My Left Nut began its stage life from Patrick's own teenage story.
Independent Memorial Profile
Michael Patrick
A Belfast actor and writer whose work moved between autobiography, Shakespeare, television, and radio, and whose final years turned illness into some of the most courageous stage work in contemporary Irish theatre.
This is an independent profile page, not an official site. It is designed as a factual memorial reference built from publicly accessible reporting and official project pages.
He shared his motor neurone disease diagnosis publicly.
The Tragedy of Richard III opened at the Lyric Theatre.
He won the Judges' Award at The Stage Awards.
Michael Patrick died at NI Hospice, aged 35.
Life in Brief
An actor, a writer, and half of a creative partnership that kept widening its form.
Michael Patrick, whose offstage name was Michael Campbell, built a body of work that moved between solo performance, ensemble theatre, television, radio, and script development. He was based in Belfast, studied physics at the University of Cambridge, spent much of that time in performance with the Cambridge Footlights, and later trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.
His long-running collaboration with writer and director Oisín Kearney shaped much of his most recognized work. Together they developed projects that combined wit, autobiography, and formal control, including My Left Nut, The Alternative, The Border Game, The Tragedy of Richard III, and My Right Foot.
Patrick's illness did not narrow his range. After publicly sharing his MND diagnosis in February 2023, he continued to write, perform, and reframe disability on stage in terms that were unsentimental, sharp, and artistically ambitious. That arc became inseparable from how audiences came to understand his work and his legacy.
- Offstage name
- Michael Campbell
- Based in
- Belfast
- Known for
- My Left Nut, Richard III, screen work
- Diagnosis shared
- February 1, 2023
Timeline
A short chronology of work, illness, and the projects that defined his public story.
My Left Nut established the tone
Patrick wrote and performed the solo show My Left Nut, based on his teenage years. The production was nominated at Dublin Fringe and won the Summerhall Lustrum Award at Edinburgh Fringe.
Screen credits widened his audience
His screen work included Game of Thrones, Krypton, Soft Border Patrol, The Keeper, Blue Lights, and This Town, alongside radio and voice performances.
He publicly shared his MND diagnosis
Patrick announced that he had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease, saying he wanted both to make daily life less awkward and to raise awareness of the disease.
The Lyric announced The Tragedy of Richard III
The production reframed Richard as someone living with disability as part of terminal illness. It opened on October 12, 2024 at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast.
A landmark performance received a major award
The Lyric announced that Patrick had won the Judges' Award at The Stage Awards for The Tragedy of Richard III, a performance the judges described as truly astonishing.
My Right Foot extended the autobiographical arc
The one-person play My Right Foot premiered during Dublin Theatre Festival 2025 before transferring to the Lyric, turning diagnosis, inheritance, and urgency into direct theatre.
His death closed a brief but unusually concentrated career
Michael Patrick died at NI Hospice on Tuesday, April 7, 2026. Obituaries immediately returned to the same idea: that his work had altered how disability and performance were seen on Irish stages.
Selected Works
The titles most closely tied to how audiences remember him.
Stage / Writing
My Left Nut
An autobiographical one-man show based on Patrick's teenage years, later adapted for screen and often treated as the breakthrough project in the Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney partnership.
Stage / Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Richard III
The 2024 Lyric Theatre production that put disability and terminal illness at the centre of Richard's story, and became the defining performance of Patrick's later career.
Stage / Autobiography
My Right Foot
A later solo work that addressed MND directly, the legacy of his father, and the problem of how to live under a sharply shortened horizon.
Screen
This Town, Blue Lights, Game of Thrones
Patrick's television and screen appearances brought him into wider view while still sitting inside a career rooted in theatre craft.
Radio / Voice
Bitter Pill and BBC audio work
Voice performance and radio writing formed another strand of the career, adding intimacy and tonal precision to an already varied body of work.
Legacy
Why the story keeps being searched.
Search interest around Michael Patrick is not only about a filmography. It is about the rare compression of talent, illness, humour, authorship, and public courage into a few visible years. His story is repeatedly framed through three titles: My Left Nut, The Tragedy of Richard III, and My Right Foot.
Those projects map a longer emotional line: a son writing around the absence left by MND, an actor reshaping Shakespeare through disability, and a performer later turning that same disease into live testimony. The work remains memorable because it was never only confessional. It was rigorously made.
Context
Lyric Theatre described his Richard III as a landmark performance that centred disability and disabled performers. Obituaries in April 2026 positioned that role as one of the defining images of his career.
FAQ
Quick answers for the questions most readers arrive with.
Who was Michael Patrick?
Michael Patrick was a Belfast actor and writer, also known as Michael Campbell, whose work spanned theatre, television, radio, and autobiographical performance.
When did he share his MND diagnosis?
He said publicly that he had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease on February 1, 2023, and continued writing and performing after that announcement.
Why is Richard III central to his legacy?
The Tragedy of Richard III became the signature role of his later career and was presented as the first time on the island of Ireland that an actor with a disability had played Richard III.
What should I look up first?
Start with My Left Nut, then read about The Tragedy of Richard III, and then My Right Foot. Those three titles explain most of the public story around Patrick's work.
Is this his official website?
No. This is an independent memorial and research page. Official representation and project links are listed in the sources section below.
Sources
Public pages used to ground this profile.
- Michael & Oisín: Michael Patrick profile
- Lyric Theatre: The Tragedy of Richard III announcement, May 30, 2024
- Lyric Theatre: Judges' Award announcement, January 20, 2025
- Michael & Oisín: My Right Foot project page
- The Irish Times obituary, April 8, 2026
- Original brand design philosophy used for this site