Director Fiach Mac Conghail announces the Peacock season
Our programme for the Peacock stage offers a different but complementary season to our programme on the Abbey stage. It continues my commitment to present work that is vital, challenging and entertaining and which engages with the big, sometimes difficult, questions of our time. Here, in this most intimate of performance spaces, some of Ireland’s most talented artists and writers such as Jean Butler, Mary Raftery and Gerard Mannix Flynn and directors Tom Creed, Wayne Jordan, Róisín McBrinn reflect on history, politics, tradition to explore, question and make connections with Ireland today.
As The Waterboys get ready to kick off a series of concerts based on the poems of W.B. Yeats on the Abbey stage, we present two readings of the writer’s plays entitled Reading Yeats. Tom Creed directs the overtly political, Cathleen Ni Houlihan and Wayne Jordan, our new Associate Director, directs On Baile’s Strand, one of Yeats’ most popular works, based on the mythic tale of Cuchulain. There will be a talk by a leading expert on Yeats before the readings each night. This event begins a dedicated programme exploring and celebrating the plays of W. B. Yeats over the coming years.
In April, we present The Darkest Corner, a series of presentations which aim to shine a light into what An Taoiseach Brian Cowen called ‘the darkest corner of the history of the State’. He was responding to the publication of the Report from the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, commonly known as the Ryan Report. Our response, The Darkest Corner, will begin with No Escape, a piece of documentary theatre in response to the findings of the Ryan Report, compiled and edited by journalist Mary Raftery. Mary’s 1999 film States of Fear and follow up book Suffer the Little Children exposed the widespread abuse of children in institution run by the Church. This work marks a major departure for the Abbey Theatre by commissioning and producing documentary theatre to investigate current or recent events in Irish society.
We will continue with a public reading of Richard Johnson’s controversial play, The Evidence I Shall Give, a play which was referred to in the Ryan Report and first produced by the Abbey Theatre in 1961. The Darkest Corner concludes with Farcry’s Production of Gerard Mannix Flynn’s powerful production of James X.
In May, we are delighted to host, once again, Dublin Dance Festival. Dance is one of my favourite art forms and I am very pleased that we are continuing the Abbey Theatre tradition of commissioning and presenting dance work with this new piece DAY with Jean Butler.
We hope to see you at the Abbey Theatre over the forthcoming season and I hope you will be engaged, challenged and entertained.
Le gach dea-ghuí,
Fiach Mac Conghail
Director/Stiúrthóir
PS Don’t forget that Elaine Murphy’s delightful play Little Gem is on the Peacock stage until the end of the month. It’s playing to packed houses, so do book soon.
