“If I could be half the man my father is, I’d be doing really well in life”
Ultan Pringle is a Donegal playwright and actor, with a remarkable family background. He joined #OliverCallan to chat about his former TD dad Thomas, and his decision to move home to Killybegs for good.
LemonSoap Productions, presented as part of SOFT CAPITAL, Dublin Municipal Theatre’s residency programme, BallyBridgeWater at the Smock Alley Theatre @smockalleytheatre@lemonsoapproductions
Starring
🌟Clara FitzGerald (@clarafitzactor )
🌟Callum Maxwell (@calpmax )
Written by
🌟Ultan Pringle (@ultanpringle )
Set Concept & Video Design by
🌟Choy-Ping Ní Chléirigh-Ng 吳彩萍 (@choy.png )
Directed by Jeda DeBrí (@jedadebri )
#SovranCareyCreatives #SovranCareyTalent #BallyBridgeWater
Ladies I ate so many canapés in Dublin Castle on Tuesday night am still sick as a dog!! Never thought I’d be at a state reception in my life but it was very fancy and I felt totally out of place but fret not I drank eleven cups of free tea and ate my weight in hors derves or whatever u call them. Never saw caviar irl before but it looks rank and I did not eat it.
It’s emotional too to know that someone as hugely decent empathic and brilliant as Catherine Connolly will be our president. To know that a politician who stands for equality for all and a fair decent brilliant society can romp home to the biggest Irish electoral victory ever? Bliss.
But also Cormac Begley was playing the concertina on Tuesday night and I was whooping along - as I think one does at a ceili! - but my sister Siobhra reliably informs me that I was terribly embarrassing. Ah well sure if ur not gonna make a tit of yourself at a presidential inauguration what ARE you gonna do?! 🤪🥳
Strollers Network is delighted to announce Ultan Pringle as the recipient of the PROPEL Programme Award 2025!
The PROPEL Award will support Ultan and LemonSoap Productions across the next three years to enact a slate of ambitious development work on new plays and musicals.
Speaking about the PROPEL Award, Ultan said:
“The PROPEL Award at this time feels like a lifeline. A chance to realise a development slate, to bring ambitious collaborators together and to be afforded to dream, create and evolve alongside one another. I couldn’t be more chuffed and over the moon and deeply indebted to the Strollers Network. I can’t wait to work on a new soap opera farce, a musical about a baby growing in the womb, a horror drama about academia and a play about an older lady who begins to lose her mind in a bingo hall!”
More info can be found on Strollers Network website.
@visual_carlow@siamsa_tire@limetreetheatre@hawkswelltheatre@draiocht_blanchardstown@thelinenhall_castlebar@solsticearts@riverbankartscentreie@watergatetheatre@sourcearts
My Granda’s wife, Sunny, passed away yesterday. She and her carer, Kevin, both passed in a house fire in a tiny wee cottage up a mountain in Connemara. It doesn’t quite feel real and the horror of it is very present. Sunny was mad bonkers, joyous and innocent. She was intensely curious & full of wonder and found her garden a joy and she’d feed the cat off her own plate which always made me want to puke. She’d take ages to choose in a restaurant and I’m always struck by how she told us it was because when she was in prison for 17 years she never had choice and now found it almost too much to have all at her fingertips. After her conviction was overturned in the 90s she dedicated her life to an abolition of the death penalty and her ferocious commitment to overturning that injustice I find inspiring. When I’d visit her she’d tell anyone who happened to ring that her grandson was visiting and she’d always beam at me when she said it. I don’t know if a step Grandmother is a real thing but when I told her once I thought of her as one she teared up and told me it meant the world to her. We hadn’t really spoken in a few months, I thought I was so busy and there was so much time, but we had a long call a few days ago and we’d agreed we’d go for dinner in July and go see a new documentary coming out about her. I feel robbed now and wish I’d done different. What use is a stupid Instagram post? But paltry words are a way to honour her and her complex fascinating self. She told me forgiveness was key to great living, to forgive and live, I told her I thought that too simple a doctrine. But I will remember it, and make amends, and I will remember too Sunny’s real wonder at how gorgeous she thought the world is. And I will make time.
All abuzz etc to be an Irish Times one to watch or a rising star or whatever for this year. I am however slightly horrified that when asked what my aspiration was I said to play a straight fella? Should dream bigger tbh but hey if anyone’s casting I’m available! I can butch it up and do a deep voice and drive a Volkswagen Golf. I did love everything about 2024, the work was so exciting, and to meet so many brilliant people so dreamy, but it’s a devastating lifestyle where you can’t earn enough, even with apparent successes. I stole my costume shoes for a few days during Julius Caesar so I had shoes without holes in them! Or I’ve spent the last six weeks living on a loan from my little sister. I made a deal with myself that I would try it out for one last year and if it’s not sustainable by the end of 2025 I’ll follow my dream of becoming a baker, or a TV chef, or a wealthy house husband, or most likely a history teacher. I don’t want to be gauche but I think the arts is a horror show, a wonderful one, and what’s the use in pretending like it’s all magic all the time. So what I am really saying is: I am very available to play gay best friends or straight big brothers with secret gambling addictions or something idk 🫦🤠😵💫
Thrown in a wee pic of Emmanuel and I during Boyfriends, and that’s a pic of wee chubby me when I think I was a vulture in the Jungle Book lol
#Ladies #Theatre #model #me #arts #irish
Friends romans countrymen lovers & ladies, strap in! Because the Julius Caesar Variety Show is coming to town next week(ish). And in it a young hot n sexy director who is soon sure to be crowned One Of The Greats decides to stage a dangerous production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. And shouldn’t his auditions be dangerous too? And is great art not made with a little bit of sex, danger and rock n roll anyway? And why won’t anyone trust the process! And why doesn’t his wife want an open relationship anymore God damn it!!
He’s a divine wee freak & I’m playing him and it’s a blast and I hope people come and squeal at some of the mad horrifying and all too real shit which goes on during this woeful woeful audition. @makingjoynesbitt has written something daring & brilliant and I hope you come along from the 11th - 14th September as a part of @dublinfringefest ! 🥳🏛️🤠
#model #caesar #theatre #bagofcats
Hot from a sold out run in Dublin, Boyfriends comes to An Grianán THIS WEEK! Thursday’s show is already sold out but tickets are still available for Friday and Saturday’s shows. Don’t miss it!
“Like Pretty Woman for the 21st century, only prettier, funnier, and way sexier, Boyfriends has all the makings of a modern day, rom-com classic” - THE ARTS REVIEW ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“smart, raw, and above all, hilarious.” IRISH TIMES ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Book now - see link in bio.
#donegal #angrianan #govisitdonegal #irishtheatre #earagailartsfestival
They’re not even Boyfriends! But, ladies, let me tell you they’re still a hoot & a holler & they kiss non stop God love em. Having a mad dizzying fun time doing this wee play. There’s robot dogs and Elizabethan ruffs and Marshmallows and I vape for the first time in my life and it sucks and I feel like a baddie anyway!
What incredible luck to get to do it all. With such an incredible bunch of collaborators - and in the end, ladies, they were all Boyfriends - and we’ve got one week left in @projectartscentre before we troop up to Donegal & @angrianantheatre to bring talk about ass eating and situationships home to where it belongs ❤️🫦 Come & see! The show is so mad if you’re bored I can promise u a refund (aka a puff on the watermelon vape & a go driving the robot dog)
#Boyfriends #play #theatre #newwriting #pride #Dublin #Donegal #art #situationships #me #model #sexy xx
Take it from me Ladies when you’re feeling ancient for turning 26 just make your lactose intolerant self a huge tres leches cake (three milk cake!) and enjoy every bit of it. It was divine but I did spend too much time in el baño (that’s Spanish for toilet - cultured!) the next day but it was worth every bit of it luv. I also took my Granny for a drive to her favourite beach called Port and all she did was talk about the famine and sigh dramatically.
@owenclarke.ie snapped this bizarrely candid pic of me & her there where she looks like an old lady model from 1847 and I look like an absolute bizarre goof from Dr Who or something. Modelling not on the cards for me but when I showed my Granny this pic of her she said: oh I was thinking of the Famine… She really is haunted by it! It’s hilarious. Not a day goes by where she doesn’t just randomly go: oh what they did to us what they did to us. Camp icon! I’m going to be more like her now I’m 26 and just mutter things incessantly about the famine, British colonialism and how much I hate Eastenders yet can’t stop watching. #me #treslechescake #model #thefamine #potatoblight #sexy
Ladies, get those tellies on tonight! Making my RTE debut at 10.30pm tonight in Falling For The Life Of Alex Whelan on RTE 2! I play Eoin who is a man with one line, one dream, a bad moustache (all mine baby) and many herbal menthol cigarettes to huff on. It’s a gorgeous melancholic moving little film by @nellehensey & @puredivilment and it was very cool to be a tiny tiny tiny part of it. I dropped the cigarette TWICE during a take which was mortifying but got to sit on set then eating Kinder chocolate drinking tea marvelling at all the incredible stuff happening. Bliss haha!
Available on the RTE Player too from tonight so no excuses 4 not tuning in! 🥳😍🥳
#barefootcontessa #model #movies #menthol #rte #filminireland #me
I feel like Johnny Cash when he sang that song Hurt or something cause Fruit is finally over, ladies! The finale is now live and this is the last post I will ever ever make about a podcast (promise) so once before I go:
Secrets will out and friendships maybe explode and everyone makes maybe questionable decisions - every episode of this show tbh - but I knew instantly when I wanted to do Fruit that in the final episode Izzy’s Mam would arrive and be dynamite and she had to be played by Marion O’Dwyer. Cause Marion was my acting hero all throughout college (& still is now!) who kept giving funny brilliant performances that I was and am in awe of and so I knew everything was building to her arriving in the show. And she does not disappoint! Funny sharp brilliant & true I think - everything you’d ever want for the final very special guest star!
Lisa, Ois & Madison give - though I’m ofc biased - wonderful moving performances in this episode as it all comes to a close. It was fascinating to write this to think about friendship and the nature of it and what happens when maybe - very maybe - they’ve run their course and need to evolve. And what happens when there’s no houses to live in or life goals to meet and our generation try to harken back to the past? What happens when we know in our hearts that’s not possible? That’s what fascinated me with Fruit. It’s over now anyway and it was very cool to be a part of and an honour to work with so many gay icons and I am now never going to listen to a radio drama again!
End spam Fruit posts forever! Hope you’ve tuned in and had at least one solitary laugh and now I think I’m finally going to watch Sex And The City and see what all the fuss is about 🥳💅🍇
#Fruit #Spotify #newwriting
