Life
[?-?]; b. 18 Oct., Dublin; ed. Belvedere Coll., where he studied Classics, and Edinburgh Univ.; fndr. Member Galloglass Theatre Co. (Clonmel), with br. David Teevan (mgr.) and the latter’s partner
Theresia Guschlbauer, 1990; wrote plays
Here Come Cowboys, Vinegar and Brown Paper, and The Crack
and the Whip; Svejk (Gate 1999);
also Breathing Space, jointly produced by Galloglass and Theatre West Glamorgan under a cross-border EU grant scheme; also translations from Greek, French
and Italian, incl. Iph (Belfast Lyric 1999; dir. David Grant), a hip version of Iphegenia, orig. commissioned for the Abbey by Patrick Mason, but transferred to the Lyric Theatre, Belfast (Maryc 1999); presented on radio by Stephen Wright (BBC3, 1999) and later produced on stage by
Co. Sligo Youth Theatre
(Factory Performance Space, Jan. 2001); wrote a stage-version of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels for Galloglass, touring Ireland and ending at St. Patrick’s Cathedral (29th June 2000); appt. writer-in-residence and Head of Drama at Queen’s University over six years; issued tans. of Euripedes Iphigenia in Aulis (Belfast Lyric, 1999); taken on to rewrite RSC’s Tantalus, a nine-play marathon following rift between author John Barton and producers Peter and Edward Hall, 2001; appt. Northeast Literary Fellow at the University of Newcastle and lecturer on the Univ. of East Anglia Creative Writing programme; trans. Euripides Bacchai (London, National Th. 2002); wrote How May Miles to Basra? (BBC3), an anti-war play about the invasion of Iraq, based on Herodotus; trans. Euripides Alcmaeon in Corinth as Cock of the North (2004; pub. 2005); also Missing Persons: Four Tragedies and Roy Keane, produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Aug. 2005 and Trafalgar Studios (Whitehall Th., London), Jan-Feb. 2006.
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Works
Plays, Svejk, based on The Good Soldier Svejk […] by Jaroslav Hasek [Oberon Modern Plays] London: Oberon 1999), 104pp.; Iph--: after Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Aulis [Lyric Theatre, Belfast] (London: Nick Hern Books [1999]), xxii, 65pp., and Do. as Iph--- / Euripides: A New Version from the Greek of Iphigeneia in Aulis, introduced by Edith Hall [Absolute classics] (London: Oberon Books, 2002), 76pp.; Cuckoos, by Giuseppe Manfridi: English Version (London: Oberon 2000), 72pp.; The Walls [Oberon Modern Plays] London: Oberon 2001), 80pp.; Two Plays, introduction by Jack Bradley [Oberon Modern Playwrights] (London: Oberon Books 2002), 94pp. [“The Big Sea”; “Vinegar and Brown Paper”]; Bacchai / Euripides; a new translation, introduced by Edith Hall (London: Oberon 2002), 71pp.; Monkey!: A Tale from China [Oberon modern plays] (London: Oberon 2003), 68pp.; Alcmaeon in Corinth: After a Fragment of Euripides, first performed as Cock of the North, introduced by Edith Hall [Oberon Modern Plays] (London: Oberon 2004), 95pp.
Miscellaneous, with Caoimhín Mac Léith, Michael Cullen: Are All Painters Cowboys or Are Some Cowboys Painters? [catalogue] (Derry: Orchard Gallery/NI Arts Council 1996), 32pp., mostly ills.; ‘A Barbarian Activity: The Process of Translation of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis’, in David Johnston, ed. & intro., Stage of Transition: Essays and Interviews on Tanslating for the Stage (Bath: Absolute Classics 1996), p.97.
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Criticism
Jane Coyle, feature-review of Iph at Belfast Lyric, in The Irish Times (2 March 1999) [infra]; Jonathan Croall, ‘Inteview with Colin Teevan, Translator’, in Bacchai: National Theatre Education Pack (Nat. Th. Educ. Magazine July 2002), p.3; Suzanne Lynch, ‘What links Euripides and Roy Keane? [...]’, in The Irish Times ( 20 Aug. 2005) [infra]; Toby Lichtig, ‘Voices of the Not Forgotten’, review of Missing Persons, in Times Literary Supplement (10 Feb. 2006), p.19.
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Commentary
Toby Lichtig, ‘Voices of the Not Forgotten’, review of Missing Persons, four Tragedies and Roy Keane, at Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall Th., in Times Literary Supplement (10 Feb. 2006), p.19: ‘The “missing persons” of Colin Teevan’s compelling new play, first seen in Edinburgh last summer, are men in various states of crisis. The situations are modern - a reluctant IRA terrorist forced to decommission his gun, a footballer falling out with his manager - but the themes, of jealousy, loyalty and revenge, are timeless. Teevan’s idiom reflects this, combining everyday speech with the tenor, and sometimes the imagery, of oral epic. Each of the five short monologues has its origins in Greek myth; each is handled by the excellent Greg Hicks with steel and sophistication. [...]’ (For full text, see infra.)
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Quotations
Jane Coyle, feature-review of Iph at Belfast Lyric, in The Irish Times (2 March 1999), quotes Teevan on Iph: ‘[...] “It is not about Ireland; it is not about Northern Ireland”, he insists. “But when I heard it read last year, for the first time, with Northern accents, it did seem to gain a certain momentum. It is about the freedom of the individual versus the freedom of a society; about what can happen when people are inspired by a cause to do crazy things.’ He is immediately referred by Grant to news reports of the young Kurdish girl who set fire to herself last week at the seige of the Greek embassy in London. He agrees that this is exactly the kind of blind fervour the play addresses. / “Irish society is full of the notion of the sacrificial lamb. The rhetoric of Padraig Pearse was all about spilling blood for Ireland - Irish emigration was sacrifice on a grand political scale. I recall, during the writing of the play, suddenly thinking of the terrible story of a young girl, who gave birth to a baby in a churchyard grotto, during the abortion debate in the 1980s, and of the double standards implicit in her horrible ordeal. Here, we see a young girl pushed into an extreme situation because her father has chosen to put the interests of the country before the interests of his family.” But it is not only in its hip, vernacular language, in the mischievously logical creation of an outspoken Chorus of sexy, giggling girls, in its writer’s modernistic ideas of rupture and fragmentation that Iph breaks new ground.’ (The Irish Times, 2 March 1999.)
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