Abbey feel the need for writers!

2009-03-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

The Abbey Theatre got a pretty hard time at the Writing Contemporary Ireland workshop/seminar last week. And rightly so! I was, however, encouraged to see this on Theatre Forum today.

The Abbey Theatre Literary Department is to present two exciting new writing initiatives in 2009.

The first of these, is the Abbey’s New Playwrights Programme, an 11-month programme built to support 6 talented, emerging playwrights.

The selected participants will partake in a series of workshops and talks with international and Abbey writers, directors, actors and designers. They will also undertake workshops with Abbey staff members on voice-work, language, composition and play structure. The participants will have a special opportunity to watch rehearsals, see behind-the-scenes of new plays commissioned by the national theatre and attend opening nights. In this way they will gain access to a knowledge of theatre and the breadth of collaborative work that goes into staging a play which they wouldn’t be able to access anywhere else in Ireland. Those taking part are not obliged to develop a play during the programme, however, the literary department will offer dramaturgical support throughout the eleven months. The participants of this year’s programme are Aidan Harney, Lisa Keogh, Shona McCarthy, Jody O’Neill, Neil Sharpson and Lisa Tierney Keogh. All of these writers were specially invited to participate in the programme by the Literary Department with three of the playwrights coming to the department’s attention through the Abbey’s unsolicited manuscript process.

To date they have had a workshop with dramaturg Graham Whybrow, they will be doing another one with Tim Crouch at the end of March; they've also met forinformal discussions with Marina Carr and Sam Shepard and have been attending dress rehearsals for Abbey plays.

The second initiative from the Abbey’s Literary Department takes place during the week of 15 June. Six 20 minute plays have been commissioned from female writers under the theme of ‘The Fairer Sex’. Those writers are Rosemary Jenkinson, Claire Kilroy, Deirdre Kinahan, Lisa McGee, Elaine Murphy and Ursula Rani Sarma.

The Fairer Sex was mentioned at the seminar and I was aware of the New Playwrights Programme already but it is still an encouraging update and I thought I'd share it with you all here to get the ball rolling (or the blog as the case may be :P)

When I see The Abbey producing a play by Aidan Harney, Lisa Keogh, Shona McCarthy, Jody O’Neill, Neil Sharpson or Lisa Tierney Keogh, or a full-length play by Rosemary Jenkinson, Claire Kilroy, Deirdre Kinahan, Lisa McGee, Elaine Murphy or Ursula Rani Sarma, I'll get really excited!

Eoin O hAnnrachain.

Writing Contemporary Ireland with Mark O' Halloran and Madani Younis

2009-03-10T11:12:00.000-07:00

A continuing professional development workshop hosted by Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts, in partnership with Filmbase.

The workshop is aimed at emerging and established writers, theatre makers and film makers who are interested in exploring approaches to representing culturally diverse communities and creating new work that reflects the diversity of contemporary Ireland.