Seán Rocks grew up in Monaghan town. He has acted on stages around the world, including London’s Royal Court Theatre. His screen credits include The Bill, Glenroe and Fair City. In 2000, he began presenting programmes on RTÉ Lyric FM. He has produced several radio documentaries, including Soul of Ireland, an award winner at the New York Festival of Radio. In 2009, he started anchoring Arena, RTÉ Radio 1’s flagship arts programme, which airs weeknights, 7pm-8pm. See: www.rte.ie.
I was in a production of in primary school. I played Rolf, the Nazi sympathiser. In one scene, I had to walk on stage carrying this telegram. At this stage, Captain von Trapp knew I had some dodgy background. I thought to myself, I know what will help this scene. I dropped the telegram just as Martin McKenna – who was playing Captain von Trapp – asked me, “What do you want?” I heard from the wings my teacher saying, “Ah, he’s after dropping the telegram.” I wanted to shout, “I dropped it on purpose!” I remember, as I exited, there was a round of applause. I thought, that’s interesting.
I remember the Irish Theatre Company came to Monaghan touring JM Synge’s a story about this old, blind couple who have this beautiful love for each other. Barry McGovern played this wandering friar. The belief in the play is that if you rub water from the well on your eyes, you’ll see again. I was thinking, how’s that going to work? Will they have a well with water in it? When it came to putting water in their eyes, the well was nothing more than an upturned light. They put their head into the light and that was how they showed water pouring over their eyes. My brain knew there was no water, but my emotions made me believe there was water and they could now see. It was incredible. It was an awakening.
I remember early in my acting career going to see Sebastian Barry’s play It was a production at The Peacock. The lighting again was incredible. There was just these shafts of light and this story of these two brothers – Eamon Kelly was the simpler brother, and Jim Norton was the more sensible brother. I remember the sheer beauty of the relationship between the two of them and the emotional intensity of it.
I was in Tom Murphy’s at the Abbey in 1998. I played the all-singing, piano-playing priest Fr Billy. It was a great part. I had great fun with it. Music was a big part of my background growing up. We all played piano to a certain level. I played guitar. We all sang in choirs. Family parties would be singing songs, all of us around the piano, singing anything from Stephen Foster Victorian parlour stuff to folk things, to Simon & Garfunkel.
The older brother of a friend at school had this amazing album collection. We’d be listening to his records in stereophonic glory. Queen became a big thing. I loved that Queen didn’t use synthesizers – that every sound they made was made. Maybe I was a bit of a purist. We’re more tolerant of electronic music nowadays. A lot of sounds in the Seventies were a bit kitsch.
As a guitarist, I wasn’t playing Led Zeppelin, apart from the unforgivable recurrence of the guitar riff at the beginning of which was de rigueur for any self-respecting 20-year-old who was playing guitar at a post college party. was another staple. Now if I saw someone with a guitar at a house party, it would cause a shudder: “Is that a guitar? Did he bring a guitar?”
I remember going to see the American artists Tune-Yards at Whelan’s in Dublin many years ago. The lead singer was on Arena with me. I really liked the music. It was loops and pedals, very clever stuff. Some people would say it’s too clever – that it’s “to be admired,” if I’m not misquoting one of our reviewers, “rather than loved,” but I remember going to that gig, and the live experience was a whole different ball game, and brilliantly so.
Another stand-out concert was The Gloaming. They are such a phenomenal group of players. Iarla Ó Lionáird is amazing, his facility with song. It was in the National Concert Hall. I remember thinking, this is extraordinary, I’m feeling it in the people around me.
It’s not that it was a beginning. Irish music has been alive and well for several hundred years, but it was part of a resurgence, a renewal happening. They were bringing other elements of music and genres into what they were doing. You had this mix of instruments. I remember the atmosphere at the gig, the air of expectation before it started.
I’ve been spoiled. In January 2024, I was at Trad Fest doing a live outside broadcast. Sitting across the stage from me was Janis Ian and Ralph McTell, both of them holding their guitars. She sang, “I learned the truth at seventeen”. He jammed along. He started singing The Streets of London and she jammed along. I’m thinking this is the best gig I’ve ever been at! They were playing music almost to each other, and I was getting to watch that a few feet away.
I remember broadcasting at Electric Picnic, probably 2010. Janelle Monáe performed. She was really impressive. She walked off stage and across the field to where we were recording an interview. It was as if the air moved out of her way. People playing in those big arenas, if they don’t have star quality they’re going to disappear into nowhere. She had it. You could see it with her – that is star quality walking across there.
I remember reading George Orwell’s as a 17-year-old and in particular the appendix at the back for Newspeak – the Orwellian language of control, doublethink, people in charge imprisoning people for thought crimes, pulling people off the street because they weren’t obeying the party. People who went to war were the Department of Peace. If the party said it’s true, it was true whether it’s true or not. How that has come to pass. We live in an era where you need to be discerning. Language is such a potent thing.
Claire Keegan’s writing possesses such integrity. The stories she tells are so wonderfully condensed. Not a word too much. Never a melodrama, just this economic, potent, thought-through sentence after sentence. If I had to pick a contemporary writer, she stands out.
I can still remember the opening sequence to – where he picks up the stylus of the record with his foot and puts it on the record. That’s how the film started! I blubbered uncontrollably. It was an extraordinary moment.
