The Brag

Neil Watkins

The Year Of Magical
Neil Watkins Discusses His Altar Ego
By Michael Brown

The word ‘wanking’ has featured heavily in my Google searches over the last week, as I readied myself to talk with Irish writer/performer Neil Watkins about his one-man show The Year of Magical Wanking, coming to Sydney as part of the Mardi Gras Festival.

“There is no actual wanking in the show,” Watkins tells me. “You will not see my cock. But, I will describe, at points, wanking. But it’s much more than that. The title is a red herring. To me the play is a very considered study of sexual shame and the journey toward self-acceptance.”

Nominated for Best New Play and Best New Performer at Dublin Fringe last year, the play is the story of Watkins’ 33rd year, as he grapples with being a homosexual who has an internet porn addiction and a Jesus complex, living in the land of Catholic guilt.

“Growing up Catholic, you knew that gay people were damned. You didn’t know any different, so you did believe it,” Watkins explains. Even as a 33-year-old, regardless of his personal distance from Catholicism, shame was hard to avoid. “I mean Ireland has so many churches in it, so many crucifixes in it, that it’s still there, you know?”

So what drew Watkins to bring this confessional to the stage? “[I felt] I had no choice but to do this,” he tells me. “I thought, I’m going to bite the bullet; I’m sick of keeping my HIV status a secret – that was crushing me – and I felt I’d love it if somebody spoke up about this; I’d love if somebody out there could put on a piece of art, theatre, anything, a film, a song, that would resonate with me, that would help me. So that inspired me.”

Watkins was also galvanised by touring internationally with the play Silver Stars, which told the stories of gay men who left Ireland because of homophobia. “By the time we toured it for the last time, I decided, I felt, right I’ve told these men’s stories, now I really want to just tell my story.”

The realism of Silver Stars also informed The Year of Magical Wanking. “Silver Stars had stripped away everything. I wasn’t allowed to ‘act’,” Watkins recalls. “I realised that the audience liked this – they liked it, they needed it; they needed to see a human up there, not an Oscar Wilde character or a Shakespeare character written from some other time.”

The Year Of Magical Wanking is written entirely in verse, a choice that Watkins says gives him a thin buffer against the intensity of the material.

“In a way, the verse is so musical and rhythmical, I enjoy that; that gives me something to get my teeth into every night, no matter how painful the material. [Also] I needed to find a way to make it palatable for an audience, and the verse does that…mixing the two big oppositions of hardcore porn with hardcore poetry. And I think there’s as much of a stigma around poetry as there is around porn. You can be accused of being a wanker for both of those things,” he quips.

“I think, like, ultimately, the universal thing is about no matter how messed up your life gets, or you get, or you feel, or how much fear is there, you have value, you have worth, and you’re worthy of self love, no matter what destructive, irrational belief you’ve inherited from, you know, organised religion or whatever.”

Amen to that.

What: The Year of Magical Wanking
When: Tuesday February 14 – Sunday February 18
Where: Sydney Theatre / 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay
Tickets: from $29 at sydneytheatre.org.au