Trauma of uncle's brutal murder by IRA inspires Magherafelt-born actor to write his own play

Ruairi Conaghan was just eight years old when he and his family suffered a dreadful act of violence.

On September 16 1974, a year marked by high levels of violence during the Troubles, the Magherafelt man's uncle, Rory Conaghan, a senior judge, was shot dead by the IRA at his home on Belfast's Malone Road.

The callous attack was carried out at breakfast time by an IRA gunman disguised as a postman, and was witnessed by Mr Conaghan's nine year-old daughter, who was holding his hand at the time.

On the morning that Mr Conaghan, a native of Derry, was killed another senior legal figure, Martin McBirney, was also shot. The shootings led to the end of a loyalist ceasefire. The IRA said in a statement that they had been killed for 'collaborating with the British war machine'.

In 1965, Rory Conaghan had become the youngest judge in the North at the age of 45.

The Irish Times said of him: “He was ironically the county court judge who restored the confidence of many members of the minority in the judicial processes in Northern Ireland.”

Whilst the trauma of his namesake's death has constantly stayed with Ruairi, it was only years later, while living in London and working as an actor, that the impact of his uncle's murder caught up with him leading to a physical and mental breakdown that threatened his life.

"Even though I was named after Rory, I find it hard to deal with the legacy of his name," Ruairi said.

"As soon as I got the opportunity I left Northern Ireland, I couldn’t wait to get away and I went to Liverpool and then to London where I became an actor.

"I didn’t tell anyone about my background or my history, I didn’t mention anything about what had happened to me and my family. My father was also an SDLP councillor at the time in Magherafelt and he was dealing with some threats as well.

"I did a version of Hamlet in which Benedict Cumberbatch was Hamlet and I was the Player King, who is an actor who comes on stage and delivers the speech for Hamlet. The speech was very similar to the murder of my uncle.

"When I began to envisage my uncle’s murder in that moment, 40 years after his death, it created a difficult mental health moment for me. I felt very, very ill in the midst of that production, physically ill. I was dealing with chronic fatigue and chronic pain but also my mental health suffered terribly."

While playing the role of Pat Magee, the mastermind of the 1984 Brighton Bomb attack on Margaret Thatcher, in another play, this further triggered memories of Ruairi's uncle's murder.

"It became clear later on, after I had played Pat Magee, that I had never really played republicans as an actor, not because I had any political reason, I just didn’t feel I could bring truth to republicanism," continued Ruairi.

"I wanted to play Pat Magee because he had formed his own kind of truth and reconciliation movement with a woman called Jo Berry, who was the daughter of Anthony Berry, one of the MPs who was killed in the Brighton Bomb. They did a very courageous thing in forming a group together to go around and talk about that reconciliation.

"I met Pat and found it very difficult meeting him. I found it very difficult understanding how could I bring truth to a man who represented an organisation that nearly destroyed my family."

Magherafelt-born actor Ruairi Conaghan is set to perform his one man show in Bellaghy on June 19.

Following this encounter, Ruairi felt he should write his own play, one which would give a deep insight into his personal trauma and recovery.

"When I got better and I recovered, although it did take a while, I kind of thought that there is a story here to tell. I understood writing, I understood plays and so I wrote this play 'Lies Where it Falls' in 2018 and developed it through Covid before starting to present it two years ago," said Ruairi, who has also starred in hit drama series Downtown Abbey.

The one man show, which Ruairi is set to perform at Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy on June 19, has been extremely well received in Scotland, London and also in Belfast.

Having moved back to the North in 2020 with his wife Catriona and son Sé, Ruairi is looking forward to performing in south Derry, where he grew up.

"It’s lovely to be able to perform there. I did do the play there two years ago though it was one of the very first performances so the play was still developing," he said.

"It went to the Edinburgh Fringe where it was very successful and then it went to London where it was nominated for an award and on that basis I’ve been invited to take it back. I’m doing a week at the Lyric in Belfast, I’m doing Armagh, Derry and An Grianán Theatre in Letterkenny.

"The Heaney Centre is remarkable and it’s been a great home for myself and my friends and wife to visit there because we are only half an hour’s drive from Belfast. We have seen many wonderful things there. It should be prized by south Derry."

Ruairi describes the play as 'deeply personal' and a performance that 'uses a blend of song, poetry, humour, and Shakespeare' to tell his story. 

Judge Rory Conaghan, a native of Derry, was shot dead by the IRA in 1974.

"This is a subject about a difficult situation but I’m an entertainer so there are a lot of laughs there, there is music and there is Shakespeare and song," he said.

"I was very cautious when I wanted to tell this story that I was not going to write a story that was a turgid and difficult. I wanted to write a story that was full of warmth and love and hope. I’m not frightened to talk about the difficult things but I also want to lift people’s spirits.

"I have just been in a play called ‘Agreement’ by Owen McCafferty where I play David Trimble. We took that to New York and to Dublin. It’s a play that also ended with hope because it is about the Good Friday Agreement. It was very important that when I was writing my play that it offered some hope about where we are as a nation and where we are as a people.

"What’s quite interesting is that from doing this play I have reconnected with a lot of the people that I went to school with in the Rainey in Magherafelt. We are all in our late 50s and I was at school with a fellow and he came to see the play and he said: ‘Ruairi, you never mentioned anything about that when you were at school with us’ and I said ‘I didn’t feel it was right’ and he said to me ‘my father was murdered by the IRA when he was in the UDR’.

"I was just thinking ‘why are people not talking to each other about these things?’ There was a great collective quietness where people didn’t talk about it but now we are talking about it which I think is a good thing."

Tickets to "Lies Where It Falls" in Bellaghy are now available to purchase via seamusheaneyhome