Playwright Gorman’s mixtape memoir of the ‘80s

After four decades in professional theatre, playwright and performer Declan Gorman is marking the milestone in the most personal way imaginable by stepping back into his own past.

His new one-man show, ‘Nineteen Eighty Something’, revisits the chaotic, formative years he spent as a young migrant in Germany, navigating a foreign language and a world in upheaval. Conceived eight years ago after a small showcase in Monaghan, the production blends humour, memory, and history to reveal a decade as often romanticised as it is misunderstood.

Amid political unrest, cultural shifts, and the backdrop of seismic events such as the Hunger Strikes, Gorman reminds audiences, especially younger ones, the 1980s were far from simple. The music was great, he admits, however the times were anything but.

On Wednesday afternoon, The Anglo-Celt met Declan in An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk where the stage was the setting for the interview, mercifully without an audience. The Monaghan man is totally at ease under the spotlight, with or without bums on seats.

“It’s the journey through my own twenties,” Declan begins. “In ‘81, I turned 21. I had arrived in Munich among thousands of my generation who had to emigrate from Ireland, in search of work, adventure or both!

“I chose Munich because friends of mine had been there, they were proper musicians. They were wild, young, bearded, Paddy Irishmen, banjo players. They had great yarns, most of which were exaggerated about the wonderful time they were having. So, I thought it was as good there as anywhere else.

“I brought an old guitar with me, with a very stupid idea that I might make a living as a busker the difficulty was that I didn’t know how to play guitar, so my busking career was very short-lived.”

Needless to say, the play is infused with humour.

A natural story-teller, Declan is the sole performer on stage but the audience will meet 20 characters from women to elderly men. He starts the three-act play as a young migrant in Germany looking for work. Declan lived a chaotic life in his 20s, he drank a lot and never knew where he was going to sleep at night.

Then he met a young German woman and the two started seeing each other, she helped to broaden his horizons. Work in a car factory followed for a couple of years. When he and his girlfriend broke up, his horizons broadened as far as North Africa, where he went in search of “a belief system that meant something”.

Declan discovered an Irish drama group in Munich just before he left. When he finally came home, he was determined to pursue his passion, drama: “I managed to wangle my way into Trinity College,” he recalls. He didn’t get the drama course but they offered him German and English instead. Already fluent in spoken German, Declan later directed German plays for the Modern Languages Society in Trinity.

He didn’t finish college but he co-founded Co-Motion Theatre Company in 1985 with Joe O’Byrne. Declan later founded the Upstate Theatre Project.

“My student friends in Germany were very political in a way that I had never seen at home in Ireland. When I got back to Dublin in the late ‘80s, I became very active in street protest politics and campaigning for everything from divorce to pro-choice. Then I got involved with the campaign for the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. We had these huge, colourful demonstrations that were really reinventing the whole area of protest,” he recalled.

Declan still has an acute sense of social justice and feels content that he and others did their bit to change the world for the better.

Declan started writing his memoir for stage during his residency with Íontas and Garage Theatres in 2018, where he did a showcase for Monaghan Arts Network.

“I wrote the first scene of this play and I just thought - what would it be like to enact your own life on a stage? You almost never come across it. That was eight years ago, it took me six to write it in fits and starts.

“How do you compress 10 years into 100 minutes of theatre? You focus on certain episodes, it’s about growing up politically, sexually and emotionally.”

This deeply personal work delves into the emotional instability, depression, and confusion of his early adulthood. This sense of inner and outer turbulence gradually gives way to clarity and purpose.

The playwright uses old news reels he edited himself. Is it theatre or cinema? Sometimes it’s both but the show is an ode to the stage: “Theatre and the arts really saved me, my mental health and gave me something to do. In 2025, I celebrated my 40th year on the professional stage.”

The play is soundtracked by ‘80s music, such as Something Happens, An Emotional Fish and The Fatima Mansions.

“I’m a frustrated rock star. I try to make my theatre shows as rock and roll as possible,” he said.

As such, this performance is very physical and he enlisted the help of a choreographer for the dance sequences where he becomes his younger self. Both the actor and the audience are in the moment.

“It’s nostalgic, but never twee,” he assures. “Sometimes we yearn for the old days, but the 1980s was a very turbulent time. I’ve done a couple of one-man shows now, but this one’s by far the most personal. It wouldn’t be everybody’s experience, but nobody that lived through the ‘80s is unaware of it,” Declan adds.

The writer and actor of the piece is looking forward to staying in Monaghan on opening night, to celebrate with the crew in their shared achievement. By name he credits his director Gerard Lee, movement director Fiona Keenan O’Brien, lighting designer Ash Dawes and design mentor Dylan Connolly for helping make his vision a reality.

“I love going back to Monaghan. I don’t live there anymore. I perform away in my own accent. I have the bog of Monaghan on the bottom of my boots still. I’ve never managed to be a very arty person, so the play is not very highfalutin.

“What’s new about this one is the level of my soul that I’m bearing. Mercifully, I grew up in Monaghan, the sense of humour is ingrained in us. The natural, easy storytelling ability of rural Ireland is in me. I think where I’m most at home is at home.”

The ‘Nineteen Eighty Something World Premiere and Regional Tour’ runs throughout April and May 2026. The play is not suitable for Under-14s. Tickets are on sale now and available through declangorman.com. Local dates are opening night in Declan’s native Monaghan at The Garage Theatre on Saturday, April 25; Ramor Theatre, Virginia on Friday, May 8 and An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk on Thursday, May 28.