Up Against It

The Show: Up Against It

This podcast first appeared in October 2005. In a stunning display of completely tapped out creativity, it was called The Sean O’Neil Show. The show grew out of a desire to interact with a new medium and complemented my interest in the cultural capital around me. Not surprisingly, the demands of the show actually fed that interest and vice versa.

The show aimed to provide a personal view of the arts–film, theatre, art exhibitions, music, television, dance–and the occasional cultural and political shift, here in London. We were never listed in iTunes but were very fortunate that our sophisticated and deeply satisfied listeners numbered in the high single digits. Er, sometimes.

After three painstaking, arduous and increasingly long episodes, The Sean O’Neil Show went on a short hiatus and was recently relaunched as Up Against It with what we hope will be a tighter format, shorter episodes and, fingers crossed, a theme song.

Up Against It will be published on a somewhat erratic schedule of at least once, maybe even twice a month.

Your Host: Sean O’Neil

Sean O’Neil is an American/British freelance writer, playwright and novelist currently working in London, where he has lived since 1996. He is originally from Detroit (b. 1966), and previously lived in Chicago and Los Angeles. He has been a frequent and long-term visitor to New York since the ripe young age of 16.

As a freelance writer, he currently works with a writing partner and has two film projects in development with HBO/Paramount. In print, he has previously worked for Time Out, The Guardian, The Scotsman and as an arts correspondent for The Chicago Tribune. His feature-length piece, How I Got My Guiche, dealing in part with his immigration to the UK, was originally submitted to Detour Magazine but later dropped due to advertiser concerns. It can be found here**. (He likes it and hopes you do too. Simmer down in the back.) In broadcast radio, he has worked for BBC 4 and Radio Five Live.

As a playwright, Mr. O’Neil created and performed a one-man play entitled Martin and John, adapted from the novel by Dale Peck (UK Title: Fucking Martin). The play premiered in Chicago at The Underground Performance Space at Cafe Voltaire (now defunct) in October 1994, produced by Stratford-on-Guy Productions (Mr. O’Neil and his director/colleague, Eileen Vorbach). In June 1996, it was produced again in Chicago, above ground, by Live Bait Theatre and shortly thereafter, in August 1996, had its UK premiere at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe where, once again produced by Stratford-on-Guy, it enjoyed a sell-out run at The Hill Street Theatre and was awarded a prestigious Scotsman Fringe First for “innovation in theatre and outstanding new production.”

The play had its London premiere at The Bush Theatre in January 1998 and was later performed in residence with The New York Theatre Workshop at Darmouth in July of that year.

Aside from his freelance work and podcasting, Mr. O’Neil is currently at work finishing his first novel which he hopes to complete this year (but he says that every year).

Mr. O’Neil would like it to be publicly known that he has accepted Judy Garland as his personal savior.

**Requires Adobe Reader