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John Harrigan

JOHN HARRIGAN  (1971 - )

 Nationality:    British
email:    Click here to contact     Website:    Click here

Literary Agent:    n/a


John Harrigan is a Writer, Director, actor and the founder of FoolishPeople. FoolishPeople was founded in 1991 as the name under which John Harrigan developed and created live art and theatre that aimed to give rise to a numinous experience within the spectator. FoolishPeople combine live art with the hermetic and esoteric to create theatre that explores new technologies in Magick, which in turn enable theatre to be a powerful tool for positive change. Plays written by John Harrigan and produced by FoolishPeople are Enochian: Language of angels, Revelations: Fear the mind, The Singularity Ruined Steel and the anthology of Six plays entitled Dark Nights of the Soul. Harrigan has written one Book of prose entitled Vacuum and is currently finishing a book of prose and photography titled THE BOOK OF HaTE and a graphic novel titled WET SHaRDS, both of which will be published in 2006.

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below is a list of John Harrigan's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

 Abbatoir Pages, The         Cirxus         Enochian: Language Of Angels         Red Threatening Sky, A         Revelations: Fear The Mind         Ruined Steel         Singularity, The

Abbatoir Pages, The

Synopsis:
Promptly at 7.30 a beautiful woman appeared, elegant in chic red, her martinet manner slightly undermined by a gentleness behind the eyes. The programme says she's Tacuinum, which perhaps relates to an arabic medieval medical manuscript called Taqwin al-sihla - when translated into Latin it became known as Tacuinum Sanitas, but there is no way at this stage of knowing that, nor is their really any way of discovering who the other people, animals or beings you are going to meet are called or exactly what they are. If there is a story it is fragmented and up to you to put together. If there is a mystery to be solved you have to find it, quite apart from discovering a solution. Tacuinum issues strict instructions about guest behaviour, for the premise is that you are invited to a party that celebrates the publication of the latest work of a famous horror story writer, Helen Mayer. Most importantly you must be silent, as the beings you meet will constantly remind you with fingers to their lips, and you are warned that you may have to go really close to hear what some of them are saying.
- Howard Loxton, British Theatre Guide

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
The Old abattoir, Clerkenwell, London    Oct 2009

Organisations:
Guerilla Zoo and Foolish People

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Cirxus

Synopsis:
The arcola Theatre has another new space, an industrial building behind the present one, which officially opens in July as Studio K but is now the site for this promenade production which takes its audiences back to 1957 and the village of Seascale on the Cumbrian coast, where the Windscale nuclear reactors and Calder Hall nuclear power station had been built in the preceding years. It's relevant, for those who may not be aware, that in October that year a fire destroyed the core of one of the Windscale Piles releasing radioactive material into the environment, including Iodine-131, which can by taken up by the thyroid gland. Nearly fifty years later, in 2005, a Magnox reprocessing plant on the same site leaked radioactive waste. Soil samples taken by Greenpeace over 11km from the site were found in tests by scientists at Bremen University to have radioactive contamination with americium-241 400 times higher than those taken the same distance from Chernobyl. In 1957 milk and other farm produce in surrounding areas had to be destroyed - but what about the people? Writer and director John Harrigan here presents a poetic look at the effects. Note his title Cirxus, a mutation from Circus, for here he presents a group of characters from a circus changed by their exposure to radiation. They inhabit a barren industrial space with some boxed in areas making small rooms. an elephant painted on a wall is a reminder of the animal acts, a banner or sign indicates a side show but you are not here to see their performance in the ring. a bath full of sand, some palettes with beach toys are a reminder that this is by the seaside, strings of coloured lights are a sad reminder of past brightness.
- Howard Loxton, British Theatre Guide

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Foolish People

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Piece

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  11            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Enochian: Language Of Angels

Synopsis:
John Harrigan's Enochian Language of angels was another controversial play influenced by near death experiences, the visiting of heaven and hell and the sphere of good and evil. a clear confrontation with the inevitable choices of death was translated on to stage imaginatively by the writer. it is a subject we hear and read about so often and yet rarely have the courage to analyse such possible realities. asmadai the role of dilemma was interpreted originally by John Harrigan. This proved to be a powerful and shocking play full of the brazen symbolism of this borderline state, containing interesting angles on life. - Sophi Cockayne: Comet Leisure

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
North Herts College Hitchin, UK    1991

Organisations:
Foolish People

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Red Threatening Sky, A

Synopsis:
another of Foolish People's atmospheric site-specific productions, this one set in what is supposed to be the Club aethereus on Valentine's Day. It is a very strange kind of club owned by the mysterious Sebastian Qyain who seems to be trying to get his hands on something or someone. There is what seems to be a cabaret area with a stage marked out by a bulb-illuminated cat-walk but it embraces all sorts of other locations too among the pillared and vaulted halls and strange rooms of the abattoir's three floors. There is a tea room where you may be offered cakes and scones as the Welsh waitress tells you about her love life, a hotel room where unpleasantness happen, a doctor's office and her consulting room, a strange place, part tent part tumbled-down shack, where a receptionist seems more like a controller, a washroom-cum-dressing room where cabaret girls congregate and may confess their romantic disappointments or challenge you with your own erotic failures. Then there are the Valentinians - are they a family or a secret society? - represented by a mysterious woman in black and red who want someone to find a missing woman called Pearl who seems to have been abducted. Perhaps the waif-like creatures whom you may encounter anywhere performing their slow, contorted choreography are Valentinians too.
- Howard Loxton, British Theatre Guide

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
The abattoir, Clerkenwell, London    14 Feb 2010

Organisations:
Foolish People

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
site specific Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Revelations: Fear The Mind

Synopsis:
a group of friends meet each year to play with death.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
North Herts College Letchworth, UK    1994

Organisations:
Foolish People

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Ruined Steel

Synopsis:
Ruined Steel blended Modern theatre with Science Fiction, Horror and anime to create art that hacked reality.Who owns your soul? Have you already sold it to your corporate masters for survival? Would it be Heaven or Hell if they could keep you alive perpetually without your permission, as long as it served their brand? Because soon, even the afterlife may be digitized. Those who've sold their souls should be thankful for their fate with the devil, because Hell has nothing on Ruined Steel.

Notes:
Ruined Steel Featured world famous burlesque Artist Valeria Dragova And Katarina Severen AKa Nikita the UK's most famous female pro wrestler.Ruined Steel was written And directed by John Harrigan.

1st Produced:
Camden Peoples Theatre, London    2004

Organisations:
Foolish People

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Singularity, The

Synopsis:
It began millions of years ago with an inexplicable event that ignited the spark of human consciousness, transforming animal into man, and now it happens again as two black holes collide and create the gravity wave that will carry the entity that is the singularity to us. The Singularity has decided that Mankind must answer for its actions whether it wishes to or not, before it can play a role in the evolution of the species. Now two lives are about to become inextricably tangled in the Singularity. Dr Ruth Bell, the survivor of a tragic human event and Rebecca Beelz, a human who must control others to survive. It will kindle their wildest dreams - and fan their darkest fears. Now, the Singularity enters its perilous, ultimate stage. a single hope flickers. Is humanity ready to learn the awe-inspiring truth?

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
The Barn Theatre, Welwyn Garden City, UK    2002

Organisations:
Foolish People

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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