A comedian, artist, and guitar teacher's advice for 2020
Doing things differently can make life great. meets a comedian, an artist and a guitar teacher who have advice for anyone looking for a change in 2020
Nurturing your higher self, your inner artist, your cherished dreams. These are things most only dream of, as feeling the fear and diving straight in, require courage of an admirable kind.
Sometimes we shake things up and do things differently. Sometimes we quieten the voice within and procrastinate some more. But other times, stuff happens, and we find ourselves on a path that’s made for the gifts we have, without feeling at all, that we had any real choice in the matter.
LAURA O’MAHONY
Making a career out of comedy is not for the fainthearted. Only the brave attempt it. Only the great succeed. Cork woman Laura O’Mahony’s among them. She’s a whizz and she’s everywhere.
The stand-up comedian, actor and member of CCCahoots comedy sketch troupe is a hoot on Mario’s Sunday Roast radio show. She’s also a riot on RTÉ. You’ll have watched her on Bridget And Eamon, Comedy Bites, The Republic Of Telly, The School and more.
With a one-line quip, O’Mahony could drag a chuckle from a deadpan Beefeater. Born to conjure laughter, she premiered her first solo stand up show at Cork Comedy Festival in 2016. She’s now counting on filling Cork’s Everyman theatre to the rafters, when her new show The People’s Princess runs there in March.
Booking that venue for herself was a risk. But for her it was a no-brainer: “Filling those seats is my goal now. I’ve no interest in anything other than having the craic. Nothing horrendous happened to me yet. But it could be pending. Then they’d say of me ‘Just when she was having the craic, she died’.”
I wonder if she joked her way out of the womb, but ask instead about her entry into comedy: “I’m a stand-up first and foremost. I started in 2013. I did my first stand-up at the Coco Club in Coughlan’s Bar. My friends comprised the audience, so it was a very unrealistic experience.
“Then I did a spot in City Limits. That was much scarier, with an audience of devout comedy fans wanting to be made laugh. After that I entered the So You Think You’re Funny competition at the Edinburgh Fringe and reached the semi-finals.”
She later quit entering competitions.“Some can be limiting,” she says. “Sometimes you get just seven minutes and lots of politics. In Dublin one time, the audience voted for the winner, so those with the most support in the room won the night.
“That was a waste of time so I started gigging.”
The first night she supported Des Bishop, he introduced her as “a local girl who’d tell a few jokes”.
“I think he was expecting a half-funny girl and he was taken aback,” she says. “The next night he gave me more time.”
She used to perform in serious plays, but gave that up. “Once my babies arrived, I decided I didn’t have time to be fannying around in those, as it wasn’t my love interest. Slobbing around the Abbey in sad plays wasn’t for me.
"Nor was being in rehearsal rooms while being told to pretend to be animals. I’d be thinking: I’m not 19. I don’t have time to be a horse. Can we just get on with learning the script?”
She’s fearless: “In stand-up, there’s usually a fella in the second row with his arms folded waiting for the girl on stage to talk about her vagina until the main man arrives. I love breaking these guys down, making them laugh. I always do it.”
FIONA CHAN
Another who’s brave, switches things up and takes risks to do what she loves, is Dublin-based artist, Fiona Chan. This year, she held her first exhibition, My Heart is an Ocean, at the Signal Arts Centre.
A proud landmark in any creative’s life, the debut exhibition was particularly poignant for Fiona, who lost 60% of her sight in 2014 when a brain tumour and associated seizures turned her life upside down.
“It took a while to recover,” she says. “For a time I was in standby mode. But then came the realisation that if I don’t try I’ll never know.”
After her surgery, Chan contacted NCBI, where she found support and encouragement. “They encouraged me to be creative and resourceful. So I took up arts, crafts and pottery. They also helped me develop my studio practice.”
In 2019 her first exhibition was launched to a great response. Of what was revealed through her painting she says: “Feelings I went through. Some were a little dark, a little cathartic. Most showcased my sense of renewal and a glimpse of hope for better days. My belief is that life can always get better.”
Find out more about Fiona Chan’s work at www.visualartists.ie
GORDON LEARY
That belief is something Gordon Leary knows first-hand. He left an IT job to teach guitar and has never been happier.
“It came about via a circular route,” he says. “I was a musician and a music teacher for years. Then I got tinnitus and slight hearing loss. I stopped gigging in case it might get worse, and went back to college for the IT skills that landed me a new job.”
Working 9 to 5 in something that wasn’t his ‘passion’ took a toll. “There was a long, horrible, commute every day. I’d get home in the evenings flaked and fit for nothing. I felt I’d no time to pursue what I really loved. Instead I was doing stuff for stress relief.
“I was teaching guitar one evening per week back then, and I decided if I did more advertising and marketing I could gradually build that up. So I did. I knew music was a better fit for me.
That’s why I took the plunge, and it was so energising that along with teaching guitar, I began writing and recording. Now the work-related stress I knew in IT is long gone.
What would the IT crowd think if they met him now? “They’d find me more relaxed, big time,” he replies. “Also, more content and happy.”
He loved performing: “I really wanted to be a rock star,” he laughs. “But the teaching found me. When the hearing issues meant I couldn’t keep gigging, I questioned whether I should continue teaching.
"I stayed with it, as I get a great kick out of it. I’m my own boss now, running my busy, guitar-teaching studio and I’m more excited about that than ever.”
Leary’s talk about early rock star dreams got me curious. So, after we chatted I took a peek at a YouTube video in which he plays an impromptu guitar solo. It looked like one hell of a gig. The man can play.
Gordan Leary’s guitar teaching studio: guitarlessonsindublin.com
If you go through a low spell, remind yourself to be brave again. To those wanting to unleash their creative genie in 2020, while feeling a bit scared of risking failure, O’Mahony says: “Every now and then you have to reinstate bravery.
"I’m going to be brave by doing my show in the Everyman. Then I won’t be brave again for a while. I’ll hibernate and mind my kids.
“If you go through a low bravery spell, remind yourself to be brave again. But remember that being brave all the time isn’t sustainable. It’s also exhausting. I think it’s brave to fight for just being normal. That’s worthwhile for me.”
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