I don’t often post more personal information on my playwriting website, but this post combines the personal with the theatrical.

Recently, I had the pleasure of going to Ireland with my wife and our little littlest ones, and one of the places we stopped was the medieval city of Kilkenny, in southern(ish) Ireland.

The reason Kilkenny has such relevance for me is because it is the setting for my gothic, spiritual drama “A Flower of the Field”, which was loosely inspired by the writings of the monk John Clyn, who, during the height of the Black Death in the 14th century, wrote a historical chronicle of the pestilence (and indeed, “world” history – from Adam and Eve to his present day) in the still-existent abbey of St. Francis.

What a treat, therefore, to travel to Kilkenny on a day trip from Dublin and see (albeit, from afar – since it is being renovated) the ruins of the same St. Francis’s Abbey where my play takes place:

Not only that, but my play incorporates another figure from Kilkenny history, the noblewoman Alice Kyteler, who was accused of being a witch and fled the city, and who is remembered still in Kilkenny to this day:

I wrote “A Flower of the Field” without any knowledge of (or passion for) Kilkenny, per se – clobbering together disparate stories from the period of the Black Death, courtesy of the real John Clyn – and just happened to set the story in the very abbey that is still standing and incorporate the woman whose memory looms large in the city to this very day.

What a fun time… to see where my own play takes place!