He is very busy. He is auditioning everywhere,” says Michael.

Director JP Conaghan, meanwhile, has been integral in helping him hone the new drama.

“He saw a different play than I. He has turned it on its head. We did eight or nine drafts. JP met me in my house and various places. We went through it.

"It's a very tough process. He suggested a lot of stuff, which was hard for me to listen to sometimes, and he put me through the mill because it's a tough play.

"When you see the resume or the synopsis it's about how brutal and how tough gay activism can be,” he says.

The work was written ‘at fairly breath-taking pace’ last year. He credits friend and comrade Shá Gillespie for making come together.

"I met Shá, who is producing the play, on a cold January afternoon in The Taphouse. She said to me, 'That play that you did a reading of in the Museum of Free Derry was great. Are you doing anything about it?'

“I said no, but she told me that it can't just gather dust on a shelf. 'I'm taking this on board. This is our history. I'm putting this on the stage'."

Shá, says Michael, got Ulster University on board. The production soon became a reality with the support of UU’s School of Arts and Humanities, its LGBT+ Staff Network, and Dublin Pride.

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“Dr. Victoria McCollum, a Lecturer in Cinematic Arts at UU, played a pivotal role in all of this. I'd really want to thank her.”

Jed Dowling, Dublin Pride Festival Director, is equally credited for the support he has given the production as are all of those who contributed to a GoFundMe stage set up by Shá to get it over the line.

The play is now in its final rehearsals ahead of the premiere on August 22.

"It's a great bunch of people around me. I'm very nervous, I'm very vulnerable. You are exposing yourself. You are putting yourself out there.

"Sometimes I think what am I doing? But I've got good support. My community around me in the Bogside are very supportive.”

Looking back on the struggle for gay rights over the past half century Michael believes it is more important than ever to form ties and connections with other grassroots movements.

"In 1993 homosexuality was decriminalised. It was 20 years after the movement at Trinity was established. I address that in the play. What do you do within 20 years? What do you do? You don't sit around being gay all day long. That's boring. You've got to get out and connect with the community.

"'Only connect' is one of my favourite lines. You connect with everybody else. You worry about the Palestinians. You worry about the black civil rights movement.

"You connect with the feminist movements. You connect with the wider world. If you don't, we are lost, and we would be nowhere were it not for the wider community’s help and support.”

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Last year the Derry activist was recognised for his role in the development of the LGBTQAI+ movement in Ireland when he was invited to be Grand Marshall at the 2023 Dublin Pride parade. It was a proud moment.

"They asked me to be Grand Marshall last year because it was the 50th anniversary of the founding of the gay rights movements in Trinity and what made me a proud Irishman walking down O'Connell Street at the head of the march was the whole world looking at me, people of different races and colours cheering me on, the new Ireland, which I love. I was almost in tears. And we've got to get used to it because that's the way Ireland is moving and it is the way it should be going,” he says.

The run at The Playhouse is already sold out but ‘Nancy Boy Shenanigans’ is likely to take on a life of its own after the Foyle Pride Festival.

"They are going to put on a performance of it in November in Liberty Hall in Dublin. We are trying to keep it as professional and minimal as possible so the set can be taken down and moved fairly easily and smoothly,” says Michael.

For more details visit: https://www.derryplayhouse.co.uk/event/nancy-boy-shenanigans#book

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