Autumn 2010
We are delighted to announce dates for our public performances of THE SHAPE OF A GIRL: 27th & 28th October at 8pm. Tickets: €10 adults €8 students (this production is suitable for ages 13 upwards). To reserve tickets please telephone Graffiti :021 4397111 or email:graffiti@eircom.net.
Members of Activate Youth Theatre will conduct a Long Stand in Blackpool Shopping Centre on Friday 5th November 6-9p.m. This fundraiser is aid of Activate Youth Theatre and will support its ongoing programme of workshops and performances which take place throughout the year. This event is supported by Blackpool Shopping Centre as part of their community iniatives programme.
The Summer has been a very busy one for Graffiti and it looks like the next year is going to be equally packed. Perhaps we can count this as a good thing in the current climate!
Over the Summer we have been developing Walking Man by Jody O’Neill, a new piece which we hope to produce in Spring 2011. Director, Designer, Actor and Production Assistant had a wonderful week working with the text and creating the prototype of the set and puppets. As usual, the Studio was buzzing with so many ideas that the next stage in the process will be to remind ourselves of the storybook simplicity that makes this piece so appealing.
Also in development was the gentle and beautiful Blátha Bána/White Blossoms with a week’s intensive work with visual, musical and theatre artists. We are lucky to have been awarded a grant from Cork City Council for the development of this piece of Theatre for the Youngest and will be returning to it from time to time up to Christmas. Aside from working in an exciting new area – and having great enjoyment in it – we are using the project as a piece of Practice based Research and continuing to build our documentation.
We have another project moving into action – BEAG, the Building Early Arts Group. BEAG is supported by Cork City Council, Cork County Council and the HSE. This is the pilot development of an Early Years Arts Team to work with and in crêches in our area. As we write this we have appointed our Project Director, Margaret O’Sullivan, and are completing our team of three artists.
BEAG will be training in the Autumn and then moving to crêches in the Spring. We are delighted that our work on Blátha Bána/White Blossoms and BEAG is mutually supportive and enriching.
On the other end of the scale, our play for teenagers, The Shape of a Girl by Joan McLeod is already in pre-production and will go into rehearsal in mid-September. All performances will be in our venue.
Graffiti as Gaeilge and our colleagues in Irish language work are really looking forward to the first annual symposium of Meitheal na mBeag (19 agus 20 Samhain, i nGaillimh). We are proud to welcome back to Ireland Ivica Simic, Secretary General of ASSITEJ International, as our distinguished keynote speaker. The full programme will be up on the website shortly: www.meithealnambeag.ie Tá súil againn sibh a fheiceáil ansin!
The Outreach teams are also gearing up for a substantial programme of workshops in schools and for the energetic annual inflow of teens to our three Youth Theatres is about to start.
All three youth theatres will return mid-September. We are delighted with the success and enthusiasm of the members of Fish Tank and have listened to their pleas to give it a permanent home in our Outreach Dept. So here are the times and dates for this year:-
Fish Tank – Tues. 21st Sept. 5-7p.m Age Group 13-15 years
Activate- Wed. 22nd Sept. 7-9p.m Age Group 16-20 years
Physically Phishy – Thurs. 5-6.30p.m Age Group 10-12 years
If you know of someone who would like to join any of our youth theatres please bring them along on the appropriate day
The Great Book Swap @ Graffiti Tuesday 14th September 5.30 – 7.00pm. Admission €5.00
Please come along to this fun evening in aid of Fish Tank Youth Theatre in the Studio at Graffiti Theatre.
Admission fee includes a glass of wine or tea/coffee and the opportunity to bring along any old books that have been gathering dust on your bookshelves and swap them for ones that have been gathering dust on someone else’s bookshelves! All we ask is that you make a small donation for each book you take home. All monies raised from the swap will help towards the running of Fish Tank – our latest youth theatre for 13-15 year olds.
As alcohol is being served, this event is restricted to the over 18s.
JUNE 2010
PRODUCTIONS
Graffiti was delighted to be on the road again with a van full of puppets as Jackie, an old favourite, befriended the 3-7 year olds of Cork. Jackie’s Day, by Sarah FitzGibbon, is a charming and gentle interactive play which investigates the small but significant problems of its central character and her friends. This year’s version played both in Irish and in English (with the same cast), and as well as travelling to schools we have also created a lovely environmental set within a tent in our own theatre.
We are also pleased to have secured the rights for The Shape of a Girl by Joan MacLeod, which will be available in October and November. This Canadian script has been a phenomenal hit world wide. Originally commissioned and produced by Green Thumb Theatre Company, it is not – as you might think – a play about female body-image but a spare, tightly written and beautiful piece of theatre which investigates in a very subtle way the concept of the gang, the excluder and the witness. What do we see – ‘A girl in the shape of a monster: a monster in the shape of a girl’? We’ve wanted to produce this play for several years and are really looking forward to working on it.
Meanwhile, development work continues on Walking Man by Jody O’Neill and on Blátha Bána/White Blossoms which is our new piece of Theatre for the Youngest. Walking Man will have a week’s development rehearsal in August and we hope to prepare it for full rehearsal and tour in the Spring. We hope to premiere Blátha Bána in Summer of 2011. It’s based on a myth . . . but that’s all we’re saying!
Emelie also recently directed a reading of another new commission. Where in the world is Frank Sparrow?, a dark new teenage play by Australian writer, Angela Betzien. This was at The Provincetown Playhouse in New York and was part of their season, New Plays for Young Audiences. It was the only transnational piece and its “gritty Marc O’Rowe meets The X Men” style created a lot of interest!
DRAMA PROJECT
After a successful pilot project, a new programme of curriculum drama workshops based on the Kindertransport story will be available to schools in the Autumn. The workshop places the participants (5th and 6th class students) in the role of Jewish children embarking on their train to safety before the Second World War. It aims to develop the empathy of the students and help them understand and respond to challenging moral dilemmas.
YOUTH THEATRES
In May, the Graffiti Theatre hosted Activate Youth Theatre’s new play, Myrtlehill Terrace, which used real documents form the 1911 census to inspire fictional stories of Cork people one hundred years ago. There is something extraordinary about seeing the original census forms. The handwriting is beautiful and the documents evoke images of a bygone era. They provided the fuel which fired the imagination of the Youth Theatre members. Devised by the Youth Theatre and directed by Geraldine O’Neill and Julie O’Leary, the play Myrtlehill Terrace played in the Graffiti Theatre on 7th and 8th May.
The younger Youth Theatres, the Fish Tank and Physically Phishies, invited parents and friends to observe a final workshop session at the end of the year.
PLAYOGRAPHY NEWS
Playography na Gaeilge was launched recently by the Irish Theatre Institute (supported by Foras na Gaeilge) and Graffiti plays an impressive role in the history of first productions as Gaeilge. ITI published a report of the research findings of the project and we were surprised by (and a little proud of!) some of the results. Graffiti began producing as Gaeilge in 1999 and is now the fourth most prolific producer of Irish language first productions still in existence – though Branar may soon take over that honour! In the period in question (1975-2009) Emelie FitzGibbon was the 7th busiest Irish language director in the country (as well as being on the top list for new plays in English for the same period). Meanwhile Síle Ní Bhroin was the 12th most prolific writer/translator with 5 newly translated plays for Graffiti in that time. Playography na Gaeilge is a wonderful new resource available at www.irishplayography.com
And with no less than five new scripts currently in development, we hope to continue to be featured on Playography – as Gaeilge agus as Béarla! No wonder we are looking forward to a few days off in the Summer!