Biography

OSCAR McLENNAN – He is best known as a writer and performer of multi-media theatrical monologues, but has also published two novels, El Bastardo Tranquilo (Pepitas de Calabaza 2005) and Kiss of the Chicken King (Livewire Press, 2011), along with numerous short stories. He has also worked as curator/artistic director on various multi-media live events, such as GET UP (shortlisted for Fringe First, Dublin Fringe 2002), and BACK UP, (winner of best female performer, Dublin Fringe 2003). He is also a singer, musician songwriter and composer, and is currently touring his CD, Kiss on the Chicken King, while working on a new one.
His previous major show, The Quiet Bastard, started as a half hour installation performance commissioned by 2002 Dublin Fringe Festival. This was seen by David Sefton, who commissioned a full length show, The Quiet Bastard – Director’s Cut, for the 2003 UCLA International Theatre Festival, Los Angeles, where it ran for six nights. When the novel was published in Spanish as El Bastardo Tranquilo, Oscar moved to Spain to work on a Spanish version of the show. This was launched in L’Antic Teatre, Barcelona in 2005, and for the next two years he toured in round most of the major cities and large towns of Spain, including ACTUAL 2006 Festival in Logrono. In 2007 he moved to Argentina, where he spent over a year touring the show round theatres and art centres in Argentina and Uruguay. In 2009 and 2010, he was living in Italy, working on the novel Kiss of the Chicken King, which was published by Livewire Publications, Dublin, in 2011. In this year he moved back to Dublin to concentrate on his latest show, a multi media theatrical version of the novel; a collaboration with Olwen Fouere (Artistic Director), Kevin McAleer (projected visuals on video) and Martin Tourish (original music compositions), which was commissioned by David Sefton for the 2014 Adelaide Festival.

Other commissioned works include: Urban Minefields (Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 1996). Notes on Noise (PS122, New York, 1991). Teddy Bear’s Picnic (Tron Theatre, Glasgow 1988). Drip Drip (ICA, London, 1985).

One of his early performances, Letter to Mother, (1984) formed part of the highly successful touring show, Three of a Different Kind, which had two sell out runs at the Drill Hall Theatre in London. By the time of his solo show at the ICA in London in 1985, he had entered much darker and challenging waters, pushing at the boundaries of black humour, performance and theatre. The reviews of this show reflected the change.

“This is theatre ablaze with anger pain and truth. There is no vaccine” (Lynne Gardner, CITY LIMITS)
“Gallops off across the grotesque hinterlands of the imagination”. (THE GUARDIAN)
The rest of the 80’s and the 90’s saw Oscar touring his unique brand of performance extensively in the UK, North America, Ireland and Europe, appearing diverse locations and events such as, The Belfast Theatre Festival, The New York Festival of the Arts, The WAVES Festival, Denmark, Polysonniers, Lyon, France, Castle of Imagination, Poland, Western Front, Vancouver, Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, NOW Festival, Nottingham, Wallen Boyd Theatre, Los Angeles, Climate Theatre, San Francisco, Sligo Arts Festival, Lancaster Literary Festival, Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Gate at the Latchmere, London, Battersea Arts Centre, London, CCA, New Orleans and The City Arts Centre, Dublin.
Since 2001, he has been working with the idea of combining writing a novel and then devising a theatre production based on the book, in order to reach a wider audience and also provide a whole other dimension to the artistic experience. The Quiet Bastard was the first of these novels/shows, Kiss of the Chicken King is the second. A new edition of the novel has just been published by Livewire Press, and is available on Amazon.uk. Also for this performance Oscar returns to his musical roots, and the show features six of the songs and two of the instrumentals appearing on the CD.

PRESS QUOTES

“The wild and gentle Glaswegian with the thin lips and gleaming basilisk eye” – THE OBSERVER

“Once from Glasgow, now citizen of the subconscious” – THE SUNDAY TIMES

“McLennan’s imaginativa domain lies somewhere between comedy and nightmare” -TIME OUT

“A psychitatrist, let loose in Oscar’s brain, would emerge with enough material to fill The Lancet for a year” -THE GUARDIAN

“McLennan’s domain lies somewhere between comedy and nightmare” – TIME OUT
“Once from Glasgow, now a citizen of the subconscious” -THE OBSERVER

“This is a world where the normal becomes abnormal, where reality is revealed in all its absurdity” –
THE SCOTSMAN

“McLennan’s work so subtly mesmerises you, that you find yourself in unknown lands (staring over a precipice) without even realising you’ve left the station” – San Francisco Gael.

“He enacts little histories of desolation, whose craft and zest, turn raw pain into a grating eloquence of word and gesture” – PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE

“Gallops of across the grotesque hinterlands of the imagination -THE GUARDIAN

“Prose that coils itself like a snake around your brain.”- THE INDEPENDENT

“Brilliant but disturbing, the type of performer everyone should see at least once in a lifetime.”-
THE SUNDAY TIMES

“Uncompromising prose melts into a hypnotic stream of poetic visions so subtly, that one experiences what can only be described as verbal hallucinations.” – EDINBURGH FESTIVAL TIMES