1. When did you think about a career in theatre and what were your first steps into it?
I remember a rehearsal for St Mary's Choral Society in Newcastle, Co Down, about 1975. We were doing The King and I, and rehearsing the King's deathbed scene. Frank Bradley was the King and I was the Crown Prince, his son. Rehearsal and all as it was, in a cold hall on a weekday night, I was moved to tears. And I thought to myself, there's something about this drama business.
2. Best gigs you’ve been to?
Martha Reeves in Aberystwyth Arts Centre in 2018. Light in The Wilmar, Newcastle, when I was a teenager (they were great, and it was my local) and, for sheer entertainment, Kieran Goss in the back room of McCuaig's Bar on Rathlin Island.
3. Fantasy wedding/birthday party band?
Either Chic or the Sharon Shannon Band. Maybe the Sharon Shannon Band featuring Nile Rodgers.
4. The record you’d take to a desert island?
Sharon Shannon's version of Cavan Potholes (Live). I have no resistance to its joyousness. It never fails to lift me.
5. And the book?
100 Poems – Seamus Heaney's family's selection of the poet's work. I carry it with me like the poetry version of a hip-flask.?
6. Top three films?
Still Crazy, A Mighty Wind and Pride. They are all films with a lot of laughs, a lot of music, and heart.
7. Worst film you’ve seen?
Without doubt, Fun with Dick and Jane, starring Jim Carey. My son and I went to see it only because the film we wanted to see was bunged. Fun with Dick and Jane has never been bunged, anywhere.
8. Favourite authors?
Alice Munro, Sebastian Barry and Seamus Heaney.
9. Sports you most enjoy?
It might seem like the strangest combination, but I enjoy inter-county hurling and test cricket.
10. Ideal holiday destination?
Inishowen. A cottage in a wrinkle in the hills or a gap in the dunes.
11. Pet hates?
People using mobile phones while driving and people driving massive 4x4s in a town.
12. What’s your favourite:
Dinner? Christmas dinner.
Dessert? Christmas pudding.
Drink? Tea. Not herbal or redbush or chewed twig or anything. Just tea: ordinary, human tea.
13. Who is your best friend and how do you know each other?
I've known Sean Walsh since we were at the Red High (St Patrick’s Grammar) in Downpatrick. We've had many laughs over the years and I like to hear him playing music.
14. Is there a God?
I hope so, because then she could look after the fierce amount of technology involved in the live-streaming of my new play, Anything Can Happen: 1972 – Voices from the Heart of the Troubles.
The premiere of Damian Gorman’s play Anything Can Happen: 1972 – Voices from the Heart of the Troubles will be broadcast live from The Playhouse, Derry; it will be performed from September 16 to 19 September at 8pm. Viewers can watch at Derryplayhouse.co.uk or on The Playhouse’s social channels. As part of the production, those who have lost loved ones are invited to contribute to Anything Can Happen 1972. They can send objects or photographs of significance or importance to them, to be placed on the empty chairs in the theatre. This act is so that the chairs have, other than absence, something very significant and important on them, to be lit by theatre lights in an act echoing Seamus Heaney’s famous work Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication.
