It all started with a knock; 56 years later, it’s a knock that’s still ringing true.
Queen Anne playwright Kevin Moriarty was just 4 when that first knock came. It was his Irish grandfather — thought to be dead and buried — who mysteriously returned with a rap on the door. Moriarty turned that family story into the play “A Rose for Danny.”
Now he’s reprising the play to run during the Irish Week festivities next March, hosted by the Irish Heritage Club. He’s turning to Kickstarter and local fund-raising to make the production happen.
“This is different as far as production goes,” Moriarty said. “Because, kind of like the play, there’s a sense of renewal and a sense of community and family back together again.”
Putting on a play is expensive, Moriarty said, so with the help of childhood friends and the Irish Heritage Players, he’s trying to raise the money.
“I’m just an actor and playwright,” Moriarty said. “The spirit of community behind this has been wonderful, life-affirming. Instead of it being my play, it’s becoming our play.”
Community fund-raising
A previous run of the play was sponsored by Shoreline Community College. When someone suggested a Kickstarter campaign for this run, Moriarty wasn’t too keen initially.
“I’m not connected to technology; I’m not comfortable with Facebook,” he said. “But I know in order for Kickstarter to be successful; you’ve got to be on Facebook, you’ve got to be sharing.”
Without social media, the “starter doesn’t get kicked,” Moriarty said.
Moriarty’s childhood friend Margie McIntosh Robert will run the social media. McIntosh Robert, who also has a grandfather from Ireland, and Moriarty spent about 11 years in school together, including eight years at St. Anne School in Queen Anne.
“Theater has been a great love of mine,” McIntosh Robert said. “Kevin and I — in our adult lives, we kind of went different directions. But we’ve been friends for a very long time. That St. Anne’s connection is very very strong. “
Moriarty is also hosting a fund-raiser this September separate from the Kickstarter campaign. The Irish Heritage Players also has a few sponsors, Moriarty said, including Seattle’s Chuck Olson Chevrolet, Argosy Cruises and Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council. On Sept. 14, they’ll host a fund-raiser with hors d’oeuvres, drinks, Irish dancing and a mini auction.
Another childhood friend, Karole Shurman, has been working to get donations for the auction.
The funds raised will go to Irish Heritage Players, a nonprofit group under the Irish Heritage Club’s umbrella. The money will cover the costs of production — from theater rental, to lighting and sound people, a set designer and actor stipends.
Moriarty said the Irish Heritage Club has given him a forum through the well-established Irish Week. He wants to fill the 75-seat theater every performance.
With the Kickstarter campaign to raise $10,000 and the September fund-raiser, it’s not a matter of meeting any goals, Moriarty said.
“We want money in the bank to do a play next year,” he said.
If it’s successful, the group would like to see an Irish-focused play each year during Irish Week.
“This is really a trial for [the Irish Heritage Club],” Moriarty said. “The whole thing has been evolutionary.”
John Keane, treasurer of the Irish Heritage Club and chair of Irish Week, said he would like to see Irish theater blossom in the Seattle area. With about 800,00 people in the Seattle community claiming some Irish heritage, there’s a “real yearning for all things Irish,” Keane said.
“This is the first play because Kevin is so enthusiastic,” Keane said. “My hope is that it’s the first of many.”
Moriarty’s wife, Cathy, said it has been fun to see who contributes: “It’s neat that they would do that.”
Shurman hopes they can bring the Queen Anne neighborhood out to support the play through the fund-raiser in September, especially people who lived on the hill during the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
“It had a small-town feel about it, and you knew everyone on the hill,” she said. “We’re trying to find people who used to live on the hill and get them to come to an event like this.”
The mysterious return
Moriarty’s history with acting spans back to his childhood, when he performed in plays at St. Anne’s.
He left theater to become “a working stiff,” but that life was brought back to him when his oldest son found pictures of him doing theater and asked, “Why aren’t you doing it now? You should be doing something like this.”
While his schedule wasn’t conducive to performing, he began to write. “A Rose for Danny” started out as a comedy, but it wasn’t believable, Moriarty said, so he went to his aunt, the last of seven children, and asked about the story of his grandfather, which was just a vague memory from his childhood.
His grandfather came to America from Ireland. During the Dust Bowl, he lost everything’ he and his children lived in poverty. As Moriarty learned the history from his aunt, she “was crying like a little girl.”
When his only son died, Moriarty’s grandfather, Jack McCoy, disappeared. He was gone for four months, claiming afterward that he had amnesia.
A body was identified as his, and the family held a funeral. Two months later, Moriarty was playing with his brother in their house on Queen Anne, when he answered a knock on the door and his grandfather was there.
“I was 4,” he said. “I didn’t think anything of it.... I said, ‘Papa’s here.’”
People laughed about it, but it wasn’t funny for his family, Moriarty said; instead, it was “just another 10 tons of humiliation on the family.”
After his mysterious return, Moriarty’s grandfather became a regular part of the family, attending Sunday dinners.
“I know, for a fact, it was a real opportunity for some of the sisters to appreciate their father,” he said.
For the generations
The play is not biographical, Moriarty is quick to point out. The characters are an “amalgamation of all of the people I know in my life.”
The Danny character, who is Moriarty as a child in the real-life story, is what Moriarty has learned looking through the eyes of his own children.
“It’s life seen through their eyes before it’s tainted with all of these kind of relationships we all make,” he said.
Moriarty plays the grandfather character, a combination of both of his grandfathers and himself. He’s different since he last acted the role.
“I’m 13 years older, I have three of my own grandkids [and] I’ve lost a brother,” he said. “I know in my heart how short and precious life is.”
During the play’s earlier run, a young kid with a mohawk and “rings everywhere” and an older woman who had lived through the Dust Bowl came up to Moriarty in the same night to tell him that the play reminded them of their families.
“To have it transcend generationally there, I thought was the greatest compliment,” Moriarty said.
For more information, visit the Irish Heritage players website at www.irishheritageplayers.org, or for the Kickstarter campaign, visit ow.ly/nReRT.
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