Mannix Flynn


Life
1957- [Gerrard Mannix Flynn]; b. 4 may 1957, Dublin; ed. Whitefair Nat. School, St. Joseph’s Industrial College, letterfrack, Marlborough House [detention centre], St Patrick’s Institution (Mountjoy) and Central Mental Hosp.; engaged in drama with Project Theatre in the 1970s; author, with Peter Sheridan, and lead in The Liberty Suit (1977); played numerous Jim Sheridan productions including Mobile Homes (1976), Emigrants (1978), The Ha’penny Place (1979) and Inner City/Outer Space (1979), with Johnny Murphy and others, as well as in Lee Dunne’s Does Your Mother? (1979) and Aidan Mathew s The Antigone (1984); wrote He Who Laughs Wins (1981) as one of 6 plays commissioned by Paines Plough Theatre Co. (London);
 
issued Nothing to Say (Dublin: Ward River 1983), a novel, later rewritten as a screen play, Alma Mater (2001), giving an account of reformatory life in Letterfrack centred on the autobiographical char. James O’Neill; co-wrote Inside for RTE (1986); wrote Hunger and Thirst for Red Rex Th. Co. (Italy 1989); Talking to the Wall (Dublin Arts Club, Dec. 1996 [var. 1993]; Dublin Th. Fest. 1997), one-man show based on experience of James from early family life through national school, borstal and prison; winner of Scotsman Fringe First award at Edinburgh Festival, 1997; wrote Twist of Fate (Trisquare Films 1998), on Kerry babies case; also James X (Liberty Hall 2003), a highly-commended monologue featuring the boyhood of a victim of physical and sexual abuse who ends in paralysis;
 
created Victim Impact Report (Oct. 2004-March 2005), an installation located at Lwr. Leeson St. Dublin, and based on the horrendous crimes committed against children by state and clergy; elected to Aosdána, May 2003; member of Board of IMMA; he revived his solo-performance James X at the Peacock Theatre (April 2010); lives in Kerry; he has been translated into Italian by Enrico Terrinoni; elected to Dublin City Council as an Independent candidate representing the South-East Inner City, June 2009 and re-elected for the same when revised as Pembroke-South Dock, May 2014; stood for election to Dáil Eireann as an Independent representing Dublin Bay South in 2016; his film Man Without God was issued in Oct. 2019. DIL2
 
[ Mannix has a Wordpress Blog - online and there is a Wikipedia entry - online

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Works
Nothing to Say (Nothing to Say (Dublin, Ward River Press, 1983), and Do. [rep. edn.] (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2003), 144pp.; James X (2003), 86pp. [text of one-man show].

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Quotations
A harsh history of the horror’, review of The Irish Gulag, in The Irish Times (30 May 2009), Weekend, p.11: ‘[... Arnold] catalogues overwhelming and damning evidence that the irish State was engaged in unlawful acts of such momentous proportions as to send shockwaves not only throughout Irish society but throughout the world. / This is a political work that will give people everywhere an understanding of thwat was happening in Ireland under a regime of brutality and fear. [...]’ (See further under Bruce Arnold, supra.)

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Notes
Variations from above given in Philip Casey‘s Irishwriters-online incl. one-man plays Talking to the Wall (Dublin Arts Club, 1996; The Dublin Theatre Festival, 1997); James X (Dublin, Music Centre, Dublin Theatre Festival, 2002).

The Darkest Corner (Abbey Th., Sept. 2010): The Darkest Corner takes its name from a statement issued by then Taoiseach Brian Cowen in describing where the enquiry and subsequent report now left Ireland, morally and socially – a dark corner indeed. [...] Mannix Flynn’s performance of James X focused on a further result of The Darkest Corner, that being class issues. This distinction emphasises that the Ryan report was met with a more concerted and middle class response that the Murphy report was [...]. (See Staged Reaction online; accessed 20.03.2011; and further under Paddy Doyle, supra.)

Land Without God (2019): Mannix Flynn’s moving and deeply personal account of institutional abuse and its lasting impact, received a Special Commendation at the Irish Council of Civil Liberties Human Rights Film Awards and Screen International called it a ‘heartbreaking personal documentary’. (Trailer available online.)


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