Trainspotting: Character Promo – Renton

“Ah chose not tae choose life, ah chose something else…”

The latest in our series of Trainspotting character promos sees the debut bow of the main man himself, Mark Renton.

Played by Ross Costigan, Mark Renton is a greedy, self loathing, nihilistic anti hero. He’s a junkie with little regard for friends, family and indeed, personal hygiene. The ‘red heided cunt’ as he’s affectionately called by Begbie, is a man at odds with himself and the world he lives in.

Yet, at his core, there’s a part of Renton that wants to change his ways, to redeem himself, to choose…. life. As he navigates the audience through the dark underbelly of 1980’s Edinburgh, we see the changes that occur in Renton as he desperately tries to get out while he still can.

Ross Costigan is one of the core members of Devious Theatre and has appeared in each of our productions so far.

These character posters for Trainspotting serve to introduce the many faces of Irvine Welsh’s work, or even reintroducing them to people familiar with the previous incarnations of the characters.

As designed by Paddy Dunne, the posters will be unveiled in the weeks leading up to the performance.

Tickets for Trainspotting are already available in The Watergate Theatre and can be purchased at 056 – 7761674.

Trainspotting will arrive onstage from June 24th to the 28th.

Tommy Says Rehearsals Are Barry, Ken?

So the rehearsal process continues at Devious Towers (our super sexy rehearsal location smack in the middle of Kilkenny). What with the bank holiday weekend upon us, this week has been pretty intensive so far, and continues to be with two more lengthy rehearsals scheduled for tonight (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday).

Speaking from an actors point of view (I’m playing Tommy, don’t you know) I’ve had a reasonable week thus far, knocking out accent kinks wherever possible with the daes and wis, naes and likesays, ye ken?

Proper junkies that we are, we’re also weening ourselves off scripts this week – at least for the scenes that have been blocked, and blocked, and drilled into your head. Next week should see the entire play blocked off, scripts binned, full props at the ready and regular runs of the show set for the following week.

We’ve also got our press hats on this week (what a scoop!) so expect a flurry of activity over the coming week with regional and national press releases, sneak photos from the rehearsal process and more promotional posters than you could shake a stick at. Or a fist. Or a Scottish flag.

I’m sure there’ll be someone along soon to fill you in on how the week continues to go. In the meantime, enjoy your lunch on this fine Wednesday afternoon.

Ken

Trainspotting: Character Promo – Begbie

“Ah’m no they type a cunt thit goes lookin’ fir bother, likes” – Franco Bebgie

The third in our series of character posters for Trainspotting shows Niall Sheehy as Franco Begbie for our upcoming production of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. A violent sociopath, Begbie terrorizes his “friends” into going along with whatever he says, assaulting and brutalizing anyone who angers him. This violence is reflected in the manner in which he speaks. He is the only one in the group who does not use heroin and, although he considers junkies to be the lowest form of life, he is himself thoroughly addicted to alcohol, amphetamine, and violence.

Niall is a newcomer to The Devious Theatre Company, having worked previously with Dreamstuff Theatre (as the majority of us have over the last seven years).

These character posters for Trainspotting serve to introduce the many faces of Irvine Welsh’s work, or even reintroducing them to people familiar with the previous incarnations of the characters.

As designed by Paddy Dunne, the posters will be unveiled in the weeks leading up to the performance. Other posters to come along in the series (collect them all!) include Renton, Tommy, Diane, Lizzie, Sick Boy and Mother Superior.

Tickets for Trainspotting are already available in The Watergate Theatre and can be purchased at 056 – 7761674.

Trainspotting will arrive onstage from June 24th to the 28th.

Trainspotting: Character Promo – Alison

“This is mad….What planet are we oan?” – Alison

The next in our series of Trainspotting character posters sees the introduction of Alison.

Played by Maria Murray, Alison is another of the wayward souls who populate the dark underbelly of 1980’s Edinburgh. An unrepentant drug abuser, Alison can’t see anything beyond her own addiction, not even her infant daughter.

Maria Murray has previously worked with Devious Theatre on our production of Cannibal! The Musical and this marks her debut lead role with us.

These character posters for Trainspotting serve to introduce the many faces of Irvine Welsh’s work, or even reintroducing them to people familiar with the previous incarnations of the characters.

As designed by Paddy Dunne, the posters will be unveiled in the weeks leading up to the performance.

Tickets for Trainspotting are already available in The Watergate Theatre and can be purchased at 056 – 7761674.

Trainspotting will arrive onstage from June 24th to the 28th.

Happy Birthday Devious Theatre

Well, how could we let this one slip by? Quite possibly in the mix of all the Trainspotting activity going on at the moment and having the entire Devious Theatre crew running around like headless chickens the past few weekends, we forgot to mention – and raise a glass to the fact – that The Devious Theatre Company is now two years old!

Yes, turning the clock back to 2006 when a select few of us at the time (myself – Ken – , John, Kevin and Niamh) had just finished work on a production with Dreamstuff theatre out of Young Irish Film Makers, the decision was made to spark a theatrical revolution in our fair city.

Copious amounts of tea, breakfast meetings, dinner meetings, secret ballots, white smoke, red smoke, morse code and more were used but within a week or two of the production finishing, we had our new theatre company established and had already started work on a new (and as it turns out afterwards, unperformed) production.

Swapping one production and one venue for an original and comedic piece of genius in the guise of Heart Shaped Vinyl and bringing theatre back to Cleere’s in Kilkenny, The Devious Theatre Company was born and the rest, as they say, is history…

Living history at that as we haven’t taken the foot off the pedal once in two years.

Just like this time last year (well, May 9th if we’re going to get all official about it), we “missed the boat” (to use a much-loved DT phrase) on celebrating our birthday. Alas, such is the joy of running a theatre company. But we’re a nice bunch really.

So to mark our second birthday, I would like to take the opportunity to those who have helped us along the road in the past two years – the Arts Office here in Kilkenny, Johnny Holden and the staff at Cleere’s Theatre, Ger Cody and the staff at the Watergate Theatre, John Cleere, Paddy Dunne, Edwina Grace, Tess Felder, Pius Meaghar, Eddie Brennan, Alan Dawson, Michael Keogh, Stephen Colfer, Colm Sheenan, Richie Cody and those who worked alongside the company on Heart Shaped Vinyl through it’s many iterations in 2006 and 2007, Jason McHugh and those behind Cannibal! The Musical!, local and regional media including KCLR96FM, The Kilkenny People, Voice and Advertiser, The Munster Express, KilkennyMusic.com, Mycrofilms, our beloved Coffee Club (RIP) and their wonderful staff, Kate St John, Young Irish Film Makers and everyone else we’ve worked with over the past two years.

We strive to entertain you and continue to promote new, fresh and original pieces of theatre.

We’re performing Trainspotting (if you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere you might have missed that bit of news) this June 24 to June 28 and hope to return with another original production this coming August (dates TBC). Come out and see us some time, introduce yourself, then hang around for the aftershow parties.

Trust me.

They’re WELL worth it.

Happy Birthday Devious Theatre!

Trainspotting: Character Promo – Spud

“It’s a fuckin’ miserable life man. It’s nay life at all, ken?” – Spud

This is the first in a series of upcoming promotional images, each one showcasing our lovely actors and a first look at characters that inhabit the underbelly of 1980’s Edinburgh. Presented here for your viewing pleasure (or displeasure, perhaps?) is Stephen “Pip” Colfer as Danny “Spud” Murphy. Stephen is a familiar face in the Devious troupe: In Cannibal! he took to the stage as James Humphries.

We will be rolling out these character images on a regular basis in the run up to the show, so keep an eye out for them!

Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, an adaptation by Harry Gibson, arrives at the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny on the 24th to the 28th of June. Tickets are on sale now and can be booked at +353 56 61674.

Trainspotting – Week One

After a week of pretty intensive rehearsals I thought it might be a good idea to let everyone know how we’re getting on with our production of ‘the Scottish Play.’
Ehhh…. The other one.

First off, the accents are a total bastard but hey, we’ve prepared and we’ve got time. The actors have been giving it socks or ‘soacks’ as Begbie might say. The most problematic word so far has been ‘no’ as in ‘not’ which constantly translates as ‘nu’ as opposed to ‘no’. Ehhh… ay, it’s a right tricky bugger. It’s a long journey from here still but I’m confident we’ll arrive in style come late June. As everyone’s favourite glass chucking psycho would say “A sprinter’ll nivir fuckin last the pace wi a distance man.”

The cast that we assembled for the play have justified all of our faith in them. Utter A game, pure and utter A game off them all round. The rehearsals have been pretty intensive so far. We’ve been really knuckling into the monologues and battering out a shape and structure to them. They’re long, they’re tough and they’re very Scottish but the level of writing is just so amazing that really, it’s a pleasure to work with such epic language. And I don’t just mean the swearing.

After developing this play for so long it’s so good to see it coming to life with our versions of Spud, Begbie, Renton and Alison starting to spring from the spitting, straining sinews of our dedicated acting force.

So all in all, after week one of rehearsal, progress has been made with an awful lot more to make.

All the other aspects of the production have been kicking into gear as well.

- Tommy has been figuring how to get all the props onto one carpet. Yup.
- Eddie is worryingly confident about pulling off the set. ‘No bothers’ he says.
- Myself and Niamh have been arguing the merits of shopping trolley V cot.
- We’ve also been furiously whittling down our potential soundtrack for the show. One thing’s for sure, it won’t feature Underworld.
- Paddy has been scribbling at the concept art. One thing’s for sure, it won’t feature the colour orange.
- Ken has been plugging, promoting and name dropping like a man possessed. One thing’s for sure, he gets around.
- Kate has started a crusade to find as many manky denim shirts as she can.
- And our pursuit of a permanent rehearsal space has just bared fruit. Boy, is Kilkenny busy with amateur dramatics these next few months.
- And all of us are frantically trying to get into some sort of character shape for the upcoming poster and promo shoot. There’s some magic being lined up with these, so do stay posted. What isn’t magic however, is the gunk that Pip spent most of yesterday sitting in. It probably smelled worse than arse explosion.

In other news, tickets have in fact started booking for the show already and you can procure yours with the friendly staff at the Watergate Theatre on this number: (056) 7761674.

Until later wee gadges,

John