We were delighted to get accepted into the inaugural Digital Comedy Lab with Vultures back in February. But now we’ll be even more delighted if we actually win the Digital Comedy Lab outright. If we do, we would receive a €50,000 budget to make a Vultures mockumentary feature film. Nice, eh?

It would be a fantastic achievement for us after the last couple of years work on Vultures. It’s pretty cool to have a webcom out there that people can watch and enjoy but it would be even cooler to have a feature film that people could watch and enjoy. Our Digital Comedy Lab trailer outlines the plot for a prospective Vultures movie, which works as kind of a Year Zero for Vultures (Please let me get away with using that term, I’ve wanted to for so long!). The trailer spoilers the fuck out of the new series anyway, as the prospective film would lead on from it, showing Janine quitting college. It then moves into her rallying the unemployed dicks together as they truck off to Ireland’s first ever detective convention. Then there’s a murder! So, it’s a classic closed house murder mystery with a host of suspects and motives and twists and our bumbling heroes are thrust into the middle of it. The twist on the format though is that it’s done mockumentary style which has some very tasty possibilities for a murder mystery (which is completely new ground… unlike the rest of Vultures, ho ho!). Our trailer also showcases us doing FEATURE FILM type things like showing our dicks all dickied up, Vultour and Janine without their glasses and Jack Street in a real mink coat. Speaking of the trailer, here it is!

If we get to make it, I assure you, it will be very funny. And clever. And exciting. And it will have comedy and detectives in it. If you want to see a Vultures mockumentary feature that’s like the bastard of Scooby Doo and Agatha Christie playing Cluedo, there’s something you can do for us. Watch the trailer. Share the trailer. Like the trailer. Show it to people, maybe keep clicking on it, go to multiple computers and play it. That kind of ethical stuff. Hey, it’s a competition right? In fairness, if the folks at BeActive hate our story and think our trailer is the drizzling shits, they probably won’t commission it anyway. BUT if our trailer gets enough views, it might help persuade them that Vultures is worth making. All help would be greatly appreciated.

And if it doesn’t get made, how will we carry on with Vultures you may ask? Eh…. radio? Or maybe RTÉ might pick it up…?

Okay, radio.

Devious Theatre. On The Run For 6 Years.

It’s been 6 years since we sat outside the Marble City Tea Rooms on Kieran Street, Kilkenny of a sunny Sunday morning in May and decided that we were going to make a load of theatre that we weren’t seeing anywhere else.

This time last year we were rehearsing Smitten

And then we did it for 6 years. Last year hitting the big 5 was a milestone. Especially at a time when young theatre companies were finding it harder and harder to receive opportunities and funding. Luckily, we’ve had a lot of opportunities. Funding, not so much. I guess I’m just happy that we never got used to having it in the first place! It’s been an absolute pleasure to collaborate with so many great people on so much theatre. I’m proud of the work we’ve done in that time. Here’s what we’ve made since May 9th 2006!

We’re currently making our 14th and 15th productions, the Irish stage premiere of Night Of The Living Dead and Phantasm by John Kennedy. Both of them hit the stage this summer and as of today, I’ll be working in our offices in The Maltings on both of them. It’s a great pleasure to have our own permanent space to work in. It’s an even greater pleasure to still be making these plays with Devious Theatre.

We’ve got a production meeting at 11am. Better go. There will be cake.

That pretty much sums up the trailer for the new Vultures episode The Lost Lunch Of Niall Tennyson.

Here, Niall Tennyson takes up one of the most popular and dangerously sociable internet phenomenons, planking.

Unfortunately, due to our participation on the Digital Comedy Lab over March and April, the new episode won’t be available for viewing at the end of April as planned (like, by the end of tonight). We will however have it ready to go next month (which starts tomorrow).

As the episode title alludes to, the storyline of the second episode in the new series does deal with some degree with Tennyson’s lunch getting lost. Yup, after the ex-boyfriend stalking of the first episode, we’re going high octane with the storylines for this series!

In the mean time, you can do some Vultures subscribing here and some YouTube subscribing here! Also www.VulturesPI.com has plenty of information on the show!

It sets out the stall for our version of the story which is coming from an Irish perspective in 2012. A really bad crisis happens and it gets worse and worse and people have to flee the country and it doesn’t look too rosy for the ones who are left behind. Sound familiar, right? We’re doing dear ol’ Uncle George proud and going straight for the socio political themes that made his original movie so vital. It’s probably safe to say that the characters will swear loads and drink tea too.

The trailer also provides a look at Connie Walsh playing the part of beleaguered teen heroine Barbara. The most iconic line from the original movie gets an airing here with Stephen Colfer uttering ‘They’re coming to get you Barbara!’ He’ll be playing the part of Barbara’s brother Johnny in this production.

We’ve also launched Night Of The Living Dead.ie just for the show and all its general production chronicing so check that one out if you’re inclined to keep up with our zombie struggles.

Online feedback to the episode has been great so far and we’re really happy (and kind of relieved) with how well it’s gone down thus far. It definitely sets our stall out for the next few episodes in terms of story, tone, style and yes, length! Speaking of the new episodes, we’re back at our James Bond (or Kevin Smith if you like) tricks of announcing the title of the next episode at the end of this one. In this case it’s revealed to be The Lost Lunch Of Niall Tennyson.

Niall Tennyson, under the spotlight.

The deductive minds among you will see a pattern emerging with the titles. Four episodes, four detectives and yes, four different leads! That’s the plan. There will be a fifth… but it’s cliffhanging at the moment. We’ve got rehearsals lined up this weekend for the next of our two final shoots. Yes, we actually rehearse this show. Who’d a thunk it?

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Vultures on YouTube and also on iTunes. We’ve also given the website a bit of a spring cleaning too.

Photography by Ross Costigan. Yes, he was in the episode. Did you like his nice green coat?

We’ve just announced the date for the return of the Mycrofilms webcom Vultures.

Janine Drew Presents Where Have All The Good Dicks Gone? hits the net this Monday, March 19th (I made that title way more complicated that I needed to). It’s the first new Vultures episode since The Long Goodbye in 2009 and the first of what will be four incoming webisodes between now and June. We’re also lining up a new Christmas episode but we’ll see how everything else goes first.

Everything else being the various walls that we’ve flung Vultures shit at over the past few years, some of which have stuck. The feature film version of the show (which has the equally long but sleeker working title of The Dicks Who Came In From The Cold) has been shortlisted for the Digital Comedy Lab which will see 2 filmmaking teams (1 Ireland, 1 UK) get €50,000 to make a feature mockumentary. So we’re going to get really competitive about that because we want to win. The plot of the movie is the same storyline that we had been saving for a potential follow up series and we’re confident it’s suitably cinematic. The quartet of new webisodes bridge the gap between the lives of the detectives in the first series and our ultra exciting second series story (none of which are too indebted to each other).

Speaking of mockumentaries, the new episode is the first Vultures one to be shot in that format. It follows Janine Drew’s attempts to make a documentary about unemployed detectives in her hometown for her first year college project. The results are tragic and comical. Yes, we’re going for a general tragicomic tone on this one. We hope you enjoy it when it hits.

If you don’t, it’s entirely my fault as it’s the first Vultures episode I’ve written and directed entirely on my own. Yup, I’m finally off the stabilisers. I could probably blame Alan Slattery, my trusty producer…. and I guess in some way, I will.

All the main cast are returning as well as other familiar faces and some new ones, like this ginger rogue Ronnie Drew, younger brother of Janine Drew. He’s played by Colin O’Brien who I had the great pleasure of working with last year on Devious Theatre’s production Shifting. He’s a fantastic young actor and also a total scumbag, which helps.

The episode will go online at some undetermined time Monday and can be viewed on VulturesPI.com, YouTube or if you’ve subscribed on iTunes you’ll get it there. Give it a look, spread, support and share, it’s all very much appreciated.

Photos by Ross Costigan… who may or may not be in the episode….

Here’s a look at the new Vultures logo.

As created by Paddy Dunne, our wonderfully talented designer/co-creator/Pat Cairo, it’s a new logo for our friendly local detectives. We were just going to replace the dog with Janine but we decided to go for something more dynamic and vaguely SS. Deprendri Mysterium Dickius is the new Python-esque unpronounceable V.P.I. motto which will be wheeled out at choice moments in the new ones.

We’re editing Where Have All The Good Dicks gone at the moment which will hit interwebs next month. At the same time we’re prepping for the next 5 webisodes, which will be following throughout the year.

You can subscribe to all audio visual detective yarns over at the YouTube channel and all other info is on VulturesPI.com

I had a productive weekend working with Gavin Kostick of Fishamble on a new play I wrote as part of their New Play Clinic.

The play in question is called Punctured which I started writing in 2010. I applied for the New Play Clinic last year and was very excited when the play got accepted. Fishamble are at the forefront of new writing in Ireland for the past 20 plus years so it was a pretty big deal for me to have them help develop something I’d written.

Punctured is a Dublin set urban western about a farmer from down south who rides into the city looking for answers about his daughter’s death. It’s a little bit of a detective story, a little bit of a fish out of water black comedy and a lot of a violent, redemption based western. With the help of Gavin Kostick, I was really able to focus on the nitty gritty of the story and I’m looking forward to getting back into the next draft. It was great to hear actors breathing life into the characters and voice what had previously just been in my head. For the clinic we assembled the cast of Brendan Corcoran, Gus McDonagh, Ken McGuire, Annette O’Shea and David Thompson. We also had lots of tea, biscuits and pain au chocolats. It was a good weekend.

The play has been developed under Devious Theatre and we’re hoping to stage it in 2013, if we can get the necessary funding together. So I’ve got fingers crossed on all fronts that sooner rather than later, I’ll have a finished script ready to saddle up and hit the trail.

My thanks to Gavin Kostick, Marketa Dowling and Jim Culleton of Fishamble for the opportunity and to all the actors for coming on board for the weekend.

Yup, it’s set in present day Ireland. Nope, it’s not a musical.

Also, there’s not much Gaeilge in there… but we’ve a few fluent speakers in the cast so we may well try something out. The title of this blog is me combining the title and being Irish into one absolutely non catchy sentence.

Those are the answers to the main questions we’ve been asked since we launched the play in The Watergate Theatre on Saturday night. People have been really positive about it and have asked many probing questions about how we’re going to pull off a show with such a big cast and the logistical problems of a bloody, undead siege. We give that quiet, confident look that’s a good cover for the sheer terror you feel inside. Sheer terror aside we’re really excited about it and I think it’s going to be a great show.

Speaking of the sheer terror you feel inside, that’s what Night Of The Living Dead is all about. It’s been on the boil for Devious Theatre for a couple of years now. We had an eye on it as a modern Irish political allegory but always had that slight worry that if we did what is ostensibly a B movie in a modern Irish setting it would just seem kinda cheap and hokey (it still might). Then back in the year of 2009 we saw Conor McPherson’s version of The Birds, which showed us exactly how you nail a classic 1960′s horror in a modern Irish milieu. We were inspired. We were confident that we could make our Night Of The Living Dead just as relevant, tense, claustrophobic and bird free. Then last year during In The Future When All’s Well, we pulled the trigger on it and it went into active development around the time we finished Scratcher.

It ticks a lot of boxes for us. It’s got the arse on seats name value that’s really important right now and also allows us to explore relevant Irish themes that interest us. With this play we’re focusing on emigration, the destruction of the family unit and fear of government with a tag line that’s straight from the mouth of our beloved leader (“You are not responsible for this crisis”). Like the original, it tells the story of a group of strangers holed up in a house after the dead begin to reanimate and attack the living. In our version, it’s set on a ghost estate in the south-east of Ireland in 2012 as opposed to a rural farmhouse in 1968 Pennsylvania. We’re confident it’s going to be fresh, relevant and still be faithful to what George Romero and his collaborators cooked up in the late 60′s.

Of course, the zombie genre has been absolutely done to death (no pun intended) but in Ireland and on the stage, we’re confident that there’s a lot of fresh meat (pun intended, yeah. Sorry). I’ve been writing it with Connie Walsh since mid 2011 and I think we’ve done a nice take on the Romero story so far. Connie’s an extremely talented writer not to mention actess, as anyone who saw her in Shifting would attest. She’ll also be playing the part of Babs, of “They’re coming to get you Barbara” fame, for her trouble. You can read about our take on the character here. Here she is in Babs mode for the first of what will be a series of character based posters from Ross Costigan and Ken McGuire. Plenty more where that came from in the next few months.

The play will be running from July 24th – 28th in The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny. We’re mad to take it to other counties but unless people give us money or physically harass their local theatres, we’re starting off simple with it for now. I’ll be posting about it here, but for most content, keep an eye on devioustheatre.com

We’ve released the first promo for the new Vultures webisode Where Have All The Good Dicks Gone?

In it, the former detectives of V.P.I. talk about their own personal favourite fictional detectives. We’re oh so meta. It should provide a nice taster of the upcoming yarn.

The episode, which as we revealed in the trailer is a documentary made by Janine Drew, is going to be released next month. Keep an eye out for it. I’ll probably post up more stuff about it in the meantime. Details and info and such like.

You can subscribe to Vultures on iTunes and also on our YouTube channel.