stage play Tag Archive

1219

July 12, 2012 • devious theatre

They Won’t Stay Dead

The final character poster for Devious Theatre’s upcoming zombie smackdown Night Of The Living Dead went online last week. Now the collection is complete! I would hope the cool, youngsters of today will flock around town trying to collect the entire set, Panini sticker collection style. But then I realise that we’ll have wasted a lot of money and advertising. 🙁

This poster introduces Ben, the main character of both the play and original film, played by Eddie Murphy. You may notice that he’s not black but Romero said that wasn’t an issue in the original and we believe him so we’re going to stick to our guns here by casting white boy Eddie. Our version of the character originally played by Duane Jones is ironically a racist, sexist, foul mouthed, pissed off unemployed construction worker. Which in itself was a really good excuse to give him some handy implements to kill people with.

The show is now 2 weeks off opening and the pressure (and hype and expectancy) is really starting to amp up. Last night we went from one physically intense sequence to another so I guess my main concern at this stage is keeping the actors alive for long enough to do the play. Fingers crossed.

Night Of The Living Dead runs from July 24th – 28th in The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny. Check out www.nightofthelivingdead.ie for more details.

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1389

May 26, 2012 • devious theatre

Sever The Head Or Destroy The Brain

It’s all kicking off for Devious Theatre’s production of Night Of The Living Dead.

After launching the production with a character poster for Babs back in February, we’ve just released the second poster. This time it’s Tom and Judy, the teenage lovebirds of the original movie. Played by Kevin Mooney and Aoibhín Murphy, our version of the characters have a lot more attitude. They’re also very Irish. Which explains the hurl. It was very hard to write an Irish zombie movie and not use a hurl as a weapon. It’s also a pretty handy way to sever a head or destroy a brain, which as the movie tells us, is the only way to kill one of the living dead. So yeah, there’s going to be a lot of that going on.

There’s also going to be a lot more character posters. Four more to be exact. Yup, we always do overkill on the posters but if there’s anything this play requires, it’s overkill. The concept for this poster was based on imagery from Badlands, Heathers and Natural Born Killers. Essentially, iconic movies about young attractive killer couples. It definitely makes an eye grabbing poster. I just hope we’ll be allowed put it up in public!

Night Of The Living Dead runs from July 24th – 28th in The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny.

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1110

February 21, 2012 • devious theatre

Punctured

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.

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