Bloody Flashback – Cannibal! The Musical!

Well, here’s a blast from the past. As we’re on a lull (video-wise that is) between productions, today is a fine chance for us to get some footage from Cannibal! The Musical! up online, the staging of which took place back in 2007 as our first major Watergate production.

John uploaded the footage this afternoon, prompting me as director (co-director alongside Kevin Mooney) to share a few words. From viewing the clip of course you’ll see that when Devious Theatre do blood, we really do blood. The actors you’ll see above are John Morton (shirt, as Shannon Wilson Bell) and Dave Thompson (jacket, as Alferd Packer). At this point in the production, I (as Israel Swan) had already been shot, killed and eaten by fellow my fellow miners, providing a source of food for our troupé who had traveled through the mountains in search of gold, only to wind up lost in the dead of winter.

Packer leaves the camp, returning to find that Bell has gone completely mad and killed everyone else, cooking up their feet, hands, hearts, flesh to make a fine feast fit for any cannibal.

Hilarity, of course, ensues.

The music that you hear backing the scenes was performed by our own orchestra, conducted by Kevin Reade, the first and only time we’ve used a live orchestra for any of our productions. It was also the first and only time that we’ve had a cast in the region of 25 actors, which included some doubling up as well.

On a whole, Cannibal was a real ground-breaking production for us. Even though it was only two years back this August, it seems almost like a lifetime ago when put alongside the amount of work that we’ve done since then between a Trainspotting, Smitten, War of The Worlds, Shakespeare In Bits, Stags and Hens and more besides. But however long ago it seems, the show still stands as one of my more memorable and much-loved theatrical moments in all the years I’ve been involved in theatre, particularly as I’d spent almost seven years trying to get the production to the stage in the first place.

As a committee member for Devious, I’ve worked as a producer on every production to date, and taken to the stage in each as well. Producing the show would have been one thing but to be able to co-direct the production, especially as our first major production, was a real treat (and an incredible learning curve), but it’s also something that we’re able to afford others in the group with Kevin (Heart Shaped Vinyl, Stags and Hens), John (Trainspotting, Accidental Death of An Anarchist), Niamh (Trainspotting), Colm (Smitten) – the chance to take the reins on a production and step into a directors role.

This might be the only clip we decide to release from Cannibal (though I’m sure we’ve a few spare DVDs knocking around somewhere) so we hope you enjoy it.

Fancy Pulling A Sword Out Of A Stone?

Our old alma mater of Dreamstuff Youth Theatre have started auditioning for their latest production and they are looking for actors between the ages of 13 – 25 to fill the roles on offer. The show in question is a new version of The Sword In The Stone, retooled as a medieval teen comedy.

Set once upon a time when Britain had been without a king for 17 years. A stone with a sword in it proclaims that whoever pulls the sword from the stone will be ‘the once and future king of Britain’.  But no one can pull it out so it gets kind of neglected and puked on a bit. But instead a jousting competition is announced, and whoever wins it will become the once and future king of Britain! Yay! And damn it, young buck Lancelot wants to win. And his no hoper teenage friends Arthur and Merlin have nothing else to do so they might as well help him compete. But when a new girl called Guinevere joins their class, the three chums realise that they might just be competing with each other instead…

Auditions take place in the Young Irish Film Makers premises on the Waterford Road, Kilkenny tomorrow night Tuesday 15th September and again on Thursday night, the 17th. Auditions can be arranged over on 056 – 7764677.

The show plays in the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny from December 15th – 19th. And the above poster was nicely designed by our very own Paddy Dunne.

Some Thanks To Our Friends

We get by with a little help from our friends. It’s true.

In recent years we’ve been lucky enough to secure funding from the Arts Office at Kilkenny County Council. The funding we received helped get Devious Theatre up off the ground and fund our first major production, Cannibal! The Musical (the previous productions were produced sans-funding). As luck would have it, we repeated the funding feat in 2008 and secured some additional finances to help stage Trainspotting, something we now view as a mammoth financial undertaking (and something as a result other amateur theatre companies should be aware of).

However, we wanted to build something big going forward, something that would allow us establish a relationship not only with arts bodies but with those who attend our shows, those who have a belief in the work that we do and on a grander note the community that we serve to entertain.

So, earlier in the summer we launched our Friends Of Devious Theatre programme, more on which you can find here. The program is a rolling annual funding programme for ourselves which allows the company generate an additional source of income, in return providing our friends with complimentary tickets, promotional goodie packs, programmes, special mentions and all things nice. We’ve had a few additions of late which is fantastic for us as we’ve got another two productions to stage this year (October and December) and we’ve already got 2010 planned out as well.

So we would like to say “thanks’ to our friends who are helping us along our theatrical road…

To Cleere’s (who have had the cast and crew fed and watered over the past few productions), Mr. Darragh Doyle (he get’s a Mr. as he’s very important), Arthur Drohan (at Ryan’s, who have kindly given up space for all our auditions and hopefully, one day, a show), Event Media, Tom & Alice Kiernan, Enda McEvoy, Gemma McGirr, Geoffrey & Alice Rose and Rothe House. The friendship and support from these people genuinely means a lot to us as a company, particularly so in the crunch times the arts world is in right now.

We’re going to launch our expanded Friends Of area on the site shortly so those mentions are going to become extra special!

We’re Nominated For A PPI Award for Best Drama

The shortlists for the 2009 PPI Radio Awards have been released and we’re delighted to find that The Devious Theatre Company have been included in the shortlist of five drama productions for Best Drama with our local station KCLR 96FM.

War Of The Worlds finds itself nominated in the Best Drama category alongside Another Blooming Day (Newstalk), Murder Cove (WLR FM), i102 -104’s Radio Killed the Video Star (i102) and The Passion of Christ (Radio Kerry).

What can we say really! We’re delighted, nothing else we can say!

The production came together over the course of September last year. When we approached the station about airing the show, we had been offered the use of the studio, recording and production facilities but undertook to produce the entire thing from the ground up ourselves, without any budget or financial support to get the show done. Scripted within the company, WOTW was adapted from the original radio version and transplanted to a Carlow / Kilkenny setting. The cast featured myself (Ken McGuire), John Morton, Kevin Mooney, David Thompson, Paul Young, Maria Murray, Amy Dunne, Ross Costigan and Alan Dawson who also engineered the production.

Our production coincided with the 70th anniversary of the original Orson Welles production.

Outside of the company our thanks must also go to The Mill Studios (for the loan of the late night space to get our theatre groove on) but especially KCLR 96FM who have been extremely supportive of our work since our inception in 2006 – to Edwina Grace, Sue Nunn, Tomm Dowling, John Keane, John Walsh, Aisling Moore, John Purcell, John Dash and everyone else we’ve had interactions with at the station since 2006 and those involved in the broadcast from the station’s side, our sincere thanks, and we’ll be keeping the fingers crossed that KCLR can build on their representation at the awards in 2008.

If you want to grab a copy of our original broadcast in MP3 format, follow the link to http://short.ie/wotw or listen below.

The Devious Theatre Company – WOTW

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.