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.
