Pan Pan Theatre Company - Archive Launch and Digital Exhibition.

 

Pan Pan Theatre Company Archive and Digital Exhibition Launch

29^th November 2022

Location: ‘The Bridge Room’, Hardiman Building, University of Galway 

2pm Welcome and Introductions:

Barry Houlihan, Archivist, Library Archives.

John Cox, University Librarian

 

2.15 - 3.15pm: Panel 1: ‘A Theatre of Ideas’ - Pan Pan and Contemporary Irish Drama

Ian Walsh - Out of the dark: Pan Pan’s Staging of Beckett’s Radio Plays, All that Fall and Embers.

Charlotte McIvor: ""Pan Pan's Conceptual Theatre of Rigour and International Lineages of Resonance."

Emer McHugh: ‘Playing [with] Shakespeare, Playing the Dane’.

Chair: Finian O’Gorman

 

3.15pm - 4pm: Pan Pan and the Archive - "Noise and People, People and Noise"

               Barry Houlihan

               Aafke Van Pelt 

Break: 4pm – 4.15pm          

4.15 - 5pm Gavin Quinn and Aedín Cosgrove in conversation, moderated by Patrick Lonergan

 

5pm Launch of Pan Pan Archive and Digital Exhibition

Welcome and Introductions: Dan Carey, Director, Moore Institute.

Launched by Willie White, Artistic Director, Dublin Theatre Festival. 

Refreshments provided. 

Andrew Bennett and Judith Roddy, in Everyone is King Lear in Their Own Home,
Pan Pan Theatre Company, 2012. Photograph (c) Ros Kavanagh.

Pan Pan Theatre Company Archive and Digital Exhibition launched at University of Galway Library

The archive of the award-winning Pan Pan Theatre Company has been donated to the University of Galway Library Archives. Established in 1993 by Gavin Quinn and Aedín Cosgrove, Pan Pan Theatre Company have established international recognition as one of Ireland’s premiere theatre companies, touring throughout Ireland, Europe, the United States and from China to New Zealand. The archive is fully catalogued and available to researchers at University of Galway Library. A new digital online exhibition will share the Pan Pan archive with a global audience.

The Pan Pan archive consists of annotated scripts, production notebooks, photographs, designs, programmes, posters, and a vast collection of digital show recordings, spanning more than fifty boxes of materials from the last thirty years. The papers document the early years and development of the company led by Quinn and Cosgrove, who have directed and designed the majority of Pan Pan productions. Pan Pan were established in 1993 as “Ireland’s first deaf ensemble”. Pan Pan produced work for and with deaf practitioners and audiences, creating a new space of accessibility for Irish theatre in the mid- and late-1990s. New original works by Pan Pan at this time Tailors Requiem (1996), Cartoon (1998), and Standoffish (2000).

In later years Pan Pan adapted Irish and European classics in new and innovate productions. Oedipus Loves You by Simon Doyle and Gavin Quinn (2006), which starred Ruth Negga, toured to international acclaim. The Crumb Trail by Gina Moxley (20009) revisited the form of the fairy tale for a modern technology-driven society. Pan Pan engaged with the works of Samuel Beckett and William Shakespeare across a number of productions. Pan Pan produced Beckett’s radio plays, All That Fall in 2011, and Embers in 2013, and also Beckett’s Quad (2013) and Endgame (2019). Shakespeare’s works were explored in Mac-beth 7 (2004) and The Rehearsal: Playing the Dane (2010), a reworking of Hamlet. In 2006, Pan Pan staged an all-Chinese cast production of J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in Shanghai, translated into Mandarin, setting the production in a contemporary hairdresser’s salon.

Pan Pan are today producing new works and regularly touring nationally and internationally. The recipients of many international awards as well as Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards, the Pan Pan archive documents a company that has always sought to innovate, reinterpret, and connect Irish theatre and culture to the worldwide audience.

Dr. Barry Houlihan, Archivist, University of Galway, commented that “working on the Pan Pan archive and cataloguing its vast array of materials is a reminder of the immense contribution that Pan Pan have made to contemporary Irish drama in Ireland and internationally. The archive will be in an immersive and fascinating resource for anyone interesting in the company and modern Irish theatre and culture.”

Gavin Quinn and Aedín Cosgrove, co-founders of Pan Pan Theatre Company added: “It's an amazing opportunity that University of Galway has given Pan Pan to make our work available in this archive, we are blown away by the dedication and curatorial excellence of the Archive team. We are delighted that our little contribution to the theatre scene in Ireland will be preserved."

Dr. Charlotte McIvor, Head of Drama, Theatre, and Performance at University of Galway commented: “The acquisition of the Pan Pan archive gives us another opportunity to bring together history and practice in our Drama and Theatre Studies classrooms and across the School of English and Creative Arts.  Pan Pan have always been at the vanguard of moving Irish theatre forward as a landscape since their founding, and we are now delighted to be partnering with them to bring the transformative story of their history and their future directly to our students.”

The Pan Pan archive digital exhibition, curated by Aafke Van Pelt with Eimhin Joyce and Barry Houlihan, includes over four hundred digital objects from across the Pan Pan archive, all freely accessible online via the University of Galway Library Digital Repository.

John Cox, University Librarian, University of Galway adds that, “We are delighted to have secured the archive of such an innovative company as Pan Pan. This archive is a tremendous collection in its own right and complements our archival coverage of other Irish theatre companies, including the digitised archives of the Abbey and Gate Theatres and others in paper format such as those of the Druid, Lyric and Taibhdhearc.”

The Pan Pan archive and digital exhibition will be launched at an event in University of Galway by Willie White, Director of the Dublin Theatre Festival on 29^th November. All are welcome to attend.

 

Link to Digital Exhibition: https://exhibitions.library.nuigalway.ie/s/panpan/page/introduction

Video message from His Excellency, Adriaan Palm, Dutch Ambassador to Ireland on the occasion of the launch of the Pan Pan Theatre Archive and Digital Exhibition. 

Podcast: Thomas Kilroy - The Playwright and the Archive

Thomas Kilroy

Thomas Kilroy is one of Ireland’s most celebrated playwrights and critics. Kilroy is a multi-award-winning playwright, a member of the Irish Academy of Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, and Aosdána. He is the recipient of many awards such as the American Irish Foundation award (1974); the Special Tribute Award from the Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards (2004); the Irish PEN/ A.T. Cross Award (2008). Kilroy’s archive at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway, comprising over fifty boxes of manuscripts is a record of his literary achievement as well as an insight into the work of a celebrated writer, his drafts, networks and legacies, across five decades.

In this podcast you can discover the archive of Thomas Kilroy, highlights from the archive and reflections on one of Ireland's most foremost writers and thinkers. 

Flyer from production of "Double Cross" by Thomas Kilroy. From the Kilroy Archive, NUI Galway

The Galway International Arts Festival - An Archive of Stories and Spectacle

Late July in Galway has become synonymous with one thing. For forty years the Galway International Arts Festival has grown to become not just the highlight of Galway's cultural and artistic calendar but also to be one of the largest cultural celebrations in Europe. 

The archive of the Galway International Arts Festival resides within the Hardiman Library of NUI Galway. The GIAF archive is a detailed record of the history and achievements of the festival, as well as an account of its establishment and its growth over many years. It offers a record of how GIAF engaged not just the best of Irish artists and performers of all kinds, but also leading international artists. The archive consists of over thirty-five boxes of manuscripts and documents, comprising some of the first minute books of the Festival committee, correspondence with leading artists, programmes and posters for various events, an expansive photographic collection, press cuttings, and of course the famous Galway Arts Festival posters.

The archive includes a detailed record of administration, productions, and events held during the Galway International Arts Festival since its inception in 1978. Within the administrative records, there are editions of minutes from Galway Arts Festival committee and management meetings 1980-1982. The production files include a large volume of photographs from productions and events across all disciplines in the Galway Arts Festival. The photographs document events across theatre, comedy, dance, music, literature, visual art, street performance, and children's events. The images are also a record of the audiences and experiences of GIAF - those who each year return, witness, enjoy and take part in a celebration of the arts in Galway and which ripples outward into the world. 

The archive also includes a large volume of artist and event posters and other promotional ephemeral material. The series of press files contain records of local (Galway and west of Ireland) press cuttings of interviews and features with artists, members of Galway Arts Festival directors and management, reviews of productions and events at the festival and news on arts, theatre and culture in general nationwide around Ireland. The press files also offer a detailed and comprehensive list of events in various codes including theatre, music, visual art, children's events, literature provide an account of all acts which performed each year at the festival. Hearing the stories of visiting artists as well as local and Irish artists gives an indication of what it meant for a practitioner to have their work as part of the GIAF as well as collecting the many voices and stories of those who make the festival programme a special experience each year.

The records reveal just how the people of Galway, the west of Ireland and from much further afield have been an active part of the spectacle of the festival. Images of crowded streets and venues across the city show how audiences have been enthralled by all the Festival has to offer for all tastes and interests. The archive also compliments other related local artistic and cultural archives, such as those of Druid Theatre Company, Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe, Macnas and many others, building a comprehensive memory of the Arts in Galway for over the past four decades.

A full listing of the Galway Arts Festival archive is available on the Archives online catalogue

For any visitors to the Galway International Arts Festival and are curious about this amazing archive collection, please contact the Archives service for information on access.

Archive Launch and symposium celebrating John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy

British and Irish Political Theatre Since 1950: Celebrating the Legacies of John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy

O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance

 Friday 24 November 2017, 09.30-17.00

John arden and Margaretta D'Arcy, Galway, 1972

09.30 –10.30 Symposum welcome and introduction (Patrick Lonergan) Patrick Duggan 'Attempting Conversations with the State: 'Loose' Performances of Radical Resistance'

Chair: Marianne Ni Chinneide

10.30 – Coffee.

11.00 - 11.40: Formal Launch of the John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy Archive at NUI Galway

11.45-12.30:  Sources for Research on John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy 

Kieran Hoare (NUIG)– The Arden/D’Arcy archive at NUI Galway 

Harriet Reed: (Victoria and Albert Museum) “Arden, D’Arcy and the Irish in the Royal Court Archive’.

Chair: Barry Houlihan

12.30-13.30 – Reception with sandwiches/lunch at this time.

13.30- 14.45: Showcase of NUI Galway research on British and Irish political theatre since 1950

•       Miriam Haughton, “Staging Trauma: Politicising Performance”

•       Lionel Pilkington, ‘The Challenges of Anti-Capitalist Theatre in 1980s Ireland’

•       Patrick Lonergan, The Troubles Untroubled: Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman

•       Charlotte McIvor, ““Archives, Activism, Absence: Suzanne Day’s “Toilers” and ‘Where Are the Irish Women Playwrights’ (Again)”

Chair: Ian Walsh

14.45 – break

15.00 – 15.45  Vicky Angelaki, “Contemporary British Political Playwriting: The Disappearing Binary”

Chair: Catherine Morris

Conclusion of symposium.

15.45 – coffee/tea

16.00 – 17.00 Margaretta D’Arcy public interview

All welcome and registration is free: http://conference.ie/Conferences/index.asp?Conference=541 

John Hurt and the Gate Theatre - From the Archives

John Hurt

The late John Hurt was one of the most celebrated and versatile actors of his generation. With a career that spanned over four decades on stage as well as screen, the British-born Hurt leaves a legacy of diverse and identifiable roles that speak to new generations. A character actor of rare an immense talent, Hurt brought his range of abilities to Dublin’s Gate Theatre on numerous occasions. The Gate Theatre Digital Archive, now available for research at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway, documents Hurt’s performances on the Gate stage.

Hurt’s career at the Gate began in 1992 with a role of “Count Mushroom” in Brian Friel’s play The London Vertigo. Towards the end of the 1990s, Hurt would continue his association with the Gate Theatre and its director Michael Colgan through the work of Samuel Beckett. Hurt would play the eponymous role in Krapp’s Last Tape, written by Samuel Beckett and directed by Robin Lefévre at the Barbican Centre, London, as part of the Gate Beckett Festival. Hurt would revive the role at London’s Ambassador Theatre in a Gate production in January 2000, before finally bringing the role to Dublin’s Gate stage in September 2001, to great critical acclaim.

John Hurt in Gate production at Gielgud Theatre, London

 Hurt would return to the Gate to again take the lead in a play by another major playwright long associated with the Gate – Brian Friel. Hurt would play Andrey Prozorov  alongside Penelope Wilton as Sonya Screbriakova, in Friel’s Afterplay, part of “Two Plays After”, which explored much of Friel’s interest in the plays and characters of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov.

Hurt take to the Gate stage on two other occasions, in April 2006 and in November 2011, on both occasions to revisit what is now perhaps the definitive performance of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, directed by Michael Colgan.

The Gate Digital Archive contains a digitised video recording of Hurt in the role of Krapp at the Gate in April 2006, which is one of the most valuable records of Hurt’s stage career. It also includes nearly two hundred photographs, over one thousand press cuttings, stage management files, lighting designs, vast amounts of programmes, posters and other records from Hurt’s time at the Gate. In a fitting twist, as Hurt is so associated with the role of Krapp, an ageing man who listens to tapes of his younger voice recorded from decades previously, so too is Hurt’s infamous voice, deeply expressive face and his unique acting style now also preserved for future generations.

Read more on the Gate Theatre Digital Archive at NUI Galway.

Symposium on Famine Memory, Thursday 12 February, Hardiman Building

Performing Famine Memory:

Irish Theatre and the Great Hunger Symposium

National University of Ireland, Galway, February 12-13, 2015.

Date: Thursday February 12, 1-7pm. Friday February 13, 10am -12pm.

Venue: Hardiman Research Building, G010.

Conference Convener and Contact: Dr. Jason King (Jason.king@nuigalway.ie)

            

This symposium examines Irish Theatre and Famine Memory between the periods of the Irish Revival and the rise and fall of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger.  It places special emphasis on the performance of Famine remembrance to register moments of national crisis and forced migration in Ireland, both past and present.  The symposium brings together leading Irish theatre and famine scholars and theatre practitioners to explore recent productions about the Great Hunger in the era of the Celtic Tiger, such as DruidMurphy’s revival (2012) of Tom Murphy’s Famine (1968), Sonya Kelly’s How to Keep An Alien (2014), Moonfish Theatre’s bilingual English and Irish language adaptation of Joseph O’Connor’s novel Star of the Sea (2014), Jaki McCarrick’s Belfast Girls (2012), Fiona Quinn’s The Voyage of the Orphans (2012), Caroilin Callery and Maggie Gallagher’s “Strokestown - Quebec Connection Youth Arts Project - 'The Language of Memory and Return'” (2011-2014), Donal O’Kelly’s The Cambria (2005), and Elizabeth Kuti’s The Sugar Wife (2005).  Representations of the Great Famine during the Revival in Maud Gonne’s Dawn and early plays staged at the Gate Theatre will also be discussed. The performance of traumatic remembrance of the Famine and pivotal historical events in W.B. Yeats’s The Dreaming of the Bones (1916) will be explored in a keynote address by Professor Chris Morash.  Dr. Marguérite Corporaal will also deliver a keynote address on the development of international Famine studies and research networks and opportunities for collaboration.

Symposium Schedule Thursday Februrary 12:

1-2pm. Irish Famine Memory and Migration in Contemporary Theatre Productions:
 
Barry Houlihan (NUIG), Overview of Irish Theatre Archival Resources at NUI Galway.

Dr. Jason King (NUIG): “Performing the Green Pacific: Staging Female Youth Migration in  Jaki 
McCarrick’s Belfast Girls (2012) and Fiona Quinn’s The Voyage of the Orphans (2012)”.

 Dr. Charlotte McIvor (NUIG): 'The Cambria (2005) and How To Keep An Alien (2014): Famine Traces and the Palimpsestic Time of Irish Migration'    

 2-3pm. Staging Famine Memory: Theatre Practitioner Perspectives  

Máiréad Ni Chroinin (NUIG and Moonfish Theatre): “Moonfish Theatre's production of Star of the Sea, based on the novel by Joseph O'Connor” (2014).

Caroilin Callery (Cultural Connections Theatre Group): Strokestown - Quebec Connection Youth Arts Project - 'The Language of Memory and Return'.

3-3:30pm coffee break

                   
3:30-5pm. DruidMurphy and Early Twentieth-Century Representations of the Great Famine on Stage:

Professor Patrick Lonergan (NUIG): DruidMurphy (2012) and Abbey Productions of Tom Murphy’s Famine.

Dr. Marguérite Corporaal (Radboud University Nijmegen): “Starvation in the Shadows: (Un)staging the Famine in Maud Gonne's Dawn (1904)”. 

Ruud Van Den Beuken (Radboud University Nijmegen): “'My blessing on the pistol and the powder and the ball!': Prospective Memories of Landlord Murders in the Earl of Longford's Ascendancy (1935)”.

6pm. Keynote address: Professor Chris Morash (MRIA, Trinity College, Dublin):

“Re-placing Trauma: Yeats’s The Dreaming of the Bones”.

Symposium Schedule Friday February 13 (10am-12pm)
Venue: Hardiman Research Building, G010.

Plenary Workshop: Dr. Marguérite Corporaal, “Building Irish Famine Research Networks”.

Deputy Thom Kluk from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands will introduce keynote speaker Dr. Marguérite Corporaal (Radboud University Nijmegen). Dr. Corporaal will discuss her European Research Council funded project Relocated Remembrance: The Great Famine in Irish (Diaspora) Fiction, 1847-1921 (http://www.ru.nl/relocatedremembrance/) and her Dutch Research Council funded International Network of Irish Famine Studies (INIFS) (http://www.ru.nl/irishfaminenetwork/). She will consider the challenges of building international research networks and explore the opportunities and themes for research collaboration.  

Playback: The Abbey Theatre Digital Archive on "Dúiche", TG4

A great piece exploring the riches of the Abbey Theatre Digital Archive at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway was aired on "Dúiche", programme, TG4 recently. "Duiche" presented by Síle Nic Chonaonaigh, features in-depth interviews with Hardiman Library Archivist Aisling Keane and Marianne Ní Chinnéide, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway, showcasing the scale and scope of the digitisation project and also its implications for teaching, research and learning at NUI Galway. With over one million items of multi-format material available at NUI Galway when the project is completed, it comprises one of the world's greatest theatre, literary and social history collections.

You can watch the programme at the following link with the segment on the Abbey Theatre Archive beginning in the second-half of the programme at c. 11.30 minutes in.

http://www.tg4.tv/play.php?pid=3990732475001&title=D%C3%BAiche&series=D%C3%BAiche

For more on the Abbey Theatre Archive at NUI Galway, you can watch the below video:

CFP: Pushing Form - Innovation and Interconnection in Contemporary European Performance

European and Western performance discourse historically has often presumed a hegemonic and majority white field of practice despite an increasingly diverse European population. How does the present reality of European theatre and performance challenge traditional assumptions? And how specifically does formal innovation provide the space for critiques of power and hierarchy that may rework the concept of “Europe” as realized through performance? How have artists responded through form to neoliberalism and globalization in the wake of the most recent world economic crisis and how does their specifically European context set the terms of this response?

The spread of Live Art has put pressure on the institutional theatre as the primary cultural site for performance in many European nations. Yet, discussions about the usefulness and limits of postdramatic as an umbrella term for interdisciplinary work that resists overdetermining dramatic literature might seem to characterize this moment in European theatre and performance studies. This conference queries what it means to define the field of European performance. As such, we invite submissions that will consider key debates in terminology surrounding innovative emerging work, seeking also to build on older genealogies of practice in Europe and beyond. For the purposes of this conference, we will use “European performance” to designate work that happens within the continent as opposed to the European Union exclusively, although these differential power dynamics will be crucial to our inquiry.

Meanwhile, experimental performance methodologies including devising, site-specific approaches, performance art and new media are increasingly taught within universities, signaling an integration of knowledge that may confirm the field of the “contemporary” through institutional status, but suggests that these practices may no longer be the cutting edge. By considering macro-European trends in relationship to national case studies, “Pushing Form” will explore the meaning of “contemporary,” “European” and “performance” in relationship to each other. We hope to map not only the current field, but what may lie just beyond it.

For further information, please contact any of the conference organizers:
Dr Charlotte McIvor, NUI, Galway: charlotte.mcivor@nuigalway.ie Phone: 00 353 91 492631 
Dr Siobhán O'Gorman, Trinity College Dublin: siobhanmogorman@gmail.com
Dr Miriam Haughton, University of Ulster: miriamhaughton@hotmail.com


'Pushing Form' is sponsored by the Millennium Fund and NUI Galway Drama and English.

SYMPOSIUM: PATRICK PEARSE AND THEATRE / PÁDRAIG MAC PIARAIS AGUS AN AMHARCLANN

SYMPOSIUM: PATRICK PEARSE AND THEATRE / PÁDRAIG MAC PIARAIS AGUS AN AMHARCLANN

A landmark symposium on Patrick Pearse's theatric work hopes to encourage new productions of the neglected plays of the Irish revolutionary.

Experts on Patrick Pearse will travel from across Europe at the end of the month to attend ‘Pearse and the Theatre’, a  bilingual symposium on the plays of the Irish rebel and writer, which takes place in St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra on the 29th and 30th of November. The organizers of the two-day symposium on the Irish rebel’s dramatic work hope that this special event will encourage a new generation of Irish theatre makers to stage Pearse’s plays, which caused both controversy and excitement when first produced.
 As well as featuring lively discussion on all aspects of Pearse’s work in the theatre, the programme for ‘Pearse and the Theatre’ also includes a workshop for actors and directors guided by Colm Hefferon and a musical performance led by harpist Síle Denvir that will help to bring the 1916 leader's plays to life.

 As the 100-year commemoration of the Easter Rising  approaches, this special event will shed new light on an important area of Pearse’s work that has been largely neglected. In the years before he became an icon of rebellion, Patrick Pearse was obsessed with the theatre.   As the author and producer of hugely popular plays in both Irish and English he was the imaginative force behind pageants that were staged on remarkable scale. Contemporary performances of Pearse’s works attracted large and enthusiastic audiences to various locations around Dublin - including St. Enda's School, the Abbey Theatre, the Mansion House Jones Road (now Croke Park) - while many leading figures from the worlds of culture and politics were involved in the preparation, promotion, and staging of his of art and literature helped stage the ambitious scripts.  
The plays themselves were often allegories for Pearse's political vision and he drew on the theatrical expertise of his brother Willie and their circle of friends to devise innovative productions that included spectacular open-air performances. 

One of the lesser known plays under discussion, The Singer, which dealt with the morality of rebellion, was in rehearsal in the weeks before the Rising but the production was abandoned as history took centre stage.
Speaking ahead of the symposium, Róisín Ní Ghairbhí, one of the co-organisers of 'Pearse and the Theatre', said: “We are looking forward to an exciting programme which will feature scholars, writers, directors and actors. Speakers from as far away as England, France and the Czech Republic will be travelling to participate and we are also inviting people directly involved in the theatre in the hope that these plays, some of which have been half forgotten for years, will be restaged for a new audience. There is something here for anyone with an interest in Pearse, the theatre, or this crucial period in Irish history.”
 
The keynote speakers at ‘Pearse and the Theatre’ are Brian Crowley, The Pearse Museum/OPW, author of the recently published Patrick Pearse: A Life In Pictures; Dr Elaine Sisson, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology and author of Pearse's Patriots, St Enda's and the Cult of Boyhood; and Dr James Moran, University of Nottingham, author of Four Irish Rebel Plays.
 
The workshop and musical performance were specifically included in the programme to ensure that the texts discussed in the lectures are brought to life for participants and audience. The organisers hope that the gathering of scholars and practitioners will provide a fresh take on Pearse’s work in theatre. Actor director Colm Hefferon, who is facilitating the workshop, wants to ‘get away from ideology’. ‘I am interested in exploring the human aspect of the plays’ he says.
 
‘Pearse and the Theatre’ will explore a sometimes-overlooked dimension to Pearse’s life. The organizers of this unique symposium, Róisín Ní Ghairbhí and Eugene McNulty, earlier this year published Patrick Pearse; Collected Plays/Drámaí an Phiarsaigh, a new bilingual edition of Pearse's plays with Irish Academic Press. The symposium is being supported by Foras na Gaeilge.- For further information about ‘Pearse and the Theatre’ or to contact keynote speakers please contact  0833733151  or 0876461661 
 pearsetheatre@spd.dcu.ie / Roisin.nighairbhi@spd.dcu.ieEugene.mcnulty@spd.dcu.ie

Click here to see the full programme for the event.

Horror at the Lyric - Dracula on the Belfast Stage

The clocks going back, the evenings getting darker earlier and winter approaching are sure signs that Halloween is near. With television and cinema listings brimming with the latest horror movie or classic black and white (and perhaps not so scary) films of the past. It seems theatre audiences were no different in liking a good scare.

Programme cover of the Lyric production of "The
Death of Dracula"

 The archive of the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, shows a production of the Death of Dracula, a version of Bram Stoker's classic gothic novel , Dracula, by Canadian/English playwright (with the suitably spooky surname) Warren Graves. Staged at the Lyric as part of their spring Season in May 1980, the production was a European premiere of the play.

The programme note for the play, written by John Boyd, names Graves as being a founding member of Playwrights Canada and had a special interest in Irish drama, notably, Yeats, O'Casey and Brendan Behan. The play was directed at the Lyric by Tony Dinner and featured John Cunningham as Count Dracula, J.J. Murphy as Professor Van Helsing and Stella McCusker as Lucy Murray.

Graves was born in London, England 5 February 1933 and died in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada in February 2008. Graves moved with his wife and two children to Calgary, Alberta in 1964, and then to Edmonton where he worked as an assistant clerk at the Alberta Legislature. He became a prominent theatre artist and administrator with Walterdale Playhouse before quitting his government job to become a self-employed writer in 1974. 

In a previous interview with the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project in 2004 when asked about the task of adaption for a playwright entailed, Graves answered:

"Tell a thumping good story that appeals to the common man, make sure it has a beginning, middle and an end, and get the bums on the seats. Respect language as gold and not copper coin to be tossed on the counter.

In my other adaptations, my job has been to make theatrically possible a story that exists in a different medium. I suppose my position about adapting a theatrical work that already exists as a theatrical work would be ––"Why bother?" Why not take the theme and storyline and use them to write an original work? I recall the story of a distinguished Hollywood writer producing an excellent script about a cattle drive for John Wayne and gurgling with delight because nobody recognized that it was an 'adaptation' of Mutiny on the Bounty."

Page of script from Graves' "The Death of Dracula"

The play is an interesting adaptation of an often told and re-told story and offers an archival record of this story of the dark Count once more. The full script of Graves' the Death of Dracula is available as part of the Lyric Theatre Archive, T4/257.

Cast and creative listing for "The Death of Dracula"

For more from the Lyric archive, see catalogue in full here.

Abbey Theatre Digital Archive Partnership - Get the Facts

  

A DIGITAL JOURNEY THROUGH IRISH THEATRE
Abbey Theatre and NUI Galway Digital Archive Partnership

About the Abbey Theatre

 

·         Ireland’s National Theatre was founded by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1904.

·         Since its inception, the Abbey has played a key role in establishing who we are as a nation – by challenging, questioning and celebrating Irish-ness and Ireland.

·         The Abbey was founded to ‘bring upon the stage the deeper emotions of Ireland’. Today our mission is to create world-class theatre that reflects Irish life.

·         The Abbey has produced work by all four of Ireland’s Nobel laureates, premiering new plays by Yeats, Shaw and Heaney, while also producing several of Beckett’s works.

·         Over the past century :

Ø  616 playwrights have worked with the Abbey Theatre

Ø  Over 3,914 actors have thread the boards

Ø  70,000 characters have been brought to life

Ø  1,455 plays have been staged

Ø  600 costume and set designers have worked at the Abbey Theatre

 

About NUI Galway

 

·         Established in 1845, the National University of Ireland Galway is one of Ireland’s foremost centres of academic excellence.

·         NUI Galway has internationally-recognised research expertise in digital humanities and in Irish Theatre.

·         NUI Galway is home to an impressive collection of internationally significant archives in the fields of history, politics, theatre and literature.

·         The Archive Collection at the University’s James Hardiman Library comprises over 350 collections, dating from 1485 to the present.

 

About the abbey Archive

 

·         The Abbey Archive contains over 1.8 million items including:

 

Ø  Master programmes for over 4,300 productions 

Ø  Over 28,000 Press Cuttings

Ø  Video recordings of 430 productions

Ø  More than 6,000 scripts

Ø  600 Production posters

Ø  1,000 Production handbills

Ø  Over 16,000 photograph prints

Ø  600 Music Scores

Ø  Over 2,600 hours of audio files from the productions

Ø  6,000 pages of Minute Books

Ø  An extensive collection of costume and set designs

 

All forming part of the largest digitised theatre archive in the world.

 

About the Digitisation Project

 

·         The largest theatre digitisation project ever undertaken

 

·         133 years of Irish theatre, history, culture and society preserved for future generations (1904-2037)

 

·         Researchers, archivists and librarians at NUI Galway are applying the most advanced digital technology to Ireland’s most historic theatre archive to create a rich online collection.

 

·         It will take three years to digitise, with an estimated completion date of September 2015.

 

·         Digitisation of this historic Abbey Archive commenced on 4^th of September, 2012, in the James Hardiman Library on the NUI Galway campus.

 

·         The first phase of digital material will be available to researchers from September 2013, including collections of Master Programmes for 4,300 productions, video recordings of 430 productions, Audio Cues, Minute Books, Stage and Lighting Designs, Administrative Records and Logbooks of plays received by the Abbey.

 

·         New PhD students will be recruited and funded annually to undertake research on the digitized archive at NUI Galway.

 

·         Many more researchers and students will visit NUI Galway to view the digital Archive, while original documents will continue to be available to view at the Abbey Theatre.

 

·         It is envisaged that by 2020, the archive will have generated a substantial number of scholarly books and articles, public exhibitions, public lectures, documentaries, and new digital teaching and research resources.

·         The Archive Collection at the University’s James Hardiman Library comprises over 350 collections, dating from 1485 to the present. Theatre collections include the papers of Thomas Kilroy and the Shields Family Collection and there is a particular focus on the archives of companies such as the Druid Theatre, Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe and the Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast

 

 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

www.abbeytheatre.ie 

www.nuigalway.ie