04 July 2003: A Cumbernauld Theatre Production for the Scottish Touring Theatre Consortium, Salt O’ the Earth, is previewing at the Riverbank Arts Centre from July 16 to 19 before making its world premiere at the Galway Arts Festival later this month.
The production is directed by Simon Sharkey and stars Little John Nee.
Johnny Bonner was a wee boy with a major identity crisis who battled his way from humble beginnings in Glasgow to his present moment of glory in the theatre. This is an hilarious quest for fulfilment that takes him from the sweet searing heat of a brook in the hills of Andalusia to the rain soaked banks of Saltmarket on the Clyde, with a long time spent on the highways and byways of the west of Ireland, introducing us to a host of beautiful broken people that make life “a precious thing to behold.”
Little John himself is a child of the emigration between Donegal and Glasgow. He was born in Glasgow, but brought up back in Letterkenny. After his punk years in Co. Donegal, (where he sang with a best-forgotten showband) and on the sites in London, he moved to Galway where he worked as a street entertainer, and with the Macnas Theatre Company.
Little John Nee's magnetic performances have garnered him an international reputation, not least for his original play, The Derry Boat, telling of the vagabond life between Donegal and Scotland. After opening at the Galway Arts Festival in 1998, it was revived on several occasions in both Donegal and Galway. In 2000 it played for three weeks in Washington D.C. gaining John a nomination for Best Actor, Non Resident Production in the Helen Hayes Awards (the Washington equivalent of the Tonys').
With a witty mixture of song and the spoken word, Little John brings the bardic tradition to life.
