november Tag Archive

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November 15, 2012 • devious theatre

De Tempst

Or The Tempest if you like proper spelling and grammar. I’m very lucky and delighted to be making another directing contribution to this years TEXT | Messages in Project Arts Centre. This time I’ll be directing, yup, The Tempest.

TEXT | Messages is a brilliant project that gives directors a chance to take 160 lines of Shakespeare and do whatever you want with them. But the rub is, the lines must be consecutive and there’s no editing. So you need to roll up your sleeves and get nice and inventive! I’ve joined up with my muckers Stephen Colfer, John Doran and Eddie Murphy to come up with the goods on this one and we’ve put together a really nice tale of two drunken bog monsters who get kicked out of a Dublin nightclub and end up getting involved with a scheming native homeless man. So same text, different story. From our Dreamstuff days (which took its name from The Tempest funnily enough) to Devious Theatre’s Shakespeare In Bits battle rap in 2009, myself and the fellows have done an awful lot of Shakespeare tinkering over the years so it’s great to work with them on something new. Like last years version of Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we’ve come up with a similarly twisted take on The Tempest. And of course, we’re playing it for laughs.

We are only on for one night only… TONIGHT! So if you fancy it, you’ll get three ‘messages’ for the princely sum of €5. There are also two other nights, as lovingly curated and produced by Aoife Spillane-Hinks, Conor Hanratty and Megan Riordan so plenty of choice all round! Kick off is 8.15pm in Project Arts Centre and you can get more booking details here!

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November 12, 2012 • Uncategorized

A Bucket Full Of Fire

For the next two weeks I’ll be using my acting on the newest production from Dublin based theatre company Sheer Tantrum. The play is A Bucket Full Of Fire by Darren Donohue and this will mark its debut production.

The play has been summarised as thus:

As dawn approaches six people gather around a well and a bed. They amuse, torment and confront each other but only the strongest among them will survive the night…

I play one of the six people, Blic. And I am mostly gathered around the bed. Which is highly relaxing at times. Blic is a blast of a part and I’ve been having a whole lot of fun playing with it over the last few weeks of rehearsals. This is the second of Darren’s shows that I have worked on after last appearing in Voices In The Rubble which Sheer Tantrum produced last year. He’s an amazing writer and his style is so distinct and original that I’m certain it’s going to be produced for many a year to come.

I’m working under the direction of the brilliant Vincent A O’Reilly and a great cast consisting of Simon Toal, Sinead O’Brien, Paul Travers, Vincent Browning, Grace Barry and Sarah Flanagan.

So if you’re looking to see an exciting new Irish company perform some great new writing, then Smock Alley this week is the place to be! It runs from tonight November 12th until Saturday November 24th at 8pm nightly. You can book your tickets at Smock Alley or else right here!

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November 27, 2011 • Theatre

Voices In The Rubble

What’s currently keeping me busy is this new production from Sheer Tantrum which is enjoying a 2 week run up in the Pearse Centre in Dublin City.

The Dublin based company are performing two absurd one act plays, the first of which is The Applicant which is written and directed by Vincent A. O’Reilly. I saw it for the first time last night (normally I’m quaffing Red Bull backstage… or Blue Bear, depending on finances) and it’s absolutely fantastic. A really sharp, pointed, funny, satirical piece of theatre with some brilliant performances. It was my first opportunity to see how the two plays matched up. Really well it turns out.

I’m working on Voices In The Rubble which is written and directed by Darren Donohue. I’m in a cast which also includes Frank Conlon, Amy Dunne and David Thompson. That’s the four of us up above there. Fun fact: That picture in no way relates to anything that happens in the play. I don’t have a clue what we were doing there… but we look into it.

It’s another really fast paced, sharp piece of absurd theatre which revolves around 40 years of marriage being condensed into 40 minutes. Somebody recently asked me what it was like and I described it as ‘I Love Lucy directed by David Lynch’. I think that sums it up. We previously performed it in Kilkenny back in September and it’s been great to take it up to Dublin for a spin.

The previews and first two performances have come and gone and now we’ve got one more week left in the Pearse Centre (which is a really lovely new performance space right in the centre of Dublin). You can book tickets online at entertainment.ie or else get them on the door. It runs until this Friday December 2nd and kick off is at 7.30pm nightly.

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