Artist Profile:
Little John Nee

John Nee, more commonly known by his stage name Little John Nee, is an Irish storyteller, writer, performer and musician based in Galway on Ireland’s West Coast. Nee was born in Glasgow in 1959. He returned to Letterkenny, in County Donegal, with his family when he was twelve. It was here that he began performing in punk bands, such as Joe Petrol and the Petrol Bombs and Hemlock. He lived in London during the late seventies where he continued to perform, taking inspiration from the growing punk movement.

Nee returned to Ireland in 1982, and since then has employed a variety of media, including street performance, theatre, radio, poetry, music, live-streaming and installation art, to pioneer his own unique style of story-telling. He is the author of a book of haikus “The Apocalypse Came on a Friday”, as well as numerous one-man shows, including “The Derry Boat” (1998), “Limavady My Heart’s Delight” (2006), “Dead Rooster Blues” (2008) and “Radio Rosario” (2017). In 2016 Nee was elected a member of Aosdána. He works both as a solo artist and collaboratively.

“The thing that makes Nee’s work so poignant, funny, tragic and real is that it is instantly recognisable; be it his characters, their circumstances or the situations they find themselves in. The biting wit and self-defacing humour allows him to cut through such harrowing issues as alcoholism, spousal abuse, poverty, loss, without ever belittling such topics.” –“The Donegal News”  

The Mental “Little John Nee, as actor and writer, has become a representative Irish figure and commentator, and never more so than here” The Irish Times

The Mental “Its beauty lies in its charm, but its depth lies in its message: we are all just a step away from one another after all”  The Sunday Independant

Limavady my hearts delight “Nee’s apprenticeship as a street entertainer on Grafton St. stands him in good stead, and the performance hinges on his unrivalled comic ability and his chameleon-like capacity to transmogrify from hapless hero to a range of other characters with minimal props and utter conviction”.