John Doran is a Dublin-based performer/writer from Kilkenny. He has written three plays, two of which have been performed and one in development: Some Flood (Devious Theatre, Dublin Fringe Festival 2014), Centre of the Universe (Dublin Fringe Festival: Show in a Bag, 2015) and In Passing (Shortlisted for Fishamble's A Play for Ireland, 2019). 

 

His most recent play In Passing explores a type of personality that he feels is uniquely Post-Catholic Irish. Where an Irish person exists in the absence of their conditioning. It's also about community: why we need it, if we need it, where to find it and if it's even worth the commitment. His other two shows explored themes of identity: who we are in the moments when we're treading the line between adaptation and actual change. 

 

We're In Here is somewhere between these two topics of residual conditioning and identity. It's a dark comedy about spirituality and salesmanship. It explores Ireland's relationship to mental-health, and the world's relationship to the internet. 

 

It was originally inspired by Primo Levy's If This is a Man: a fragmented and surreal account of Levy's experience in Lager concentration camp during the Second World War. 

 

"All that being said though, I'm definitely naturally inclined to find the gags in everything. So at the moment I'm allowing it to be dark, pointedly humane and probably a bit gas."