Dear fellow Actors & Actresses,

Another bulletin with some interesting opportunities out there. Some
workshops, an audition notice, a few projects and a play, so a bit of
everything out there for you. Hope is useful!

Best wishes,

Marcus

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Dear Friends,

Here is another bulletin with some interesting events from the world of theatre in Cork and Ireland. I hope you find it useful. For those of you thinking of training seriously in theatre pay special attention to the first entry, the Kinsale Full-time Drama Course. They are accepting submissions at the moment and its a wonderful course.

Best wishes,

Marcus

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Went to see End of the Line in the Granary the other evening, it’s an excellent show. Since it’s friends of mine, you might think I’m biased and not believe me, in which case maybe the great Irish Times review it got might sway you

Showing in the Granary tonight and tomorrow night. Last chances to see it!

From the Irish Times

End of the Line

Cork Midsummer Festival: Granary

A crisp directorial style from Donal Gallagher makes the very most of End of the Line , one of the first theatrical events of the Cork Midsummer Festival. The play by Romanian actor and author Paul Ioachim is set on a railway track selected as the ideal suicide method and location by three otherwise unconnected characters.

Ioachim has a light touch, or at least in this translation by Cristina Catalina and adaptation by Jody O’Neill his writing is undecorated. The jokes come without embellishment, but they come and they are so good as to make anyone wonder why this piece is only an hour long and what more Ioachim might do if the plot were darkened even a little or weighted with something more than the skilful inconsequentiality of this work.

Although the players have worked to match and convey the writer’s skill, there is a sense of a gleeful seizure of the nonsense as the balding meteorologist, the failed (or at least failing) actress and the man fromGod-knows- where realise they have been waiting at the wrong side of the station, possibly all their lives.

Jody O’Neill, Carl Kennedy and Dan Tudor give performances as precise as the writing and as pleasurable. Lighting and sound design (Adam McElderry and Carl Kennedy) , set and costumes by Medb Lambert and a shared comic accomplishment all add to the distinction of this presentation. Until Saturday

Mary Leland

John McCarthy of Hammergrin graciously agreed to answer a few questions about The Iowa Project.

Q1. Where did the idea for the project come from?
The festival director, William Galinsky, really liked last year’s Threat of Humour, and met us to discuss working on a project for this year. He encouraged us to read the works of Philip K. Dick, feeling we’d riff off them well, and we did, and ran with it for the last six months.

Q2. What was the inspiration for the marketing campaign?
The poster picks up on the 50s comic book feel of the show, the blurb eggs up the classic sci-fi tone to the script, and the flyer (attached) is basically a cheap pun which allows us to advertise the show and feel better than normal people.

Q3. How much did the venue influence your ideas?
Massively. It is such a great space that we had to work with it, rather than against it, using the warehouse as a set, rather than trying to turn it into a theatre space. A lot of the show will take place in daylight, which streaks in the high windows and casts an eery glow over proceddings. The script was largely finished when we got in there but the way scenes unfolded and connected only came together when we got into the warehouse. It changed some big ideas in the script, in a good way.

[Ed - You can see a sneak preview of the set here.]

Q4. How does it relate to previous Hammergrin productions/events?
It taps into that 50s Americana which so informed The Threat of Humour and Trying Jokes - that ultra-serious masculine world which takes itself so seriosly it is actually funny.

Q5. Why did you choose the Midsummer Festival for this project?
Without the clout of the Midsummer behind this we wouldn’t have the budget, the pr, or a name sufficient to get the venue for the show. And the inspiration of Philip K.Dick wouldn’t have been there without William’s interest in Hammergrin.

The Old Distillery, North Mall
Sunday 22 – Saturday 28 June, 9pm
Tickets €15/€12

The people who brought you Trying Jokes and The Threat of Humour are back!

That’s right, Hammergrin return to the Midsummer Festival once more, with what has been hailed as “their most adventurous project to date” by festival director William Galinsky.

From the blackness of a hundred million nights and through the depths of the psyche emerges the noble fight of four US government agents, Team Alpha, and their bid to give a great nation its own great literary giant. Their subject: Philip K. Dick!

Using a mysterious new technology - H.A.C.K. - the world’s first mind reading machine — Team Alpha will probe beyond space, into the unknown and beyond the mysteries of the sixth sense, in an attempt to crack a literary code that counterspies of every nation would risk their lives to get!

Join Mitch, Douglas, Nathan and Ava as they enter a world where there is no why…

You can read Hammergrin producer John McCarthy answer 5 of our questions here, and check out a sneaky-peak of their set here.

The Old Distillery, North Mall
Sunday 22 – Saturday 28 June, 9pm
Tickets €15/€12