No sign of the 7 year itch though. This week we’ve been getting excited about new works in progress from John Doran & Kevin Mooney, Adrian Kavanagh and John Kennedy. Plus we’ve locked down the team for our next play this year. The future is still bright. We can see it all so clearly now… just like this:

Here are 7 (mostly) new pictures which show us (mostly) growing up over the past 7 years:

2006 – Baton Rouge

2007 – The Master Of Green Screen

2008 – Jailbait

2009 – Sharp Dressed Men

2010 – That’s Not David Thompson

2011 – The Guardian Angel Of Set Building

2012 – Living In The New HQ

2013 – Being Devious

Thanks to everyone who supports and still asks us what we’re doing next.

This is the first video we’ve released from the romantic semi musical comedy and it shows off one of the many song and/or dance interludes from the play. This one, from the 2011 production, is a homage to the ‘All I Do Is Dream Of You’ sequence from Singing In The Rain with nowhere near the amount of co-ordination of Debbie Reynolds and her chums. Have a look!

Smitten was produced as part of our In The Future When All’s Well residency in Kilkenny Arts Office in 2011. It was directed by Angela Barrett and John Morton with choreography from Gemma Grant.

Smitten first opened in Cork on June 16th 2011 at Solstice as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival. It then marked the conclusion of Devious Theatre’s Kilkenny Arts Office residency when it played No. 76 John Street from June 26th — July 2nd.

At this stage, we’ve near exhausted the archive of material from last years Irish stage premiere of Night Of The Living Dead but there’s one more piece that still hasn’t been exhumed.

We had a camera at production meetings, rehearsals, poster shoots and for the kick off of production too. It’s all resulted in Playing Dead, a behind the scenes featurette on the show with contributions from some of our cast and crew and a look at all the hard, bloody graft that went into the first ever Irish production of Romero’s classic horror. We’ve already released a short video of the show itself but this should give a good indication of the mess that went on behind the scenes. Enjoy!

Thanks to Alan Slattery and Darragh Byrne for shooting this and to Event Media for putting it together. For more on our production of Night Of The Living Dead, check out NightOfTheLivingDead.ie

Kilkenny Youth Theatre have a very exciting production lined up for this month, especially if you’re a film noir fan or a general aficionado of booze, broads, bullets and brawls. And we are. So we’re going. And we think you should too.

Their main production for 2013 is a new piece of theatre entitled KoHL, devised by Droichead Youth Theatre, written by Sharon Cromwell. It is part of NAYD’s New Stage script programme which this year also includes Don’t Shoot The Messenger, written by our own John Morton and devised with Kilkenny Youth Theatre. We saw a preview version of the play during the New Stage launch in Axis, Ballymun last December and even at that point the cast had nailed the style of a classic noir with lashings of humour and mystery to boot. It made us damn jealous that we never got to play with this type of material in our youth theatre days. Damn jealous. So yes, we already know it’s good. Damn good.

The synopsis for KoHL is thus:

Prohibition is in full swing – booze, broads, bullets and brawls. Max Cole is looking for a case, Mia Swan is looking for her sister, their paths cross and we enter the underbelly of Prohibition New York. KYT’s production will celebrate all that is Film Noir: the femme fatale, the private eye, the newshound, the gangsters and the molls. Throw in the spirits of a few dead dancers and you have a play that sizzles with power, melodrama and ‘a whole heap o’ trouble’.

The cast includes some of Kilkenny’s best and brightest upcoming thesps. The aforementioned Mia Swan is played by Niamh Kennedy who made her debut with us playing the part of Karen Cooper in last years Night Of The Living Dead. It also features Eleanor Walsh who worked on our production of Shifting as assistant director. And there’s a whole other bunch of talented young actors who we will also potentially steal in the coming years. These include: Caoimhe Brennan, Jean O’Driscoll, Eimear Walsh, Gemma Long, Kevin Brennan, Brónagh Kennedy, Sarah Kent, Mary Whitty, Jack Eustace, Orla McGovern, Niamh Cusack, Éanna Prendergast-Doyle, Shaun Meighan and Robert Galster. The show is directed by Anna Galligan who did another amazing job last year with KYT’s fantastic production of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. So please, get your tickets for this one. It’s going to be a brilliant show and all eyes should be on the future of theatre in Kilkenny.

The show takes place in The Barn at Barnstorm Theatre Company, Church Lane, Kilkenny and tickets are priced €10 with an €8 concession. Bookings can be made at Barnstorm on 056 7751266 or by emailing anna@barnstorm.ie

A couple of Devious heads will be presenting a rehearsed reading of a work in progress tomorrow night at March Fringe Fuse. This is the third installment of Dublin Fringe Festival’s new monthly scratch night which is described as

‘a brand spanking new monthly scratch night where works of no longer than twenty minutes will be tested out in front of an audience in FRINGE LAB on the last Monday of every month.

And that’s it in a nutshell. Some of our team are looking forward to presenting an extract of a new play by John Morton entitled War Of Attrition. The play was initially developed by John and Angela Barrett during In The Future When All’s Well in 2011 and was presented as a rehearsed reading as part of Play On at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2012. The play itself is described as a ‘dark comedic thriller about a nasty game of one-upmanship that descends into a relentless war.’ Tomorrow night will see John Doran, John Morton, Roseanna Purcell and Niamh Moroney present part of the in development piece and we’re very excited about getting to test out some new material as part of Fringe Fuse. We attended February Fringe Fuse which was great fun and a really relaxed, informal way of seeing new theatre work in development and being able to have lovely chats about it.

Also presented on the night is ‘HOME inside the Body’ the current dance & theatre solo project by Csilla Nagy / Cipolla Collectiva LIVE ART and ‘The King’s Feet’ by
Louise Melinn and Máirín O Grady, a futuristic satire following the exile of a chiropodist and his hapless brother to the desert (We’ve seen some of it and it’s brilliant).

It all kicks off in Fringe Lab Studio 1 at 7pm tomorrow evening in Dublin and admission is €3 with a refreshment (mmm… beer). Capacity is limited to 40 so people are only let in on a first come first served basis. And you may get ready to take your shoes off too. We hope to see you there.

Especially you Gael Garcia Bernal.

Maria Murray as the nurse ghoul.

Connie Walsh arrives as Babs.

Alan Doyle as the unfortunate forecourt attendant.

Adrian Kavanagh as Big Jimmy McClellan

Darragh Byrne lurking as the graveyard ghoul.

Director of the show John Morton in cameo zombies mode.

The Cooper Family have breakfast.

For more of these (and many more) photos, check out the gory selection on Ross Costigan’s website here.

We screened a recording of the show publicly during last years Rockfall Festival at which time cast, crew and the general public got to take a look at our Irish stage premiere, the trailers and a behind the scenes featurette. And now we are delighted to finally be able to present two minutes of highlights from the Watergate Theatre performance of Night Of The Living Dead. Scored by Replete and featuring the in show radio contributions from Edwina Grace, Martin Bridgeman and Brendan Corcoran, this video shows what we did with our version of George A. Romero’s classic horror story.

For more on the show, check out www.nightofthelivingdead.ie

The Irish Times Theatre Awards took place on Sunday February 24th and the best of Irish theatre in the past 12 months and 52 weeks was highlighted, awarded and applauded.

We were manning the stations on our Twitter account, watching the action unfold in real time while we sat in our tuxes and ballgowns drinking cheap poitín. Twitter is at its best for award ceremonies so we got to join in on the conversation as it happened which was mostly a fine mix of jubilant and hilarious. We also kept an eye on Darragh Doyle’s maginificent Word Irish live blog (from which we’ve pilfered the results below) which kept us updated with results, commentary, tweets and images as it happened. The big winner was DruidMurphy which seemed to be everybody’s favourite thing from last year. It was definitely ours!

What was a real highlight for us though was the opening video that was produced by Rise Productions and presented by Aonghus Óg McAnally that paid tribute and parodied the well worn Just Sayin’ video whilst also paying tribute and parodying Irish theatre. It was funny, emotional and really packed a punch and it in itself is our main reason for writing this blog. The video has since been removed but if it remerges (and hopefully it will) pass it on to your theatrically inclined friends. It reminds us why we do what we do. The real winner last Sunday was Irish theatre.

Oh, and all the other winners were:

Judge’s Special Award won by Karl Shiels of Theatre Upstairs, Lanigan’s Bar, Dublin 1

Best Supporting Actor won by Aaron Monaghan – Conversations on a Homecoming, Druid Theatre Co.

Best Designer: Costume won by Peter O’Brien – The Talk of the Town & A Woman of No Importance

Best New Play won by The House Keeper – by Morna Regan for Rough Magic

Best Designer: Sound won by Little John Nee – Sparkplug, Absolut Fringe

Best Supporting Actress won by Marie Mullen – Conversations on a Homecoming, Druid Theatre Co.

Best Designer: Set won by Jamie Vartan – A Village Romeo and Juliet, Wexford Festival Opera

Best Director won by Annabelle Comyn – The House, The Abbey Theatre

Best Opera Production won by Pagliacci – Everyman Palace Theatre and Cork Operatic Society

Best Actor won by Declan Conlon – The House, The Abbey Theatre

Garry Hynes presents the Special Tribute award to Marie Mullen of  Druid Theatre Co.

Best Production won by DruidMurphy –  Druid Theatre Co.

One project that many a Deviant has worked on over the past few years is the webcom Vultures. Produced by our film making friends over at Mycrofilms, Vultures is a detective comedy serial which had its online finale just last month. It finished up after a 5 year run that delivered 2 series and 12 episodes and saw it regularly become one of the top Irish comedy video podcasts on iTunes as well as a participant on the inaugural Irish Digital Comedy Lab.

The show was created in 2007 by Paddy Dunne, John Morton and Alan Slattery and along with Ross Costigan and Peter McGann they have all steered the creative end of the show up until it wrapped this past December. And it’s not just our offices they have co-opted for rehearsals, oh no. A lot of the regular Devious troupe have taken up the quirky names and heightened characteristics of the Vultures cast of characters over two series. These include David Thompson (Dan McGrain), Suzanne O’Brien (Janine Drew), Seán Hackett (Niall Tennyson), Stephen Colfer (Tom Moriarty), Annette O’Shea (Jane Tennyson), Amy Dunne (Maeve Munroe), Ken McGuire (Hamish Lane), John Doran (Ned Savage), Kevin Mooney (Quint Quigley), Connie Walsh (Kitty McCool), Alex Christle (Irene O’Haire) Niamh Moroney (Sarah Black), Simone Kelly (Roxy Lee), Jack O’Leary (Johnny Curragh), Maria Murray (May O’Neil), Niamh Moyles (Kate Marple), Colin O’Brien (Ronnie Drew), Paul Young (Inspector Hugh Leeson) and the aforementioned Messrs. Dunne (Pat Cairo), Morton (Jim Vultour) and Costigan (Jack Street).

With so much of an overlap between our creative team and regular acting troupe, Vultures definitely bears a lot of the comic hallmarks of a lot of our productions not to mention the genre skewing style of a Devious show. So if you’re interested in the kind of work our team makes, maybe you might want to check out the show? Both series of the show ended with a double barreled finale, the last of which was Dan McGrain In The Nick Of Time and The Dicks Who Came In From The Cold which aired at Christmas.

You can find all information on the show at www.VulturesPI.com and subscribe to it on iTunes and YouTube. And we suggest you do so!

While Vultures is definitely done in its run as a web series, there may be some more interesting developments from the show later this year. Like all good detective fiction, Vultures may yet prove to be infinitely adaptable. Keep your magnifying glasses alert. Spaces might just need to be watched.

We don’t want to blow the proverbial load on our 2013 wares just yet but we can, to an extent, talk about what we’ve been brewing up. Not only that, but there’s a lot of stuff we’re looking forward to in 2013. With so much doom and gloom about arts cuts and the lack of funding doing the rounds, we want to put the sunny side out! Here’s what we guess, is a preview of what we’re excited about… utilising lucky number 13.

1. It’s been 4 years since we won a PPI radio award for The War Of The Worlds. It’s taken us a lot longer than we thought to follow that one up and get back to radio theatre. In the past 12 months, we’ve been quietly developing three works for radio and you should see at least one of them hit the air this year. Our own Ken McGuire is a now a full disc jockeying member of the KCLR96FM staff and is in a great position to put his grand radio theatre ambitions into action. We’re gonna be all up in your ears.

2. John Doran and Kevin Mooney have been working on something that we’re very excited about. Watch this space.

3. Last year was a great year for development and workshopping of scripts with two of John Morton’s new plays Punctured and War Of Attrition getting the development treatment from Fishamble Theatre Company and Dublin Theatre Festival respectively. The follow up to Scratcher is on its way…

4. Niamh Moroney of this parish has also been developing some very exciting new work and very enticing new projects. It’s great to have her back in Kilkenny after a long and productive run in Cork and it’s even greater to see the fountain of ideas that she has spewing forth.

5. John Kennedy is working on a new play. This is a very good thing. John has been an integral member of our company ever since we took him onboard as associate writer for In The Future When All’s Well in late 2010. Shifting and Phantasm were two huge successes and he is currently working on a new play for us. It won’t be produced this year but we’re definitely excited about seeing what ‘An Scribhneoir’ is going to deliver.

6. Development time! We had the luxury of development time and funds last year and we’re in the very lucky position to have more of it again this year. New year! New work! New play!

7. The theatre scene in Kilkenny is really starting to heat up again which is great for everyone involved in theatre in the city. Spark Productions have claimed their crown as the exciting new kids in the county (check out the crowds for Brownbread, below), KATS came back with serious style and packed out houses and Barn Owl Players delivered a series of great productions in 2012. We’ve also seen a preview of Kilkenny Youth Theatre’s new show and it’s going to rock socks. With a brand new piece from Barnstorm Theatre Company on the way and Watergate Productions expanding their programme, it looks like it’s going to be a great year for theatre in the motherland.

8. We’re terribly excited about what this year’s Kilkenny Arts Festival theatre programme is going to deliver in 2013. Every year it brings something different and this year should be no exception.

9. We were very lucky to participate in THE THEATRE MACHINE TURNS YOU ON: Vol 2 in 2011 with Scratcher and we’re even more excited to be watching the wares that are en route for this years festival which kicks off next week. We’ve already done a preview on it but we suggest you check out the programme and see what is going to be a fuck tonne of exciting theatre for very reasonable prices.

10. Festival season! We’re excited about the ever increasing amount of festivals kicking off in Kilkenny, not to mention our other favourites like Cork Midsummer Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival. Whichever way you break it down, there will be lots to see and do and many a reason to pillage your own bank accounts.

11. Hanging out in our gaff. 2012 was the first full year where we had the pleasure of taking advantage of having our own place. Being part of the This Is Not An Empty Space initiative from Kilkenny Arts Office has been an absolute gift and joy for us and we’re looking forward to another 12 months of meetings, rehearsals, workshops, brainstews, spitballs, mindfarts and all the times where people bring cakes and buns.

12. Progress. Every year since 2006 has seen us take bigger and bolder steps. This year is going to be no different. That’s something to get excited about.

13. You guys. We’re looking forward to meeting the audiences we haven’t met yet, the makers of theatre who we haven’t yet connected with and clapping our hands at the great shows we haven’t yet seen.

There’s a lot to be excited about this year. The future is brighter than you think.

2012 saw us produce the Irish stage premiere of Night Of The Living Dead. It was a big show. Definitely our biggest to date. So big we couldn’t move it anywhere to show it off. But the upswing of that was that the audiences came to us. Lots of them. It was our biggest houses for any of our productions so far. People went nuts for the gore, comedy, murder and mayhem. It also validated the sheer amount of work we put into the show. Not only that, but the faith of all the good people who helped us stage the show through Fund It. If you’re going to pull out all the stops on a funding campaign for a show, it might as well be for something as big as this one.

We wanted to give Romero’s classic horror the best possible Irish stage version it could have. So we went a bit mad on the bloody promo. But hey, The Sun covered us so we must be doing something ri… hmmm, no. Well, the promo worked and it even attracted some Romero loving trolls. You’re doing something right when you get the diehards angry. For the production we needed a huge, dedicated, lovely cast and crew delighted to make an absolute mess of themselves over the summer months and even bigger audience to make it worth it. And we got them!

We were very lucky that such a talented team had a taste for gore. But after the size of that show, it was nice to do something a lot smaller.

Phantasm was a new comedy by John Kennedy who wrote Shifting for us during In The Future When All’s Well in 2011. He had been developing the play since last year and a shorter version of the script became a part of Fishamble’s Young People’s Tiny Plays For Ireland. Like Shifting, it presented an opportunity to perform work that appealed to a younger audience. It was also about teenagers in Kilkenny in the present day. Oh, and foxes. And drugs.

Our production was directed by John Morton with Hazel Doyle and Colin O’Brien playing the lead parts of Frankie and Adam. And for the first time, we had a cast of two so we were in a position to travel with the show.

We debuted Phantasm in June at Solstice in Cork. Where we also brought the cast of Smitten last year. It was a great showcase for John’s writing and it also got us out of the house for a bit during Night Of The Living Dead rehearsals. (We needed it… honestly). We later spun it out to the Abhainn Ri Festival in Callan for three shows and finished up with a run in Kilkenny as part of OUT For The Weekend.

We also had a number of troupes line up for the second run of TEXT|Messages in Project Arts Centre and undertook a spell in Fishamble’s New Play Clinic in February. This kicked off a big year of development for us, capitalising on the all the exciting plans we came up with during the In The Future When All’s Well residency. And we’ve been slowly stewing them for 2013. We’re looking forward to launching next years programme and it will build on a good 2012 by offering new, original theatre. With a bit of a twist. We’re not in a position to start shouting from the rooftops just yet but when we do, you’ll hear us. We’re going to make sure our 7th birthday is quite magnificent.

Oh, and we made this, for people who weren’t familiar with our work:

So that’s our recap for the year. It’s been a brilliant one. And it’s been a brilliant one because lots of people came to our shows and supported us and worked hard to make sure that we delivered quality theatre. Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Devious Theatre

Oh, and if the world actually does end on December 21st, we wish we’d done more musicals.

THEATREclub’s innovative and exciting LP of diverse theatrical sights and sounds THE THEATRE MACHINE TURNS YOU ON will see its third volume released this January. This is a very exciting thing. It’s become one of the most exciting projects to embed itself in the Irish theatre landscape in recent years and THEATREclub have done an excellent job of promoting it. It’s where new work is presented and where people get to try out their crazy ideas. It’s exposure, practice, presentation, innovation, experimentation and diversification under one big umbrella. It can be the making of a young maker. And the third installment is going to kick off another revolution.

And no, we’re not part of it this year.

But the reason we’re writing this article is to draw your attention to it and tell you that it is well worth your time picking up a bunch of tickets and checking out what’s happening under your nose this January. We didn’t submit anything for this years machine (we’re so tired) but we did have the pleasure of premiering our show Scratcher in February 2011 at THE THEATRE MACHINE TURNS YOU ON: Vol II. It was our festival debut in Dublin and it shone the biggest light on our work in the capital to date. For the first time, a lot of theatre makers of our generation got to see our work being showcased. Our Dublin cheerleaders got to see us in action. We got to present our work to a packed house. We got to make our mark and tell people that this is what we do. It was a lot of fun.

There’s a lot of great work that’s going on this year and you should definitely check all of it out. John Morton of this parish is part of the team working on Sheer Tantrum’s Konstantin Has Shot Himself so he’ll be on the front line this time around. But there are a lot of other shows we’re going to catch. Off the bat, we’ll be checking out Germans Don’t Get Bosco by With An F Productions, Meadbh Haiceid’s MADONNA, Martin Sharry’s Looking For Work, Dan Bergin’s Fused and Edwina Casey’s Safe Filth. The people making those shows excite us so that’s the top of the shopping list for now. That’s one of the joys of a festival like this, there’s a lot to discover. And you can even compile your own mix! For €25 you can make your own mixed tape of 4 shows which is an absolutely sweet ass deal and one any discerning theatre fan should avail of.

Be part of the revolution. Get on the machine. It runs January 8th to 19th in Project Arts Centre, Dublin. For more info check out www.projectartscentre.ie and THEATREclub.ie

We quite happily passed that mantle over to Spark Productions last year. They are a young theatre company making new work and staging plays that haven’t been often performed. What seperates Spark Productions from the rest of their young, enthusiastic theatrical brethren is that they are doing it outside the big cities and towns. They’re doing it country style. Based in Graiguenamanagh, Co. Kilkenny, they’re representing fresh, young, vibrant theatre in a part of the county (and country) where it doesn’t exist. Towns in rural areas are usually the domain of am-dram set ups and troupes of players who perform the tried and tested plays. Under the stewardship of Adrian Kavanagh, Spark Productions have breathed fresh air into the theatre scene of county Kilkenny. Adrian cut some teeth with us as an actor and a crew member (he played Eamon in Shifting and Big Jimmy McClellan in Night Of The Living Dead) and with a group of like minded others, set up Spark Productions in 2011. So far, they have done a sterling job of rallying funding, community support and creating new work in non traditional venues. They kicked things off with two original productions, One For The Road in 2011 and Bittersweet Graffiti in 2012 and now they’re following it up with an unsung Irish comedy classic.

Brownbread by Roddy Doyle is one of the great comedy plays written by the erstwhile novelist before his career really blew up with the Barrytown trilogy. Brownbread was originally performed in Dublin in the 80′s by Paul Mercier’s company The Passion Machine who were doing some very exciting work in the capital at the time. Like a lot of Doyle’s other work, it’s set in the fictional Barrytown and the plot concerns the kidnap of a Bishop by three young wastrels. And then a siege ensues. It’s a brilliant play and one that doesn’t get performed too often so it’s great to see it hitting the stage in Kilkenny this week.

If you’re looking for a theatrical treat over the Christmas season and want to see something fresh, funny and exciting, go check out Spark Productions run of Brownbread this week. We’ve brought a Devious gang out to Graiguenamanagh for their past two shows and it was worth every mile of the car pool! The show is directed by Kelly-Ann Whelan and it runs December 12th-15th in Abbey Hall, Graiguenamanagh at 8pm nightly. Tickets are a stone cold bargain at €7 and you can book yours on 087-9439979.

With the budget coming up, it’s important that we are lobbying our local politicians and drawing attention to the crucial role of the arts in our communities. We had a lot of local politicians in attendance including Minister Phil Hogan, John McGuinness T.D., Cllr Andrew McGuinness, Mayor of Kilkenny Sean O’hArgain and Cathaoirleach Cllr. Marie Fitzpatrick and it was great to demonstrate to them the passion and pride we have in our local arts community.

Kilkenny has a thriving arts scene and punches way above its weight nationally so it was great to see such a nice spread of representation. Apart from ourselves, there were members of Barnstorm Theatre Company, Young Irish Film Makers, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny Arts Office, Barn Owl Players, Spark Productions and The Watergate Theatre. We were all fighting against arts cuts and potential loss of funding and jobs throughout the city and everybody did a great job of getting into the spirit of the day.You can see a video of the event here, as made by the scamps of YIFM.

NCFA Free Hugs Kilkenny from Young Irish Film Makers on Vimeo.

What we need to do next is to see Kilkenny artists being showcased within Kilkenny itself in a more positive fashion. Yes, we’re referring to ourselves, but we’re also referring to the innumerable amount of local artists who aren’t given the spotlight they deserve. Our talent is as good as any county and when given the opportunity to prove this we do. The united front that was put on Friday proves that there is a huge community prepared to proudly represent Kilkenny arts and fight for the work we make. Now let’s now see that work better represented in our own events and festivals all year round.

This event shone a huge light on our local arts community, lets keep it there throughout 2013.

John Morton is directing 160 lines of prime text from The Tempest and it has been brought to life by the supreme acting talents of Stephen Colfer, John Doran and Eddie Murphy. This trio have performed in many of our plays over the year but as a triple threat they devised the version of our Bard based battle rap Shakespeare In Bits that played Kilkenny and Dublin in October and November of 2009. So they have form in this Shakespeare twisting regard. John Morton last directed a piece for TEXT | Messages 2011 (in fact, he’s the only returning director this year) and so he now has to try not get barred after this years festival. In the spirit of the entire TEXT | Messages project, the boys are presenting the Bard… but with a twist.

In the spirit of the contribution of our team last year, it’s similarly skewed and debauched. Act 3, Scene 2 from The Tempest gets reconfigured as the tale of two drunken countrymen Stephano and Trinculo (Eddie Murphy and John Doran) who get turfed out of a Dublin nightclub called Prospero’s. In the adjacent alleyway, they become entwined with a manipulative native homeless man called Caliban (Stephen Colfer) and thus, hilarity ensues. And yes, lest you think we’re chopping and changing, every word spoken is exactly as William Shakespeare wrote it.

That’s not to say of course that it’s not full of innuendo’s, slapstick, violence and a questionable amount of stimulated sex. Not to mention all the urination, drunkness and pro wrestling matches. Yes, this chunk of Shakespeare has it all!

Tonight the other TEXT | Messages are A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Tracy Martin and Richard III directed by Samuel Ferry. There will be another two nights of the show leading into this Saturday November 17th. Tickets are a meagre €5 and the show kicks off at 8.15pm in Project Arts Centre. For all details on booking, here’s the link!

If you ever wanted to hug anyone in our company, this Friday could be the time and place for you to do it!

We’ll be taking part in an event organised by the National Campaign For The Arts to highlight the role of the arts in the life of Kilkenny city. And being a city full of friendly, arty types, we’ll be doing it in a very novel way… with hugs!

From 12.50pm – 1.10pm this Friday lunchtime, members of Kilkenny’s artistic community are meeting on the Parade (just like in the above Smitten picture) and dishing out free hugs and raising awareness of our arts scene as another harsh budget looms. Join ourselves, Barnstorm Theatre Company, Kilkenny Arts Office, Young Irish Film Makers, Mycrofilms, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny Castle, The Watergate Theatre and Barn Owl Players in highlighting the role of the arts in Kilkenny. We need to put on a united front and make our presence felt and with a lot of politicians promising to be on hand for this assembly, we hope it’s a presence that will be felt keenly. So if you want to support this most worthy of all causes, please join us!

If you want to be a hugger or be more involved in this event, please contact Vincent Dempsey at Barnstorm Theatre Company on 056 7751266.

PS. Did we mention the free hugs?

The actions however were a different matter. We saw an awful lot of fantastic interpretations by some brilliant directors and actors over the course of the three nights. We were also delighted at the response to our own contribution, an adaptation of Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (yes, we snuck in an entire play within a play, cheeky wha’?). We completely messed with it to the extent that some people in attendance thought we weren’t sticking to the text. We just make it sooooo real you know? Maybe it was the Kilkenny accents of our troupe below. So yeah, we brought cross dressing, glory holes, oral sex, crude musical numbers, night terrors and all manner of lewdness to the text last year. And it seems like we didn’t offend anyone too much because…

Our 2011 TEXT|Messages cast.

We’re delighted to be invited back for this years run!

TEXT | Messages is following up its successful run in 2011 with more Bardcore text. It’s being curated and produced by the lovely and ever so helpful team of Aoife Spillane-Hinks, Conor Hanratty and Megan Riordan who all did a great job last year. Our contribution lands on the first night of this years run on Thursday November 15th! John Morton is again directing a piece of Shakespeare and a very novel spin is being put on it… as we like to do. This time he has enlisted the immense acting talents of Stephen Colfer, John Doran and Eddie Murphy. Three men who have a lot of experience dissecting the Bard, having performed our late 2009 run of Shakespeare In Bits in Kilkenny and Dublin. So these players have a lot of experience messing around with Mr. Shakespeare. In fact, three of them have acted in so many Shakespeare plays in the last 18 months that they could definitely be described as our crack team of Shakespearean thesps.

This time our crack team will be tackling The Tempest, specifically Act 3, Scene 2. We’ll have a nice little progress blog later in the week in terms of how we’re approaching this one. But in the mean time you best get your tickets while you can! Last year sold out very quickly and each of the 9 pieces of the 3 nights will only be performed once. So get on this one quickly! Tickets are only €5 and can be booked at Project Arts Centre, right here.

Remember, it’s rude not to TEXT back.

Oh, the dead will dance.

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, we just want to remind you that we’ll be throwing a seriously horrorshow event Saturday night in Cleeres Theatre. And it’s all in aid of The O’Neill Centre / Enable Ireland! And horrorshow is definitely the name of the game this bank holiday weekend boys and girls.

We’ll be screening our Irish stage premiere of Night Of The Living Dead for the first (and only) time along with a brand new behind the scenes look at the production and the prologue we shot in association with Mycrofilms this past July. The whole play will be seen in all its gory glory on the big screen and we’re hoping people will get in the spirit by dressing up in some suitably gory costumes. Like this lot:

So do dress accordingly. And it is a special occasion because this will be your last chance to see Night Of The Living Dead presented in public (at least until someone gives us the money to tour it!) so take advantage of this opportunity to see the play screened while you can! Admission is €5 and all funds raised will go to The O’Neill Centre and Enable Ireland. The events that we’ve thrown for Rockfall Festival in the past have always been a lot of fun and this one will hopefully be no different.

The screening will be followed up by Dead Disco, a Halloween club night which will be overseen by The All Time DJ’s and should see some bone breaking tunes played amidst a whole bunch of dead people dancing. It promises to be such a good night that everybody should end up looking like this by the end of it.

So Cleeres Theatre, 8pm this Saturday October 27th is the place and time for what should be a most epic bloodbath of craic. And if you want to do a compare and contrast of the original movie and our version, you can brush up on it right here!

Photos by Ross Costigan. Sometimes the dead do tequila shots too.

We’ll be screening the play in its entirety along with both trailers and a brand new behind the scenes documentary on Saturday October 27th in Cleeres Theatre. The event takes place as part of this years Rockfall Festival and also conveniently falls under the banner of Thrillkenny, a host of zombie related events taking place over the city.The screening will be followed by Dead Disco, a Halloween themed club night which will see some ghoulish treats amidst a bone shaking array of tunes played by the All Time DJs (Night Of The Living Dead producer and director Ken McGuire & John Morton spinning tunes that are literally deadly). The whole night kicks off at 8.00pm and admission for everything is €5. Like all Rockfall events, all proceeds will go to the O’Neill Centre and Enable Ireland.

This marks the fifth event that we have held for the Rockfall Festival and it’s something we have really enjoyed doing over the years. Rockfall does amazing fundraising for the O’Neill Centre over the past 21 plus years and it’s great to be a part of a festival that does so much for so many people. We’ve previously staged performances of Heart Shaped Vinyl and Shakespeare In Bits for the festival and last year we joined up with KilkennyMusic.com to throw an event that was half gig, half interactive Shifting screening. And boy, did it get interactive!

With Night Of The Living Dead, we’re hoping people will get into the spirit of things and costume up for our zombie gorefest! It’s the final chance that people will get to see a play that was described as thus-

The Devious Theatre Company have crafted a hilarious, violent, tense, and fun slice of stage horror, filled with memorable characters and quotable dialogue, cementing themselves as Tarantino’s of the Irish theatre scene.

So come along to Cleeres Theatre on the 27th and join us for a jam packed event of theatre/horror/Halloween party goodness and in the process, raise some money for a brilliant cause!

Photos by Ross Costigan. He’ll be there

War Of Attrition is a new play written by John Morton which we started work on during our residency in Kilkenny Arts Office last year. Over a few weeks, John and Angela Barrett devised the piece as a very physical comic two hander but after much subsequent work the play took shape as a three person play with a much more destructive outlook. It still remains a dark comedy about accountability, competition and the battle for a better life in modern day Ireland. The story focuses on an escalating feud that threatens to destroy the lives of those involved and that’s all we can really say, because it’s not finished yet! The play was initially designed as a new piece of work for us to perform and right now, we’re still hoping to do that. We’ve got an eye on a 2013 start date but we’re some ways off making any announcements yet.

In the meantime, the play itself keeps developing. Apart from his current involvement on the theatre festival’s The Next Stage programme, John is also a participant on the inaugural Play On playwriting initiative from Dublin Theatre Festival and used the opportunity to further develop War Of Attrition. Play On is facilitated by Graham Whybrow (former Literary Manager of the Royal Court) and it aims to get new Irish plays written that address contemporary concerns. The play has been selected, along with 5 others, to represent the Play On programme in a series of rehearsed readings in Project Arts Centre this Tuesday and Wednesday. War Of Attrition is being directed by Jason Byrne and a portion of the piece will be performed this Wednesday October 10th at 1pm. The event is free but booking is advised. You can book tickets on the Dublin Theatre Festival website and also at their box office on 01 677 8899.

We’ll continue developing War Of Attrition over the winter months and you may be seeing John’s follow up to last years Scratcher hit the stage sometime in 2013. If you want a sneak preview, you can catch it this Wednesday.