Some New Pics From Stags & Hens

So Stags and Hens has been and gone at this stage with likely the final post-show discussions had this past weekend in advance of our upcoming production of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Until today, I don’t think these pictures have seen the light of day online and hopefully we’ll have some more to showcase in the next while.

We’ve thrown five up on Flickr for the moment, also available in the local gallery here. The five photos in question are by the hand and eye of Ross Costigan. Contrary to rumour, we’ve no plans to re-stage Stags and Hens between now and December given the scale of our December production.

We are, however, exploring possibilities on taking Accidental Death elsewhere. If you’re a venue owner or manager, please contact us to arrange a chat on touring options.

We Want You!

We’re currently in the auditioning process for our upcoming Dario Fo Season. And we’re looking for the entire team. Actors, Directors, Technicians, Designers, everything! As is usually the case, our underfunded low budgeted selves can’t afford to pay a wage on this so we’re looking for people who are running on enthusiasm. But we will feed you! Maybe…

We’re holding open auditions this coming Saturday August 29th for actors. But even if you don’t want to act and you just want to come in and talk to us about a different aspect of production then please do.

For any prospective actors, we are looking to cast both Accidental Death Of An Anarchist and Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!

We are looking for actors who are extremely physically adept, creative and well able to improvise. Both these plays need to be reinterpreted by the actors and the rehearsals will require the actors to workshop scenes and develop their own work. Both pieces require heightened physical comedy and so we need a tight company of actors who can work fluidly in tandem with each other in a creative environment. Both these plays are actors pieces and so we need very enthusiastic, imaginative and committed ensemble working together.

If any of you are interested in either or both plays (or know of people who might be), can you contact us at info@devioustheatre.com and we’ll organise audition times from there.

The Dario Fo Season opens this winter when Accidental Death Of An Anarchist opens in the Set Theatre, John Street, Kilkenny from December 2nd – 6th.

The Loves Of Cass McGuire

Kilkenny’s oldest and best loved theatrical group, Watergate Productions, are presenting their first play of 2009 this week in their own abode The Watergate Theatre. The play in question is their first staging of Brian Friel’s The Loves Of Cass McGuire.

The play is set in the year it was written, 1966. It tells the story of Cass McGuire’s return to Ireland after 50 years working with the deadbeats and drunks of Skid Row only to be rejected by her family and consigned to a nursing home.

The play is directed by a good friend of ours, Geoff Rose, a big fan of Brian Friel who also directed a production of this play in Kilkenny back in the 1980’s. It also features a heavyweight cast featuring Kilkenny’s finest acting talent: Brendan Corcoran, Donal O’Brien, Mary Cradock, Tom O’Loughlin, Clare Gibbs, Marina Boyd and Paula Drohan. Colette Brown is taking on the title role and the cast is rounded out by erstwhile Devious member Sean Hackett. This marks the first time that one of our troupe has appeared with Kilkenny’s theatrical establishment so best of luck to Sean for the week. He has previously appeared in Cannibal! The Musical, Heart Shaped Vinyl and plays Niall Tennyson on Vultures.

The play opened last night and will run until Saturday August 29th at 8pm each night. All details on the play and booking tickets can be found right here.

Dublin Theatre Festival Looking Great

The programme for this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival arrived into the office earlier in the week (my office, not the Devious office, though eventually…) and it’s got to be said, the programme looks stellar.

One thing we’ve promised ourselves as a group and have started doing, thankfully, is to hit the road and take in more theatre, linking up with groups from around the country. Where better to start our autumn road trips than with a spin to the big smoke.

Chaired by Peter Crawley, the Dublin Theatre Festival runs from September 23rd to October 11th this year and on DeviousTheatre.com we’ll be shedding the spotlight on some of the productions taking to the stage across the three weeks or so. One such play that’s on my list to get to is Buck Jones and The Body Snatchers, written by Ken Bourke and directed by Joan Sheehy. The play opened in Limerick last year and found itself nominated for Best Production at the 2008 Irish Times Theatre Awards.

Someone better let the staff at Jimmy Chung’s know that we’re coming…

Love Is My Sin

Peter Brook’s Kilkenny bow is finally upon us. And the excitement couldn’t be higher as the 2009 Kilkenny Arts Festival reaches its final weekend. The C.I.C.T/Theatre Des Bouffes Du Nord production has been readying itself in the Watergate Theatre since yesterday and by all accounts it’s looking stunning. Love Is My Sin sees a performance of some of William Shakespeare’s most beautiful sonnets. Chosen by Brook himself, they are being performed by Natasha Parry and Bruce Myers.

As we’ve stated ad nauseam at this stage, this is one of the theatrical events of the year in Ireland and if you’re any sort of theatre aficionado, you’d be a fool to miss it. It should be sublime.

Here’s a recent picture of Peter Brook himself, arrived in Kilkenny.

Love Is My Sin opens tonight and runs until Saturday 15th August at 8pm nightly. The performance will be 50 minutes with no interval. Tickets can be procured on the Kilkenny Arts Festival Box Office hotline of 056 – 7752175.

10 Things You Might Not Know About Peter Brook

For the casual (or non) theatre goer, the name Peter Brook might not raise much of an eyebrow. But for those in the know, the 84 year old director is one of the true icons of modern theatre. Here’s why you should care:

1. The most important one is that he’s currently in Kilkenny preparing to take to the Watergate Theatre stage with his newest production Love Is My Sin. This performance is the jewel in the theatrical crown of the 2009 Kilkenny Arts Festival.

2. His seminal 1968 book, The Empty Space, regarded as one of the defining texts on modern theatre practice, has been translated into over 15 languages. The book can usually be found in the hands of any self respecting theatre student worldwide.

3. His very first performance was said to be a production of Hamlet, aged 7, with himself in all the roles. He performed this specially for his parents. He didn’t make a single change to the text. Nor was it abridged. A sign of things to come…

4. He became Director Of The Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 and held the position for over 2 decades, creating some of the most important work ever seen on a British stage in the process.

5. In this time he worked with actors such as Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Paul Scofield and most famously directed iconic productions of Shakesperean classics such as Titus Andronicus, King Lear, Measure For Measure and most famously, his revolutionary performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1970.

6. This play, along with a production of Marat/Sade in 1966 bagged him two Tony Awards for Best Director (Dramatic)

7. In 1951, Peter Brook married Natasha Parry. They remain married to this day and along with Bruce Myers she will be performing Love Is My Sin, a selection of Shakespearean sonnets, in the Watergate Theatre for 3 nights this week.

8. In 1970, he co-founded the International Centre For Theatre Research with Micheline Rozan. It is currently based in the Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris. The man himself has been based there ever since.

9. In a rare recent interview with the Irish Times about his upcoming Kilkenny shows, Brook gave an insight into his attitude towards rehearsals and performance: “A play should never be its best in rehearsal – that’s a horrific idea – and the first night should never be the best night either. It’s when you travel around the world, in front of different audiences, and the work is changing all the time – that’s the exciting, the vital, the most important thing.”

10. Love Is My Sin is a true theatrical event. And Peter Brook is a true theatrical giant. And so, this performance is not to be missed. A major coup for the Kilkenny Arts Festival, Love Is My Sin will play in The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny from tomorrow, August 13th until Saturday August 15th at 8pm nightly. Tickets can be procured on the Kilkenny Arts Festival Box Office in Parliament Street on 056 – 7752175. We’re getting in line right now. We suggest you do too.

Krapp’s Last Tape by Moving Still

The theatre programme of the Kilkenny Arts Festival continues this evening with the opening of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape in the Parade Tower at 6pm.

As my favourite Beckett play, Krapp’s Last Tape probably would have been my highlight of the theatre programme for the festival. But then again, the little matter of a theatrical giant called Peter Brook stomping into town next weekend put paid to that. Nonetheless, this is one I’m very much looking forward to.

A haunting and humorous rumination on memory, love and loss, Krapp’s Last Tape will be performed by Fergus Cronin in a production from Galway based company Moving Still. It will also run tomorrow, Sunday 9th and next weekend on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th August, again in the Parade Tower.

The theatre strand of the festival kicked off last night with the stunning Lucia’s Chapters from Mabou Mines. And you can read my review of it here.  Myself and Ken are covering the Arts Festival over on KilkennyArts.ie for the next 10 days so keep an eye on that website for all news, reviews and bits and bobs. All theatrical previews will be covered on this site, so do keep an eye on us as well.

Presenting A Season Of Dario Fo

Frustrated with the government? Rising prices getting you down? Is the justice system failing you? Lost all faith in the Church?

Then our newest season of work might just be right up your disenfranchised alleyway. A season of comedic plays by Dario Fo will take place in Kilkenny’s newest theatre venue, the state of the art Set Theatre, John Street, Kilkenny between Winter 2009 and Spring 2010.

Dario Fo is Italy’s most famous living playwright, a Nobel Prize winner and joint 7th in The Telegraph’s list of 100 greatest living geniuses (with Stephen Hawking no less). His work has held a mirror up to the corruption, fascism and inequality of Italy’s national systems for over 50 years. His pen has repeatedly cut the throat of those very systems, earning him death threats, litigation and censorship throughout his career. Fo’s famous razor sharp wit has created a body of work that has challenged successive governments, the Catholic Church and the police forces. He has maintained that his work belongs to every citizen who is downtrodden by such oppressive systems. And so, with timely prescience, Devious Theatre are delighted to present two of Dario Fo’s most controversial, comedic, authority slaying works in the Set Theatre.

His best known play Accidental Death Of An Anarchist will open the season in the Set Theatre when it runs from Wednesday December 2nd to Sunday December 6th. In the aftermath of the apparent suicide of an anarchist from a fourth floor police window, the policemen involved are having difficulties remembering the details of the event. That is, until a nameless, deranged madman shows up and proceeds to tie the authorities around his fingers in a master class performance of utter logic.

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! will continue the season when it opens in the Set Theatre in Spring 2010. Frustrated by rising supermarket prices, two working class women decide to rebel against the cost of living by taking goods without paying. However, hiding this from their husbands and the authorities chasing them might prove a little trickier than expected.

Yes, we’ve just finished Stags and Hens, but we’ve got a whole lot of theatre planned between now, next August and beyond. Over the past few weeks we’ve been thrashing out rights, prices, costs, venues, all that kind of thing we love doing at DTC and we’re delighted to reveal two of the productions we’ve got planned for you. This is also the first time we’ve broached the idea of presenting a season of an author’s works with Accidental Death of An Anarchist high on our lists of late (though possibly since 2008 or 2007).

As is usual, keep an eye on the blog for notes on casting, auditions and the likes but for the moment we’ve left post-production and walked right back into pre-production. Genuinely, the fun never seems to end. Have we more aces up the sleeves? It’s certainly possible though for the moment we’re hoping you’ll join us at the new Set Theatre in Kilkenny this coming December.

Lucia’s Chapters by Mabou Mines

The Kilkenny Arts Festival is kicking off tomorrow and the theatre programme will be taking a bow with Lucia’s Chapters by Mabou Mines.

Having last appeared at the festival in 2006 with Prelude To A Death In Venice, the renowned avant garde group are returning to Kilkenny with their acclaimed new show. Lucia’s Chapters looks at the remarkably tortured life of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia. Lucia is played by Ruth Maleczech in what is said to be a remarkable performance.

The show is currently moving into the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny in anticipation of its opening night bow tomorrow.  It runs until Tuesday August 11th at 8pm nightly.  We’ll be heading along tomorrow night to cover the show for the Kilkenny Arts Festival. Ken McGuire and myself from this parish will be blogging, reviewing and recapping the events of the festival over at KilkennyArts.ie over the next 10 days so check in for coverage of what will hopefully be a rain free festival!

And keep one eye on this website also as we’ll be featuring the theatre programme throughout the entire run of the festival. Keep an eye out for the Keystone Kops too! They’ll be running around like mad, the rogues. There’s a wealth of variety that should do a nice job of keeping all theatre goers happy over the next 10 days.