Tired and subdued as term draws to a close? You may feel that the title of Billy Roche’s new play Lay Me Down Softly encapsulates all your innermost wants: lay me down softly between freshly laundered sheets with a homemade dinner and a cup of tea made by a loving family member…where was I? Ah yes, if you are feeling even slightly more energetic than this it’s not the play for you. (more…)
November 2008 – The Abbey Theatre presents a hugely exciting opportunity to hear former Irish President, Mary Robinson lead a series of talks and discussions throughout November and December. BEARING WITNESS is a series of talks and play readings which commemorate and explore the 60th anniversary of the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights. Taking place in the Peacock and the Abbey, the series will run until 16 December 2008 and will include a top roll-call of experts and commentators in the field of humanitarian and world affairs.
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Brecht is the love of my life- sorry, that just came out. My love in fact runs so deep that any production of his Excellency’s work is destined to fail when set against the backdrop of my enormous, insurmountable expectations. At the close of The Abbey’s current version of ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’ therefore, I was left a shell of my former self having been bludgeoned and bombarded by the brilliance of this Brechtian extravaganza, which not only exceeded my wildest hopes, but blew them completely out of the water.
Trinity’s Department of Drama presents Final Year, Bachelor of Acting Studies in Churchill x 3
The evening of 5th November didn’t feel like an evening for cynicism. It wasn’t the evening to have a newfound optimism pricked by the relentless nastiness of Caryl Churchill’s social critique. Churchill doesn’t like Americans very much.
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Ireland, still under the control of Great Britain at the turn of the twentieth century, was a country left disillusioned by the effects of colonization. The loss of their political and economic power and especially the loss of their language to the hands of the dominant colonizer left the country without an identity independent of English influence. At this time, The Irish people required a means to express, if not their political independence, then at least their cultural individuality.
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Watch closely the next time you see someone enjoying a cup of coffee in a film. Most of the time, the cup will actually be empty and certainly very rarely will you see someone actually drink from it. This is because of the nature of filmmaking. An actor might be required to do the same take eight or nine times -to actually take a sip of coffee each time would put a strain on the strongest bladders. How many of these takes are done depends on the director -Clint Eastwood has been said to be to satisfied with any shot in which the camera did not actually fall over while the notoriously difficult filmmaker Stanley Kubrick sometimes forced his actors to do the same take a hundred or more times over.
Times are bad, prices are rising and recession is looming: sound familiar? Before you jump to any justified assumptions, this is 1930’s Chicago not just another day in Dublin. Indeed the circumstances from which ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’ arises strike an almost uncanny parallel to that of the world’s current political and economic climate- this is not lost on the Tom Vaughan Lawlor. A graduate of the Trinity Drama course, an ex RADA student and most importantly the lead in The Abbey’s current production of ‘Ui’, Lawlor has a lot to talk about- we start with his time at Trinity.