ANU Productions, 'Thirteen': Where Do We Stand Now?

Photo: Patrick Redmond

As I mentioned before, I am reviewing Thirteen in two parts. Part one is here.

Here are my thoughts on the remaining chapters (Soup, Save The Kiddies, Inquiry, Protest Part 2, Incitement, Bargaining, and Assembly) and on the event as a whole.

ANU Productions, 'Thirteen': Why Should We Fight?

Photo: Patrick Redmond

It's about time I wrote something about Thirteen - the thirteen-part theatrical epic by ANU Productions that is using the city as as a mise en scene to bring the Lockout of 100 years ago into focus.

I will be reviewing the event in two parts, with this post discussing the first eight chapters: Citizen X, Resilience, Porous, Suasion, Constituent(s), Backwash, Speakers Corner and Protest: Part 1.

Company SJ and Barabbas, 'Rough For Theatre One' & 'Act Without Words II': In Dublin's Fair City

Meet at the Screen Cinema, Dublin Fringe Festival

Sept 14-17

My review of Rough For Theatre One and Act Without Words II by Samuel Beckett coming up just as soon as I scratch an old jangle to the four winds ...

Dead Centre, 'LIPPY': Heaven Faced

LIPPY by DEAD CENTRE is perhaps the most polarising and extraordinary production to premiere at the Dublin Fringe Festival, and (at the last minute) I was asked to review it for Irish Theatre Magazine, the result of which you can find here: http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Lippy

LIPPY is a performance about the suicide pact of four woman in a house in Leixlip, Co. Kildare thirteen years ago.

Writing the review didn't fully get it out of my system. I mean Christ! - it's one of the riskiest things I've seen, and its use of form and content could have backfired horrendously.

Where You Can Go to Find Some of My Other Fringe Reviews

For my reviews of The Secret Art of Murder and a few other shows you'll have to go somewhere else.

Some of my reviews over the next few days will be published in Irish Theatre Magazine. 

So for my reviews of Decision Problem [Good Time for Questions], GRINDR / a love story, The Last Post, and The Secret Art of Murder you'll have to click here.

Update: Instead of browsing the ITM reviewing section, here are links to the individual reviews.

Decision Problem [Good Time for Questions]: http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Decision-Problem--Good-Tim

GRINDR / a love story: http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--GRINDR-a-love-story

The Last Post: http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Last-Post

The Secret Art of Murder: http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Secret-Art-of-Murder

And, a last minute addition to the mix, my review of LIPPY: http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Lippy

What did everybody else think of these productions? Add your thoughts in the comments section below.

Gúna Nua and Ramblinman, 'PONDLING': Build Me Up Buttercup

Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin Fringe Festival
Sept 9-13


My review of PONDLING by Genevieve Hulme-Beaman coming up just as soon as a brunette bolt of lightning shatters my hopes and dreams ...

Collapsing Horse, 'Distance from the Event': Days of Future Past

Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin Fringe Festival
Sept 7-9, 11-15, 17-21

My review of Distance from the Event by Eoghan Quinn coming up just as soon as I wear a coat that's exciting ...

PaperDolls, 'Bunk': Bed, Wrath and Beyond

Project Arts Centre, Dublin Fringe Festival
Sept 8-14

A quick review of Bunk after the jump ...

HotForTheatre, 'Break': Praying For Bells

Project Arts Centre, Dublin Fringe Festival
Sept 7-8, 10-15, 17-21

My review of Break by Amy Conroy coming up just as soon as I take out my notes to signal the first sign of defense ...

In the Beginning Was the Spoken Word

Promotional Art for the PETTYCASH production GRINDR / a love story by Oisín McKenna.

"As a gay today you don't know who else is gay oftentimes. And so it's hard to figure it out, so I've always kind of wanted a way to find other guys".

This quote is from an interview with Joel Simkhai, co-founder of the smartphone application GRINDR, who seemingly set out to simplify the means of interaction in the gay community. Spoken word artist Oisín McKenna explores how the invention has made communication between individuals worse rather than better.

Described as a "geosocial" networking device, this application lists other users in order of their proximity. McKenna describes his own experience with it: "I found myself in a position where I was forming these intense attachments to people over the internet based on information on their profiles, thinking that that was the normal way to conduct myself. I eventually thought: this is stupid".

Looking at People Leave

Promotional art for ChalkTalk Theatre Company's production of The King's Feet by Louise Melinn and Máirín O'Grady. 

"Live in hope. You have chosen heat.

The desert. The King's feet".

Such is one curious quote from the upcoming new play by Louise Melinn and Máirín O'Grady: The King's  Feet. I meet the playwrights to discuss this dark comedy/dystopian fairytale. 

"The Irish emigrants moving to Australia - that was the narrative we were looking at", says O'Grady.

Not a "Composer" Composer but a Composer for Theatre

Promotional art for Animus by Denis Clohessy and Noelia Ruiz

You might remember Denis Clohessy's musical score strutting with the flamenco moving Tino McGoldrig in Silent or chasing Farrell Blinks through a train in Man of Valour. Now his compositions take centre stage in the new play Animus directed by Noelia Ruiz for Dublin Fringe Festival.

"There was a really strong impetus from Denis to create music that is not just ambience", says Ruiz. "To create a piece where the music is the main dramatic drive".

Clohessy is quick to credit the talents of the actors as well, who on this occasion are Camille Lucy Ross, Jim Roche and Anna Shiels-McNamee. There is also an impressive design team with Jack Phelan and Aedín Cosgrove. I ask him about the story of the play.

"It's a Murder Revenge story so there's an event, either accidental or on purpose, at the beginning of the show and the truth of it will be revealed through an investigation. It's kind of like a detective story". To go into it further, the play's press release reveals that a man is left dealing with the consequences of a tragic accident while two sisters seek their own version of justice. But it isn't as straight forward as that.

Man as Some Kind of Baffling Monster

Image of Dick Walsh's Some Baffling Monster from a work in progress performance

"Greek tragedy reveals Man as some kind of baffling monster", wrote philosopher Simon Critchley. It's one of several diverse references sourced from philosophers to screenwriters, Euripides to Paul Newman, that Dick Walsh mentions in our interview.

An Irish Times reviewer summed up their experience of his last play, a dangerman, as: "At one point in last night's show, I thought he might actually kill us". But while sitting in a café, Walsh kindly gets up from the table and asks the barista what flavour tea would best serve to unwind me from the stress of my day job. 

We then discuss his new play in the Dublin Fringe Festival: Some Baffling Monster. 

"I had an idea to re-look at the Greek play, where they discuss morals in a very overt way and characters have a very moral debate onstage". He goes on to describe how he adapted the plot of a Paul Newman movie, Hud, to an Irish scenario of a struggle between an old man and his son for the family farm. "I took this story as a set up for a moral debate: what makes a good man?"

In Beckett the Body is the Thing so Act Without Words

Promotional art for Company SJ and Barabbas's joint productions of Beckett's Act Without Words II and Rough for Theatre One

Samuel Beckett was the great painter of a landscape blasted and smoldering after the second World War. But does the effect of him translate from the shell-shocked spectators seeing Waiting for Godot and Endgame in the 1950s to contemporary audiences, or do the plays need to find a way to respond to the devastation of today?

If so, director Sarah Jane Scaife and performer Raymond Keane may have found a way to do just that, as they relocate two of Beckett's one-acts to the city streets at night as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival.

The mime play Act Without Words II (which comes in at just over two sheets of sheer stage directions) had already been produced by the duo in the early 1990s. Scaife was qualified with her sharp sensibility of Yeats and Beckett, and Keane had trained in the Marcel Marceau camp of French mime. Their collaboration then ended. "I dropped her", Keane jokes. The reality was that he was going on to co-found the Barabbas company while she was off to direct Beckett in every corner of the world.

Dublin Fringe Gets Locked Out but Who Else is in this Year's Festival?

Raymond Keane's physical stylings from his performance in clown may just make him the man for Samuel Beckett's Act Without Words II. Photo: F. Sakauchi

Dublin Fringe Festival has revealed the remainder of this year's programme after having already leaked the highlights last month (my write-up on that here)

We learn more about ANU Productions' city-wide installation of the Lockout that seeks to immerse audiences in the events of 100 years ago. Thirteen sees 13 interdisciplinary art events taking place across 13 days at various Luas stops, the conserved tenement at No. 14 Henrietta St (which was the site of Thirteen's prelude: Living the Lockout), Dublin Castle, Liberty Hall, Collins Barracks and other places. All events are free-ticketed.

The offering from the Spirit of the Fringe-commissioned Paperdolls is called Bunk - an aerial circus performance about the threshold between internal and external worlds, in other words: the bed.

It's very exciting to hear of the collaboration between avant garde director Sarah Jane Scaife and Raymond Keane on Samuel Beckett's Rough for Theatre One and Act Without Words II. I've held a suspicion that Keane with his physical stylings drawn from his performance in clown could be a formidable performer of Beckett's work, considering the playwright's own influences from Charlie Chaplin.

(Also, Keane's Barabbas colleague, the sweeping Bryan Burroughs, will be tearing up Beowulf in Bewleys Cafe Theatre, and Ruth Lehane performs in red nose in Ruth 66, which is about a clown's travels across America involving sex, drugs, the usual.)

On the creative winds of Human Child earlier this year, Collapsing Horse present their new play, this time for adult audiences: Distance From the Event by Eoghan Quinn. Starring John Cronin, this Irish noir/Sci fi hybrid follows an investigator looking to solve the disappearance of a human colony on a distant planet. Epic in scale, as is to be expected from this energetic company.

Plays also seem to be back at the Fringe. Genevieve Hulme-Beaman has been fantastic in everything I've seen her in, and her play, Pondling, about a schoolgirl searching for love might be a promising debut. The charming (and talented as hell) Janet Moran performs in Swing, a play about dance and nerves, written by Moran, Steve Blout and Gavin Kostick. Louise Melinn and Máirín O'Grady co-write The King's Feet, an absurdist play directed by Aoife Spillane-Hinks. Hopefully the attributes of these two fine writers - to present what is instantly recognisable from Irish life today - won't be lost in the exercising of the absurdist form. And John Morton's War of Attrition for Devious Theatre seems to be a vibrant tale about three young Irish people living in Dublin and the terror they wreak on each others lives.

Dick Walsh had audiences flinching in last year's a dangerman, and now he returns with Some Baffling Monster - a tale of a father and son's struggle for a farm presented in a form "monstrously Brechtian, maybe better than Brecht". Sounds like a tall order but don't be fooled: Walsh seems well voiced in contemporary performance styles.

A few of the performances which we glimpsed at THE THEATRE MACHINE TURNS YOU ON VOL. III are also in here, many of which share a theme of womanhood such as Sorcha Kenny's DOLLS, Louise Lewis's The Churching of Happy Cullen and Meadhbh Haicéid's MADONNA.

Oisín McKenna's spoken word performance Writer/Performer/Salesman (A New Play About Retail) was one of the highlights of THE THEATRE MACHINE, and now he presents GRINDR / A Love Story - a piece about gay relationships in the digital age.

Also: the street performers of Macnas will be transforming Meeting House Square into the magical world of Chaosmos; composer for theatre Denis Clohessy presents the music-led revenge tale Animus (which, if as good as his usual compositions, could be marvelous); Bush Moukarzel presents a curious and extraordinary-sounding performance called LIPPY inspired by a real life suicide pact in Kildare between an aunt and her three nieces; and Brian Flemming makes a welcome return with more tales of the Irish in Africa in Have Yis No Homes to Go To.


What will you be seeing in Dublin Fringe Festival 2013?

Big Guns Called In for Festival Director's Last Fringe

Promotional art for HotForTheatre's upcoming new show Break

The highlights of the 2013 Dublin Fringe Festival (Sept 7-22) have been announced, which, of course, is the last festival overseen by artistic director Róise Goan.

Headlining international acts include glam singer/theatre artist Taylor Mac and an abridged version of his upcoming 24-hour project where he performs a pop classic from each decade in the twentieth century. Scottish-born Nic Green traces her national and personal lineage in the dance and music performance Fatherland.

The Gathering strand of the festival brings home-gig to Irish comedian Aisling Bea in a double bill with Dead Cat Bounce's James Walmsley, as well as a headliner to Maeve Higgins and her new show about her "break-up with Dublin" and the abandonment issues that arise from her move to London.

WillFredd's Sophie Motley and Sarah Jane Shiels are also at hand, collaborating with renowned musicians Caoimhin Ó Raghallaigh and Nic Gareiss in a performance about the role of mice in "traditional music, science, and in our daily lives". Meanwhile, fantastic to see great faith placed in the Galway-based Blue Teapot Theatre Company, whose acclaimed production of Christian O'Reilly's Sanctuary seems to be growing into a national hit.

In Irish theatre, the spotlights are appropriately shone on the two biggest success stories born from Goan's direction of the festival over the past five years.

Louise Lowe was already making strides with her fantastic site-responsive work with ANU Productions, but World's End Lane - the first installment of the nearing complete Monto quadrilogy - in the 2010 festival was a game changer. The success meant that the company migrated to a bigger platform in the Dublin Theatre Festival with Laundry (2011) and The Boys of Foley Street (2012). They return to the Fringe with Thirteen, where the company turn their theatrical historicity back one hundred years to the events of the 1913 Lockout with "a series of thirteen interconnecting works combining performance, installation and digital technology allowing audiences to immerse themselves in the tumultuous events of 1913 as they unfold in present day Dublin"

The 2010 festival also marked the debut of playwright/performer Amy Conroy with superstar hit I ♥Alice ♥I, which, along with follow-up The Eternal Rising of the Sun (2011), has had enough fire to fuel constant touring both at home and abroad. Her company, HotForTheatre, has become an exemplary touring company in Ireland, seeming to hit every venue in the country. Conroy has also gone on to become a treasured and insightful literary voice, writing about courageous souls in modern Ireland. Truly exciting, then, is her return this September in greater company than before with Break - a performance interrogating the public education system and the priorities of the institution that precede those of the individuals.

The full details of this year's programme will be released August 14. However, below is a list of other productions we know going to Fringe because their Fundit campaigns say so ...

• Rise Productions, The Games People Play - The creative team behind the highly successful Fight Night are back, this time with a modern retelling of Tír ná nÓg where the mythical paradise relocates to Drumcondra. Gavin Kostick back on script, Bryan Burroughs back on direction, starring the cunning Aonghus Óg McAnally. 

• Louise Lewis and Simon Manahan, The Churching of Happy Cullen - Also marking the centenary of the Lockout, this physical theatre performance about a mother's rite of passage though a tumultuous period in Ireland's social history already received a promising work-in-progress showing at THE THEATRE MACHINE TURNS YOU ON VOL.3. Lewis always gives a striking performance.

• Denis Clohessy, Animus - Having lent majestic music scores to The Corn Exchange and Rough Magic, composer Denis Clohessy's new project is a "music-driven revenge tale" and is propped up by an exciting design team including Aedín Cosgrove and Jack Phelan, and stars the charming Lucy Camille Ross. 

• X & CO, KITSCHCOCK - Anthony Keigher's pop star persona, 'Xnthony', becomes obsessed with stardom in this exploration of the anxieties and insecurities in a "world that continues to blur the line between public and private identities". 

• John Rogers, Decision Problem [Good Time for Questions] - Rogers's piece of science fiction theatre "charts the origin, rapid rise and possible future of computers", shining light on humanity's place in an increasingly digital universe. 

• 50% Male Experimental Theatre, FIGURE IT OUT - Male may be in the title but this new performance is about the complexities of female identity, with use of dance, live music and film.

Raymond Scannell, 'DEEP': Like the Legend of the Phoenix

Half Moon Theatre, Cork Midsummer Festival

Jun 21-30

My review of Raymond Scannell's new play DEEP coming up just as soon as I get laughed at by a Depeche Modist ...