Cork actor uses his own tour guide experience for Meltdown show

A familiar face from Killnaskully, the lack of secure income as an actor ensured Jack Walsh had to turn to working as a tour guide to make ends meet

Mon, 22 Jul, 2024 - 21:30

Colette Sheridan

Cork-born Jack Walsh (Jimmy in Killnaskully) knows all about the ups and downs of the life of an actor. Because of the inevitability of ‘resting’ periods, the 68-year-old decided to become a part-time tour guide, selling brand Ireland “with enchanting tales of ceol and craic” by day while by night, he was hunkering down in his damp Capel Street flat in Dublin, threatened with eviction because of rising rent.

But never one to miss an opportunity, Walsh has parlayed his story into a one man show, Welcome to Ireland – Meltdown of an Irish Tour Guide, which he will perform at the Cork Arts Theatre on August 7-10.

Walsh could have had an easier life. “As a young fellow from Ballinlough, I hadn’t a clue about theatre. I thought the Cork Opera House was just for fur coats, a cliché I heard along the way.”

After leaving school, Walsh got a job in a bank. “In those days, that was like a ticket to heaven. But I hated it. It took me a few years to be courageous enough to leave. I transferred to Dublin and enjoyed myself for a while.”

But Walsh realised he wasn’t at all suited to working in the bank. He fell in love with a woman who broke his heart. To try and get over her, Walsh took night classes in creative writing. He remembered a passing comment that his ex-girlfriend made, saying he’d be good at drama. He joined a drama class.

“I didn’t really know plays but I was a good mimic.” Encouraged to pursue acting by a former head of drama at RTÉ, Walsh studied theatre with Deirdre O’Connell who founded the Focus Theatre. “It was the Stanislavski method, all very internal. It was really good for me to do. Eventually, I started doing mime classes with two guys who had been at the Marcel Marceau school in Paris.”

Lured by tales of great fun, parties, the charisma of Marceau and his theatrical technique, Walsh moved to Paris to study with the late French mime artist.

“At the time, mime in Ireland was sort of street corner stuff. In Paris, I came to realise that for the French, mime was an art form, right up there with painting. Marceau was amazing. I remember that he was in the Theatre de Champs Elysées for a month. He would do two-and-a-half hour-long shows on his own with no words. The place was full every night. He had such magnetism. The funny thing was there were people who were better at technique but he had a mixture of confidence and bravado, storytelling talent and an artistic knowledge that was unrivalled.”

Walsh spent three years with Marceau, travelling to the US and Italy, working as an assistant to him. Walsh enjoyed the company of Marceau who, funnily enough, would never stop talking once he was off the stage.

About ten years ago, Walsh, divorced, was living in private rented accommodation in Dublin, feeling financially insecure. He had spotted tour guides and took himself off to Fáilte Ireland where he completed a course that allowed him to act as a guide to the city, often to groups of up to fifty people from cruise liners. It gave him plenty of fodder for his show in which he plays historical figures, tourists, landlords and a tour guide in danger of homelessness. These days Walsh still does occasional tour guides, but to smaller groups of people.

This grandfather points to the irony of talking up Ireland while rents are sky high and there is a housing crisis. He doesn’t want to give away the ending of his show. Suffice to say, this sometime tour guide is in a better place.

“But there was a long time when things were extremely hairy and touch and go. There was an element of couch surfing as well which, when you’re older, is quite humiliating.”

However, Walsh doesn’t regret his career choice but feels sorry for young people starting out. “It’s harder for young people today to follow their hearts. When I was twenty, if you had any sort of a job, you could get by and rent some sort of a bedsit. We don’t have bedsits anymore. There used to be places to live; loads of council houses for people that needed them and loads of flats. I can get a bit angry about the way things are now.”

Walsh says that everyone in the Dáil should see his show. It may be humorous but it also shines a light on living conditions in twenty-first century Ireland.