What’s been happening in 2009… Public Readings
Another strand in our engagement with writers is our short commission process…
Began in 2007 with 20:Love, this process is designed to afford us an opportunity to commission writers who we have never worked with before.
The process is similar to our full commission in that we ask the writer to submit a first and final draft of their script, and offer them full dramaturgical support. It differs in that the plays are geared towards a public reading, and we provide a short rehearsal process, a venue, actors and an experienced director.
We kicked off our short commission process in June this year with The Fairer Sex, public readings of six new short plays by Rosemary Jenkinson, Claire Kilroy, Deirdre Kinahan, Lisa McGee and Ursula Rani Sarma. The plays were read over two nights to full houses and great audience responses. We’re looking forward to developing our relationship with these writers over the coming months and years!
September was spent attending as many new plays in the Fringe Festival as possible and meeting some very interesting new writers. Come October we were ready for a break, but instead we decided to launch ourselves into some development work as part of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival by presenting a public reading of Shibboleth, a work in progress by Stacey Gregg which we had co-commissioned with the Goethe Institute as part of the After the Fall festival.
In October we also presented our second set of short commissions this year: Gach Áit Eile, three new Irish language plays by Celia de Fréine, Dave Duggan and Aodh Ó Domhnaill which we had commissioned in early 2009. Paul Mercier came on board to direct all three, and after a couple of months of development work, we presented them as public readings on the Peacock stage and then in An Chultúrlann as part of the Ulster Bank Festival at Queens. Audience response in both Dublin and Belfast was fantastic.
This is the first step in a process of engagement with Irish language audiences which we will continue to work at in the future.
While in Belfast in October with Gach Áit Eile we also presented a reading of Autonomous Forces, a new play commission by Gary Mitchell. This was a great opportunity to present the play for a Northern audience.