John Breen (playwright)
John Breen is a playwright from Limerick, Ireland. He is famous for his play Alone it Stands which tells the tale of Munster Rugby Team's legendary 12-0 victory over New Zealand's mighty All Blacks in Thomond Park, Limerick in 1978. In the play six actors play 62 roles including the Munster team, the Kiwis, the two coaches, the ref, the crowd, the press, a pregnant woman, several children and a dog. The Play has made it onto Broadway and this shows the immense talent of this fine playwright.
His other well-known play is Charlie, a work on Charles Haughey, the former Irish Taoiseach, who visits a small farmer in County Mayo on his way from launching what was to become the Céide Fields project. As the two men talk, Haughey's remarkable rise and fall is acting out in flashback around them.
John now resides in an environmentally friendly home just outside Ballina in County Mayo. He also established Yew Tree Theatre Company in Ballina.
A very likeable young man, John has been involved with the Mayo Youth Theatre group and has had big involvement with the Ballina Street and Arts Festival otherwise known as the Ballina Salmon Festival.
John Breen
John Breen may refer to
John Breen (RAF officer)
John Breen, CB, OBE (8 March 1896 – 9 May 1964) was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.
Service
He transferred from the Army to the RAF in 1918 as a captain. He was promoted to squadron leader in 1925 and trained as a pilot with No. 24 Squadron RAF in 1925. He was posted to Iraq as commander of an armoured car wing. He then commanded No. 84 Squadron RAF, and No. 33 Squadron RAF before a period of study at the Imperial Defence College. As a wing commander in 1935 he was attached to the Sudan Defence Force in Khartoum.
From 27 June 1940 he was appointed Air Officer Commanding 1 Group RAF Bomber Command and served in this post during the Battle of Britain, but in December 1940 he was moved to the Air Ministry on promotion to air commodore. He later served as Director General of Personnel for the RAF and as Head of the Postwar Planning Executive before retiring as an air marshal on 2 May 1946. He died in 1964 aged 68.
References
John Breen (scholar)
John Lawrence Breen (3 March 1956– ) is a British academic and Japanologist. He is a specialist in Japanese history at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (国際日本文化研究センター, Nichibunken) in Kyoto. He writes in English and Japanese on the history of Shinto and the imperial institution.
Early life
Breen was awarded his BA at the University of Cambridge in 1979. He earned a Ph.D. in 1993 at Cambridge.
Career
From 1985 through 2008, Breen was a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader in Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He is currently Professor at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Japan Review.
Breen's critical examination of religious practices in Japan has been informed by his historical research. Historicity is construed as a fundamental component of Breen's view of Shinto.
Breen's work on Shinto is influenced by the writings of Toshio Kuroda. As most contemporary historians, he holds a more moderate position. While Kuroda denied Shinto was more than a japanized version of Buddhism, Breen and Teeuwen argue there was a pre-modern, indigenous tradition of worship, mythology and shrines, even if indeed Shinto as an organized religion was yet to be born.
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