shakespeare in the house Category

1147

June 24, 2009 • devious theatre, rothe house, shakespeare in the house, The Life Of Brian Monty Python Dreamstuff Youth Theatre, yifm

Shakespeare Is Only In Bits

As part of this weekends Shakespeare In The House festival which is taking place in Rothe House, Kilkenny, us folks at Devious Theatre are performing a 45 minute slot entitled Shakespeare In Bits.

With Stags and Hens being full tilt ahead, it wasn’t possible for us to stage a full on Shakespeare production so we decided to do something to complement the fine work that will no doubt be done by the good thespians of Dreamstuff Youth Theatre.

The production is made up of various Shakespeare related sketches (Shakespeare’s editor and a 16th centruy version of the Bale rant with William Shakespeare walking in front of the ‘cantelbras’), some Shakespeare based works (The Reduced Shakespeare Company, Rosencrantz and Guidenstern Are Dead), some devised Shakespeare pieces, some monologues and a whole lot of nice little bridging devices between. It’s going to be a crash course in Shakespeare for the ADD generation.

With a troupe of 7 actors (all well versed in the playing of Shakespeare), this should be a fast paced mish mash of a mixed bag of Shakespeare related hi-jinks. Apart from myself, the actors involved are Scott Barriscale, Stephen Colfer, John Doran, Ken McGuire, Kevin Mooney and Niamh Moroney.

The festival takes place all over the weekend and there’s plenty going on throughout the rather splendid setting of Rothe House for two days. And it’s all entirely free! So do pop along. Bring rotten vegetables if needs be. Just save them for the kids.

We’re on at 3pm on Saturday and 2pm on Sunday.

Continue reading

1239

May 28, 2009 • 1978, devious theatre, liverpool, shakespeare in the house, stags and hens, willy russell

Stags and Hens

At the weekend we launched the 2009 programme for The Devious Theatre Company with a wee session and meet and greet in The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny. Kevin Mooney made the announcement that our main production for this year would be a production of Willy Russell’s STAGS AND HENS, which he will be taking the directing reins on.

This is one that I’m really amped up about doing. The play is just an actor’s playground and Kev has put together a really diverse ensemble cast of which I am delighted to be part of.

The play is a very sharp comedy about the social mores of a bunch of working class Liverpudlians in 1978. It all takes place in the ladies and gents bathrooms of a dingy nightclub where both the stag and hen parties of the same wedding have ended up. And from there, things take some very funny, dark and emotional twists and turns along the way. It’s a fantastically well written play, definitely the best we’ve worked on so far. Over the years it has been marred a little by successions of dodgy student productions which tend to play up the booze and debauchery instead of the story and character but we’re intent on keeping the story to the fore. And it’s a damn good story.

Rehearsals started this week. Lots of acting rust to shake off. And the Liverpool accent is a bastard. I sound like one of the Chuckle Brothers at the moment.

All updates on Stags and Hens are going to be hitting the Devious Theatre website as we have ’em.

Also at the launch we announced our involvement in Shakespeare In The House and nicely asked people for funding by launching our ‘Friends Of’ program.

More of which can be found over on the website. I’ll write further about Shakespeare In The House as our programme comes together for it.

Continue reading