As a 15-year-old growing up in West Belfast, Disco Pigs changed my life

Enda Walsh is putting his money where his mouth is by returning to Cork to direct this production. The city should be proud of it 

Eileen Walsh (left) and Cillian Murphy in 1996 around the premiere run of Disco Pigs. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive

I first saw Pat Kiernan and Corcadorca’s incredible production of Disco Pigs at the Old Museum Arts Centre in Belfast when I was 15.

I had grown up in Twinbrook, a working-class republican enclave in West Belfast, famous for being the home of Bobby Sands and the joyriding capital of Western Europe. When I was a teenager the Garvaghy Road was on the news every day (plus ça change…) and the only outlet for a boy like me was to get involved in GAA, or other three-letter organisations.

Before seeing Disco Pigs I had only ever seen pantomimes or plays set in the past. But seeing these two extraordinary, contemporary, defiant, unapologetic teenagers burst around the stage with such pride, energy and fearlessness changed my life.

It changed my outlook on what theatre could be. It made me realise plays could be for people like me.

Pig and Runt were like the people I went to school with, so I felt like I knew them, yet they spoke in a strange, alien language that made me hang on their every syllable. It was that tension and contradiction between the familiar and the incredibly weird that made me fall in love with the possibilities of theatre.

I became very involved in Youth Theatre and remember sometimes feeling slightly frustrated and patronised when well-meaning people would try to get us to devise pieces about our own lives. I wasn’t interested in making up plays about what it felt like to grow up poor during the Troubles because I experienced that for real every day. 

For theatre to be exciting there had to be some sort of metaphor or trick to make you look at the world you knew in a new way.

For me, there was nothing like the wallop of a classic play. The Crucible made me understand the religious fundamentalism on the news. Romeo and Juliet reminded me of sectarian bigotry between Belfast teenagers. The emotional kick of The Glass Menagerie hits differently when you are worried the electricity might be disconnected.

Seeing theatre as a teenager is what got me out of Twinbrook. It opened possibilities I hadn’t imagined for myself and ultimately led to me going to university, where I got a scholarship to study abroad in America.

(Left to right) Séamus McLean Ross as Pig, writer and director Enda Walsh and Aoise Meaney as Runt in the upcoming production of Disco Pigs. Photo: Marcin Lewandowski

Once, during a theatre class in Pennsylvania, we had to bring our favourite play and share it with classmates. I brought Disco Pigs. My American classmates struggled to read it because of its heightened, inventive Cork language. 

But a friend of mine, another international student from Barbados (also on a non-fee-paying scholarship), picked up the script and was able to read it perfectly. Her Bajan accent, cadence and rhythm seemed to match the Cork rhythm of Disco Pigs exactly. She just GOT it.

Historians and linguists will be better able to explain the links between Bajan and Cork dialects, but for me, what struck me was how easily my friend identified with these characters. When we performed parts of the play together, I realised how universal it was. 

This story about two teenagers from Cork (Pork) City could speak to young people from Belfast to Barbados.

It speaks to feeling disaffected, forgotten, left behind, and having your best friend to fight the world with. It also shows what happens when that world becomes too small, and you need to leave it.

I got to know Enda when I spent several years as an associate director on his musical Once in the West End and directed the production internationally. There’s nothing like directing a comedy song about County Cork called Abandoned in Bandon in the Korean language in Seoul to once again remind you of the mad universality of Enda Walsh.

Last year, when I was thinking about The Everyman’s 2026 season, I realised this year would be the 30th anniversary of Disco Pigs. I contacted Enda to see if he would ever consider letting us revive it at The Everyman, expecting him to say no. He came straight back and said he would love to, and that he would be up for directing it.

Some people who become successful talk a good game about giving back to the place where they started out. Enda is putting his money where his mouth is. 

He has gone around the world with his work, won a Tony Award on Broadway, made hugely successful films and opera and is one of the most prolific living Irish theatre artists. For him to come back to Cork to direct his play at The Everyman is an extraordinary thing. We are proud to have him and his incredible company and creative team here making this show for Cork, with Cork.

Aoise Meaney as Runt and Séamus McLean Ross as Pig in the upcoming production of Disco Pigs at the Everyman in Cork. Picture: Marcin Lewandowski

I think Cork should be enormously proud of Disco Pigs. Thirty years on, it is one of the most important plays in the Irish canon, has been translated into more than 40 languages, and there’s always a production of Disco Pigs playing somewhere in the world. 

It absolutely stands the test of time, and we are excited that it is going to be discovered by a new generation of Pigs and Runts. I think it’s safe to say Disco Pigs can now be considered a classic play.

Des Kennedy: 'Seeing theatre as a teenager is what got me out of Twinbrook. It opened possibilities I hadn’t imagined for myself and ultimately led to me going to university, where I got a scholarship to study abroad in America.' Photo: Raaz Praveen

Recently, The Everyman received a donation from the staff of Dentons Ireland in memory of their colleague Diarmuid’s sister Elmarie Mawe. Elmarie was a broadcaster, teacher, champion of the arts, a friend of The Everyman, and a huge loss to Cork and everyone who knew her. 

Thanks to the donation, during our run of Disco Pigs, we are welcoming 100 young people to see the show free of charge, from Presentation Secondary School, Ballyphehane; Nagle Community College, Mahon; Gaelcholáiste Mhuire A.G.; Coláiste Éamann Rís, Turner’s Cross; and Mayfield Community School. I think it would make Elmarie happy to know these young people are seeing this play for the first time because of her.

Enda will also be doing an outreach project where he works directly with young people from Ballincollig Community School and we have many more young people coming to our schools' matinee. Giving young people the opportunity to see theatre matters immensely, and it is an important part of our work at The Everyman. I hope this play ignites something in them. As it did for me.

Thank you, Cork, for supporting Disco Pigs, and if you know a teenager who might enjoy this play, please bring them along.

It might just change their life.