FROM MILKING goats to encounters with a boozy deity in Guatemala, Danny O’Brien is conceivably the only person in the world whose life under lockdown and the pandemic restrictions can be described as action-packed.
The last two years have seen the Wicklow comedian, whose admirers include Bill Burr and Arrested Development’s David Cross, play gigs in Central America, perform in gardens across Ireland, raise funds for local charities, conduct classes to help young people with their anxiety and confidence levels, and, most astoundingly, get married to Karl Spain!
It will all come out in Danny’s new show, The God Of All Things Bad, which he brings to the Róisín Dubh on Saturday February 5 at 8pm.
“It’s been the hardest period in my career so far,” Danny tells me, reflecting on his life during Covid. “My diary was wiped clean, a year’s worth of work gone, like everyone else in the world. This is my full time job, and has been for several years, so I thought, I need to diversify and make an income with the skills I have, or go back to social care work in the drug and addiction services.”
Comedy in spite of Covid
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One of the first signs that Danny’s response to lockdown would be creative and proactive was his founding of the events company, Garden Gigs Ireland, which saw him perform outdoor, socially distanced, shows with Australian comedian Damian Clark to local Dublin communities and frontline workers. The next step was the highly acclaimed Lockdown Comedy Special - a show filmed outside council flats in Dublin - in 2020 which received huge viewing figures on TV and thousands of views online.
“It was honestly a last minute scramble, one shot, one take, comedy special,” says Danny. “There was no pre-production. There was no guarantee it was going to go well. If anything, between the Irish weather, to dogs running around, to kids with water pistols, there was every chance it could have gone horrendously.
“The production company was amazing, and a testament to the people of O'Rahilly House in Ringsend, and the community there, it was incredibly well received, and I also ran a festival in the Ringsend and Irishtown Community Centre. I got a small grant from the Live Performance Support Scheme, did nine shows in two days in an inflatable tent I bought on Revolute on Done Deal, and we sold every one of them out. We donated the money to two local charities, Féileacáin, a stillbirth charity, and Autism Equality Dublin Bay. I wanted to give something back to the community as they have been good for us and it looks like the Ringsend Comedy Festival will be a permanent event going forward.”
That marriage to Karl Spain...
Danny’s other major innovation was his marriage to Karl Spain. “In September 2020, because the laws kept chopping and changing, you were allowed to have shows of up to 50 people,” says Danny. “Then it looked as if they were going to move the goalposts again, but you were still allowed to have a wedding with up to 50 people. So, as a precaution, to make sure the show could go ahead, myself and Karl got married in The Wild Duck in Dublin, and Paul Crowley, a Cork comedian, who is also a legitimate celebrant, did the wedding.
“My mother was there, we had Al Foran doing the speeches from people who couldn’t make it like ‘Katie Taylor’ and ‘Eamon Dunphy’. It was gas craic. Karl is a good friend, colleague, and mentor, and people say you should marry your best friend…”
So are they legally married? “It’s a bit of a grey area,” Danny replies, “but Karl’s partner Rachel has been incredibly supportive of the decision.”
Empowering young people
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Danny’s background in social care work has come through in almost everything he has done over the past two years, but particularly in his hosting comedy confidence building workshops for transition year students in schools all over the country.
“I’m flat out with them,” he says. “It’s about giving young people confidence. These are the most important formative years of your life, so with the schools, it’s about giving young people a voice. If they can speak to their peers in transition year, and have a bit of craic, that gives them confidence later for when they go for an interview, get their first flat, apply for college, or even just going into a shop and asking for something.
“Anxiety is already through the roof for young people and that’s only been exacerbated by the last two years. You get young people who haven’t said two words during the last two years in school and the workshops get them doing a five minute set. I think that’s transformative and empowering for them.”
Touring Guatemala
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Most extraordinary were Danny’s adventures in Guatemala. His journey there began with being burned out after doing around 100 corporate gigs via Zoom. A friend, who was living in Costa Rica, invited Danny to visit. The comedian, taking the chance of a brief window where travel was permitted, packed his bags and got a flight.
“I flew out on St Stephen’s Day and spent a bit of time in Costa Rica, then a couple of lads I worked with in New York 16 years ago, and hadn’t seen since, said, ‘Hey, you’re in Costa Rica, we’re in Guatemala, come over, we’ll sort some shows out for you, Covid is just a suggestion here’. I went to Guatemala, had one show booked in, it turned into six shows all over the country, including one on a permaculture farm run by a Corkonian, called Neil.”
In Ireland, Danny used his numerous pandemic shows to raise money for charity, raising more than €100,000 for The Irish Cancer Society, Pieta House, Wexford Women's Refuge, etc.
“Doing charity gigs is a good thing,” he says. “It’s good to do good for other people. We all have to make a living, but what I want to do going forward is work with good people who are doing good.”
That ethos did not change in Guatemala. “We were charging 50 quetzales, which is like a fiver for the shows, so instead of keeping the money, I donated to a local charity wherever I went,” he says. “In Antigua, we donated the money to Integral Heart Foundation, which is run by an Irish guy, Mickey Quinn. He does incredible work with disadvantaged families, and during Covid he was looking after them with food and education. The people there live in a highly volcanic area, so if you put living in a volcanic area, where you can be wiped out at any second, plus Covid, plus no income from the Government, plus no tourist income…we had it tough, but when you look at what was happening there, it was proper life and death.”
Meeting a god in a bar
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Danny has so fallen in love with Guatemala that he is returning in November. “I’m going back after the Galway Comedy Festival, back into the arms of Maximón.”
The title of Danny’s new show, The God Of All Things Bad, is inspired by the native Guatemalan deity, Maximón, who Danny first encountered in a bar.
“The guy who owned the bar had one of these little puppets on his till,” Danny recalls. “He told me every business in Guatemala has one and it’s bad luck not to. It’s part of the Mayan culture. After the Spanish conquest, the Mayans went along with Christianity, for fear of persecution, but they kept worshipping Maximón.
“I’m not religious at all. I was raised Catholic, but this religion has no penance, guilt, or shame, like the Catholic church. You go to Maximón, buy him a drink, tell him what’s wrong, and he will try and help you in whatever way he can. That’s a religion I can get behind. People sit around the deity, they pour alcohol down its mouth. It’s like a Galway house party, a load of randomers rocking in with cans and no one asks you why you’re there, they just say, ‘Sit down and have a drink.’”
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Maximón.
While his extraordinary experiences in Central America, and across the pandemic, have gone into The God Of All Things Bad show, Danny insists it is not “one of those ‘I found myself’ epiphany shows”.
“It’s about the mayhem of the last two years,” he says. “My last show, Reformer, was about giving up everything, I went off the booze, I went vegan. In Guatemala, I did quite the opposite. I worked on a farm, milked goats, I got parasites, I did some serious spiritual research with psychedelics. I really just went for it.”
That lust for life and experience is itself a product of the last two years. “For all the negatives, and I’ve moaned about the pandemic as much as anyone else, for me, a lot of good has come out of it,” says Danny. “It has made me realise who and what is important, and how to work smarter and not harder.
“After not being able to do much, everything I did, I tried to give it my all, as nothing like Covid has made us realise how it can all be taken away in an instant. I now try to experience as many things as possible, and I try to meet people and listen to as many stories from as many people as possible, the weirder, the better, and I think that’s what makes The God Of All Things Bad a unique stand-up show.”
There are only a handful of tickets left for Danny’s show so early booking is advised via www.roisindubh.net
