Blogs

 
 

Director's Diary: Una McKevitt

Una McKevitt, a Dublin-based theatre practitioner, describes her documentary theatre craft and the background to her latest work, The Big Deal, which opens at Kilkenny Arts Festival this week: On Thursday August 5th, actors Una Kavanagh and Shani Williams did a run through of our new show The Big...

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The Festival in figures

The Festival in figures

The programme for the 2011 Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival can be overwhelming at first glance. So how can you best parse the magnitude of this year’s offerings, keep score of how Ireland is engaging with the world, identify the brochure's most frequently used superlatives and appreciate just...

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Graphic Tensions: What Posters Say About Plays

For many people, a poster or flyer will be their first point of contact with a theatre production. In principle, these materials should carry basic information regarding who, what, where, and when; but also communicate something about the thrust of the performance itself: its directorial vision, its...

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The Queen's English, what we speak

The Queen's English, what we speak

It seems a shame that Queen Elizabeth II should make her first, historic visit to the Republic of Ireland – an occasion that inevitably summons up the tension, reconciliation and interdependence between two neighbouring nations – and for her not to take in a single theatre production. True,...

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‘The West Awakes’: Encouraging Conversation in West Belfast

‘The West Awakes’: Encouraging Conversation in West Belfast

Sitting in Taxi Trax, the West Belfast taxi depot, waiting for the performance of The West Awakes to begin, my eyes are drawn to an impressive mural splattered on the back wall of the building. It’s an image of the city, or rather the west side of the city, encompassing the Shankhill and Falls...

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A Portrait of the Artist as a young Entrepreneur? I wouldn't bank on it

A Portrait of the Artist as a young Entrepreneur? I wouldn't bank on it

Near the end of David McWilliams’s lecture, Outsiders, at the Peacock Theatre, the media-savvy economist declares that James Joyce was an entrepreneur. It is delivered as something of a coup de grâce in his take on the recession and how best to get out of it. McWilliams jokes that Joyce’s...

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Documentary theatre: beyond information

Documentary theatre: beyond information

While documentary theatre is typically concerned with staging events that have actually happened, it usually seeks to mediate those events rather than to re-present them. In other words, the performance-as-document acts as a conduit through which a creative construction of reality is presented to an...

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Let's stand firm and hold our nerve

Let's stand firm and hold our nerve

It has been a disconcerting couple of weeks for everyone in the industry, as theatre makers have grappled with and digested the recent funding decisions made in Merrion Square. Some would say the cuts made were presented like a virtual bombshell through the post, and others would argue that we had...

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What do the Irish Theatre Awards nominations tell us?

What do the Irish Theatre Awards nominations tell us?

The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards always give rise to surprises – that, after all, is part of the fun. But it’s probably fair to say that this year’s shortlist is in some ways unprecedented, due to the surprisingly low number of nominations for the Abbey and the Gate. This represents...

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The Theatre Machine lures me back

The Theatre Machine lures me back

I returned to The Theatre Machine at Project on Saturday to see if our chemistry had improved. Although the last three shows were a bit more polished than those staged on the opening night, there was plenty of room for improvement when it came to the art of seduction. Oh! How Very Ordinary is built...

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