BURBANK, California — If you were an actor whose most recent claim to fame was playing a pimp in the men’s toilet in Central Park, an impromptu trip to Uganda might not seem so unreasonable.
At least it didn’t seem so for Johnny O’Callaghan, one of the main performers in a thriller called Ladies and Gents that played in the rest rooms near the Bethesda Fountain in the park.
“It was a period piece set in Dublin and we had 30 audience members standing in both the men’s and ladies’ rooms in near-darkness. We did two shows, with the audience switching from the men’s to the ladies’ or the ladies’ to the men’s. My ‘wife,’ who was a prostitute, was in the ladies’ and I was in the men’s, and we were blackmailing a Member of Parliament.
“It was a real noir piece—-people screamed and fainted—-and we sold out the run in minutes. We would have continued, but we couldn’t afford the fee the park was charging for the exclusive use of the bathrooms. But who knows,” he adds, “maybe some day we’ll do it again—in bigger toilets!”
This is the same man, Johnny O’Callaghan, who had flown off to Africa a couple of years earlier, when a friend invited him to join her as she filmed a documentary about an orphanage in Uganda. “Why not? We all want to do good,” he says.
After landing in Kampala, he traveled west to the village of Kasese. It was election time in Uganda (2006), a treacherous time to be wandering around the country. There was a suggestion of civil war. But things seemed relatively safe in Kasese. The conditions at the House of Hope orphanage, however, were daunting. “It was really primitive. There was no electricity and one woman taking care of 50 kids,” O’Callaghan says.
“I had no intention of adopting an orphan, and there were no adoption agencies working in Uganda,” he says. “Adoption is not part of their culture. But when I saw this little three-year-old boy I knew instantly that he was my son.”
And thus began the nine-month journey to adopt this little boy and bring him to America. “I was totally naïve and had no idea how difficult it would be,” he adds. It was harrowing, and funny, and intense, he says, and he is reliving the adventure now in his new one-man show Who’s Your Daddy? that opens November 11th at the Little Victory Theater in Burbank.
It took nine months of paperwork and bureaucracy and red tape, “and all that time I felt as if I were pregnant and waiting to give birth,” he says. But in the end, this determined Irish-American-Canadian (he has citizenship in all three countries) was able to bring his newly adopted Ugandan son to America and name him Odin O’Callaghan. Much to the puzzlement of his family back in Ireland. “Who do you think you are, Angelina Jolie?” his mother asked. (“The Irish don’t censor themselves,” he says by way of explanation.)
Odin, who knew no English when he arrived, picked up the language quickly, but was also clever enough to find a reasonable excuse for his mistakes: O’Callaghan once overheard him telling another little boy “Sometimes English is difficult for me because I’m Irish.”
So who is this impulsive actor/writer/director/producer and single father? Johnny O’Callaghan left his family home in Ireland at 17 and went to work in a BMW factory in Munich. Very soon, however, he went back to Ireland to pursue a degree in Computer Science at the University of Ulster in Belfast. There, he says, he “fell in with the wrong crowd” and began acting with the Belfast Youth and Community Theatre. This group dealt with community issues and worked to bring Catholic and Protestant actors together, and they successfully toured the country with a play called Castle Rackrent.
From there he was off to Boston, where he spent two years studying at The New Theatre School, and after graduation he went to Toronto, where he played a terrorist/rapist in Carolan’s Farewell. For six years (1997-2003) he also portrayed Stephen Dedalus, reading James Joyce’s Ulysses each June 16th in celebration of Bloomsday. He also portrayed Dedalus in Bloomsday on Broadway at New York’s Symphony Space.
He moved to New York when he was invited to star in the one-man show Rum and Vodka by playwright Conor McPherson. The show was a huge success and the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York was anxious to mount it and continue the run. Unfortunately, O’Callaghan says, Conor McPherson’s play The Weir was also running at this same time in New York. Since the producers were uneasy about two McPherson plays running simultaneously, they shut down Rum and Vodka. (McPherson’s comment to O’Callaghan captured the mood: “Good luck in this fucked up business.”) Happily, though, HBO picked up the show and ran it as a special, and so did NBC.
Now living in L.A., O’Callaghan moves back and forth to perform in New York and Canada as well. He was the Voice-Over in Martin Scorsese’s film Gangs of New York, the lead in Slaughter City and Awake at Dawn, the series lead in Alias Grace on CBC radio, and a series regular on California Artists Radio Theatre on NPR.
Off-Broadway, he was Rudolph in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and the Rookie in Howard the Rookie, and in Canada he played Anatol, the gigolo, in Arthur Schnitzler’s The Affairs of Anatol. In L.A. he starred in The Lonesome West at the Odyssey Theatre, and in Vancouver he had a recurring role as Niam, an Ancient Replicator in the TV series Stargate Atlantis, which had a five-year run, ending in 2009. As the Hollywood Reporter has written, O’Callaghan is “raucous, raunchy, boisterous, lyrical, sad, funny and terrific.”
Meanwhile, in his spare time, he also managed to acquire a master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology at the University of Santa Monica. “I’m a good completer—like a dog with a bone—and I put my soul into everything,” he says. And so, with his degree he now offers meditation and healing therapy to his clients, “mostly actors who come to see me to relax.”
His spiritual philosophy also influences how he brings up his son Odin. “I’m raising him to love himself—to like who he is. I tell him ‘you’re not a victim, you’re a divine being having a human experience,’ and ‘the energy is inside you.’
“In the end, Who’s Your Daddy? Is about waking up,” he says. “Odin isn’t the story, he just facilitated it. It’s about letting go of your limitations and finding what makes you happy. As I see my role with Odin and with my clients in healing therapy, I am there to guide them to their passions.”
“It’s such a pleasure working with him,” says Tom Ormeny, who is directing Who’s Your Daddy? “He’s a serious young man, committed to consciousness and being in the moment, and we’re on the same page on that.”
Who’s Your Daddy?, produced by Victory Theatre Center, opens Nov. 11; plays Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 4 pm; through Dec. 18. The Little Victory Theatre, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank; call 818-841-5422 or www.thevictorytheatrecenter.org
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Citron is Los Angeles bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World. She may be contacted at cynthia.citron@sdjewishworld.com