AIB SEEDS3
Rough Magic showcases 8 emerging theatre artists as part of the 2007 Dublin Fringe Festival.
The AIB SEEDS3 SHOWCASE is a cutting edge theatre project running at Project Cube from Sept 18 to Sept 23 as part of The Dublin Fringe Festival. Designed to train and facilitate the next generation of theatre talent, the AIB SEEDS3 SHOWCASE is the culmination of eighteen months of mentoring, readings, workshops and international research trips for eight talented young theatre artists. The Rough Magic AIB SEEDS Programme is a structured development initiative for emerging playwrights, directors, designers and producers working together as an ensemble.
AIB SEEDS3 is an artists’ development initiative that builds on the success of the first cycle of the SEEDS project in 2001-2002, when six emerging writers were given an unprecedented opportunity to develop their craft and to kick-start their careers. AIB SEEDS3 is a new and expanded initiative, which continues to foster new playwriting talent while offers emerging directors, designers and a producer the opportunity to participate in a parallel programme.
AIB SEEDS3 will feature 8 young theatre practitioners showcasing 2 productions and 3 play readings. AIB SEEDS3 Productions are Caligula by Albert Camus in a new translation by David Greig directed by Conor Hanratty and Pilgrims of the Night by Len Jenkin, directed by Sophie Motley. SEEDS3 Readings include The Grand Tour by Stacey Gregg, Seven Years and Seven Hours by Lisa McGee and The Departure Lounge by Fintan O’Higgins. Sets will be designed by Deirdre Dwyer and Lighting will be designed by Sarah Jane Shiels. Cian O Brien is the AIB SEEDS3 producer.
The eight artists have worked together for eighteen months, participating in separate but integrated programmes specifically curated to meet their individual training needs. Mentoring by established and highly experienced artists has remained at the heart of the process, as has international research trips, an international placement with a leading practitioner and hands-on experience assisting on Rough Magic productions.
The Programme is supported by AIB, The Arts Council and Culture Ireland
Facilitated by Rough Magic Theatre Company, SEEDS3 is a structured
development initiative for emerging playwrights, directors, designers and a producer. This showcase of 2 productions and 3 play readings is the culmination of eighteen months of mentoring, workshops and international research trips. Taking the notion of 'the company as ensemble' as its guiding principle, the SEEDS3 artists have worked together from the outset, participating in separate but integrated programmes.
Caligula
By Albert Camus
Translated by David Greig
"I feel a violent need for impossible things..."
What would you do if you found you had absolute power, and realised at the same time you could never have what you really wanted?
Camus' Caligula is set in Rome as the Empire starts to decay, strangled in the hands of its most notorious emperor. This a new version by David Greig is a darkly poetic, savagely funny exploration of the meanings of power, life and love.
PROJECT ARTS CENTRE
18-22 September 6pm
1nfo/booking: +353 1 881 9613/14
Pilgrims of The Night
By Len Jenkin.
“Invisible worlds have linked arms, and they¹re going out dancing.”
On a dark and windy night in an isolated ferry terminal, six strangers
arrive to explore mysterious happenings on the other side of the river. Len
Jenkin’s play is a dynamic, exhilarating exploration of the nature and act
of storytelling.
Facilitated by Rough Magic Theatre Company, SEEDS3 is a structured
development initiative for emerging playwrights, directors, designers and a
producer. This showcase of 2 productions, 3 play readings and exhibition is
the culmination of eighteen months of mentoring, workshops and international
research trips. Taking the notion of 'the company as ensemble' as its
guiding principle, the SEEDS3 artists have worked together from the outset,
participating in separate but integrated programmes.
PROJECT ARTS CENTRE
18-22 September 9pm
1nfo/booking: +353 1 881 9613/14
Rough Magic SEEDS3 Play Readings
Stacey Gregg, The Grand Tour
Venice, London, Cairo, 1830s. Lady travel writer Hannah Westlake well knows both the worth and price of her good reputation. But now young Mary McCauslin’s racy travel reports are sweeping Hannah’s books off the shelves and similarly shelving her livelihood. Two women grapple with female competition and solidarity, coming to grips with ethical behaviour in the hypocritical and morally bankrupt status quo. Stacey Gregg has previously written a stage play, Ismene, is taking part in the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme and is also assistant to Dominic Dromgoole at the Globe Theatre, London.
Lisa McGee, Seven Years and Seven Hours
Frankie’s been doing time for seven years, since the time when Donna and JJ were at school, bored with life and excited and horrified by serial killings of local schoolgirls. Now even his brother Andrew may stop visiting him. What is the truth hidden by the fog of the past, and what does it have to do with what’s inside the box? Lisa McGee’s previous work includes Girls and Dolls and Jump!, she also writes for film and TV.
Fintan O’Higgins, The Departure Lounge
Hospital waiting room, early hours of the morning. Pushed to the brink by the imminent loss of their dying mammies, four overgrown lads have only one another’s chat for company and comfort, but end up revealing far more than the contents of their little black books. Fintan O’Higgins has written several stage and screenplays, and has scripted episodes of various soap operas.
Deirdre Dwyer (Set/Costume Designer)Deirdre Dwyer designs costumes and sets. She began designing with Waterford Youth Drama in 1998 and has since continued to design for them and also for Waterford Spraoi, Red Kettle, Everyman Palace Studio, Half/Angel and Playgroup, who's production Dark Week, which she designed, was nominated for a Judges Special Award at the Irish Times Theatre Awards 2006. She graduated with a first class honours degree in Drama and Theatre Studies and English from UCC in 2004. While in college she designed costumes and sets as part of her course and also for UCC's Dramat. She was nominated for Best Costume Design at the Irish Student Drama Awards in Galway in 2004 for The Volitional Brain. As part of the SEEDS programme she has assisted Alan Farquharson and Kathy Strachan on last year's Rough Magic production of The Bonefire, she worked as an assistant to Alison Chitty in London and Athens on the Greek National Opera's production of Carmen for the Athens Festival and she traveled to Prague for the Prague Quadrennial where her work was exhibited in the Student Design exhibition. She also works as an administrator, production manager and coordinator of volunteers with companies such as Barabbas, UCC's Drama Dept, Cork Midsummer Festival and Spraoi.
Stacey Gregg (Playwright)
Stacey Gregg is from Belfast. Writing credits include Eveline Syndrome (devised, Dublin Fringe 2005) and Ismene (ADC Theatre, Cambridge; rehearsed reading RADA). She is under commision with Tinderbox, Belfast, and writer on attachment with Watford Palace Theatre where she is developing Widow's Mite (rehearsed reading). Her first play was shortlisted for the Royal Court Young Writers Festival and she is a script reader for The Globe Theatre, London.
Conor Hanratty (Director)
Conor Hanratty trained at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Royal Holloway, University of London, before being awarded a scholarship from the Japanese Government to study theatre in Tokyo. As part of the SEEDS 3 programme he was invited to take part in the Directors' Course at the National Theatre in London. Previous directing credits in Dublin include Shirley Valentine, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Medea, Cabaret (Players Theatre), The Bacchae, Come and Go, Liz Lochhead's Medea, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (all at the Samuel Beckett Centre). In London he directed various workshop performances and co-directed Troy's Fallen, after Euripides' Trojan Women in the Boilerhouse Theatre at Royal Holloway. In Japan he directed Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and an evening of Beckett's short plays (including Rough for Theatre I, Rockaby, Neither and Quad) in a Noh Theatre in Tokyo as part of the Beckett Centenary celebrations. He also spent over a year working with Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa on several productions, including The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, The Valkyries, 'Tis Pity She's A Whore , Orestes and Tango at the End of Winter. He was assistant director to Alan Stanford for Othello (Second Age) and to Lynne Parker for Rough Magic's production of Don Carlos. Conor also works as a translator and sound designer, and is an organiser of the Intensive Summer Course on the Nature and Performance of Ancient Greek Drama in Epidaurus, Greece.
Sophie Motley (Director)
Sophie Motley trained at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College, Dublin and the National Theatre Studio Directing Course 07. Directing Credits include The Pitchfork Disney (ShinyRedChocolatePaper, Dublin Fringe Festival) What A Wonderful World, Sleeping Beauty: A Pantomime, (DU Players, Dublin) The Tempest, The Love of a Nightingale (Samuel Beckett Centre). She has assisted with Chichester Festival Theatre (The BIG secret LIVE Webcam Daytime Chatroom Show), Rough Magic (The Bonefire), Talking Birds (The Last lot), Pentabus and Making Strange. She is Artistic Director of ShinyRedChocolatePaper.
Cian O’Brien works as a freelance producer. His credits include Roberto Zucco (Project Arts Centre; Bedrock Productions) Danny and Chantelle (Still Here) (Project Arts Centre; Drogheda Arts Festival); How Many Miles to Babylon (Helix; Second Age Theatre Company); The Friends of Jack Kairo (Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Prague Fringe Festival 2007); Mother Teresa is Dead (Project Arts Centre; Focus Theatre); Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Project Arts Centre, Spiegeltent, Focus Theatre; Making Strange Theatre Company) H-BAM (How Babies are Made) Comedy troupe (Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2002,2003). Cian has worked with Caro Newling and Sam Mendes at Neal Street Productions (London) on the recent West-End transfer of their production of The Hound of The Baskervilles to the Duchess Theatre. Cian is currently working with Bedrock Productions and Dublin Theatre Festival on La Marea and will join Rough Magic as Assistant Producer on their upcoming national tour of Improbable Frequency.
Fintan O’ Higgins (Playwright)
Fintan O’Higgins is a Dublin based writer who has worked as a script-writer on ITV’s Emmerdale and RTÉ’s Fair City. Plays produced to date include:
Corpus, a musical based on Prof Gunther von Hagens’s controversial
BodyWorlds exhibition, (Edinburgh Fringe Festival), and Headlong (Edinburgh Fringe Festival); The End of the World (International Bar), The Miserable Failure of Bernard Comiskey (2005 Dublin Fringe Festival) and The Worst Thing You Can Do To Somebody That is Not a Crime, produced by Delfina in the Andrew’s Lane studio.
Commissions include "Capsizing the Stars", a feature length screenplay based on the life of J.M. Synge (Blueprint Pictures, supported by the Irish Film Board), "Latex" (Unlimited Theatre Company).
He was the winner of the BIM-Guinness Oyster Poetry Competition in 2005 and runner-up in the International Swift Satire Competition in 2004. His articles and poetry appear in Pen Pusher magazine and the Shit Creek Review.