Harbour Grace comic John Sheehan turns thespian while battling ADHD
John Sheehan is a very funny guy.
He's been well-known in this province as a stand-up comedian for many years.
That's why it may come as a surprise to know Sheehan, of Harbour Grace, is starring in Perchance Theatre's production of William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.
So how does a comic end up doing Shakespeare?
"In 2015, Danielle Irvine, the artistic director for Perchance Theatre, was teaching my daughter some Shakespeare in an arts program for school and happened to see her reading Shakespeare on her own time," said Sheehan. "So, she asked her where she got the love of it and she said from her dad."
Irvine had heard of Sheehan as a comedian and contacted him to see if he'd like to do some summer theatre.
At first, he wasn't interested, but when Irvine told him she wanted him to play the role of Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing, Sheehan changed his mind because he had always dreamed about performing in that particular role.
Since then he's acted in Macbeth as well as other Shakespearean works.
Sheehan said his love of Shakespeare developed when he was in Grade 10, wound up in the wrong classroom and was exposed to the works of the bard.
Sheehan was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in his mid-30s but, he said, looking back on his high school days, he can see how the condition actually helped his interest in Shakespeare.
"I didn't know at the time that one of the trademarks of ADHD is when you find something that interests you, you focus hard on it," he said.
Sheehan says coping with the condition is not easy.
"It's rough. I mean I had a hard time with lines this year, in particular," he said. "Petruccio's got a lot of lines and a lot of them are pretty similar."
He says the condition doesn't bother him nearly as much when doing stand-up comedy.
"When it's stand-up, it's me, it's my thoughts, it's my character, it's me with the volume turned up."
But his battle with ADHD is an ongoing one. "Very rarely will a week go by without some mini-crisis that comes from it."
He said it's a matter of finding ways to live with it rather than trying to defeat it.
