Children’s playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer was born in West Cork.

‘That’s quite magic’

There are a lot of interesting people out there, and then there are people like children’s playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer who take interesting to a whole new level.

Even his name is interesting, and one you might not associate with West Cork in the ‘80s, but that’s exactly where and when he was born.

At eight years of age, Finegan moved from the small rural town of Dunscullib to Australia where he now lives with wife Essie and son Moe in the South Australian state capital Adelaide.

At just 39 years young, Finegan has already had 97 commissioned plays performed on six continents and translated into eight languages.

Then there are the awards. To list them all might leave no room on the page for anything else, so please allow me to summarise; the man has received a hell of a lot of awards for his incredible work.

“I feel really lucky about the opportunities I’ve had along the way,” explains Finegan from half way around the world.

“I wrote my first play when just entering teenagehood and received my first commission when just leaving it. An excellent youth theatre here in Adelaide invited me to write a script about youth gambling addiction.”

As a “bookish child” living on a hill in Dunscullib between Leap and Rosscarbery, Finegan fell in love with words from a young age and always knew they’d be a central part of whatever his life would become.

“As to notions of career though, it was when I moved to Australia and joined a theatre, that I understood writing might be a job as well as a joy. That was a lovely thing to discover.”

In his early days, Finegan could be found writing anywhere and at any hour, but now a family man, he has adopted a calmer and more considered approach to his work.

“My wife works Monday to Friday jobs in the arts and our son goes to school just the same, so my schedule mirrors theirs. I write about fictional people when the house is empty, and then hang out with real ones when it’s full.”

Writing primarily for younger people, Finegan has devoted much of his career to making strong and respectful work for children, acknowledging them as astute audience members outside the play, and worthy subjects within.

“At first it was serendipitous. A play written for children lived a good life travelling the globe and where it went, chats about new commissions occurred, so it was a nice self-perpetuating thing.

“Then, over time, I came to really love the exercise of it: the permission for magic and wonder which children’s theatre allows, and which I now also build into my adult work as I feel there’s that same dormant love in us too.

“Children’s theatre deals in that all the time, conjuring big worlds and emotions and stakes, with simple evocative language. I very rarely succeed in the task, but I love the task.”

A true master in the craft of storytelling, Finegan believes a good story is one containing simple truths and complex circumstances that respects the audience while demanding something of them too.

“One where a character is truly challenged, so must truly prove themselves great. One with enough space provided for the audience to write their own narrative, to imagine their own equivalencies with a character, to see it as a representation of some part of their own life – and so do much of the emotional labour themselves.”

At the risk of sounded pretentious, I ask Finegan why, in his opinion, storytelling is such a massive part of human existence.

“Maybe because of how it reflects time, proper spans of time. Stories have been told long before us and will be told for a long time after. And while the details may vary, fundamental concepts about who we are as people, what we might want from a life, what love feels like, what loss feels like, are touched on over and over. And in the psychological safety of a theatre or a cinema or a library, we can unpack those ideas and empathetically place ourselves in the shoes of another. That’s quite magic.”

They say you can take the man out of Cork, but you can’t take Cork of the man. Since departing the Rebel County, Finegan has returned many times to the land he was born in, as a child with his parents, as a penniless teenager, and then as an adult with his own family.

“I remember that childhood very fondly, and think I’ve overlaid those early Irish memories with the more recent visiting ones, so it still feels very rich and alive for me. Lots of great family and friends still live in West Cork and I’ve been back regularly.”

It's clear that Finegan is a man who loves to laugh and although he says he lives by no mantra or particular philosophy as such, he has noticed some important things on his journey.

“I noticed a while ago that recurring in my plays is the sentiment of characters informed by three spheres: the family you come from, the community you exist in, the family you create. To exist comfortably in all three is probably my definition of happiness and to now find myself having that probably explains the laughter.”

Finegan’s highly acclaimed play ‘This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing’ is currently running as part of the Everyman and Graffiti Theatre Company’s Play It by Ear programme.