Teen Drama

A play about the Great War and 1916
Uprising. Available in the NAYD playshare
scheme and widely performed.

Working with teens either in school settings or other venues it is good to look for meaty topics that can expand awareness from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic. Drama’s potential to expand our sense of the human condition is not to be wasted!  Plus we give ourselves topics that yield lots of depth over time with hooks, hidden characters, latent themes and back stories.

Expanding awareness of human struggles, the comedic, the tragic and inspiring broadens the teenagers’ awareness of their own and others entanglements and search for clarity, meaning and recognition. At the same time, it offers opportunities to explore emotional depths, expressive potentials and story realms that are relevant and can build compassion, insight and depth.

Working as an ensemble to meet a deadline with a social end builds discipline, resilience and organisational skill.

How can we maximise this?

Out of a study of the History of Drama which included Antigone, The Frogs, Shaw and Shakespeare, the group really wanted not comedy but tragedy and were ecstatic to take on King Lear which we took on tour in Ireland, performing in Ennis, Kilkenny, and Tuamgraney.

Some people question doing Lear with teenagers but this was the third time I had directed it and just as in previous times, I found they truly loved it and met an incredible transcendence through it. What can you do after Lear? Of course the Lear has to have the strength and stamina for the enormous range and length the part asks for. Supported by strong characters all around and steeped in the spirit of play and ensemble, having worked together for so many years and ultimately ballasted by the brilliant bard, they soared.

Our set design was particularly cool with staves as a recurring image, a percussive stick routine to open arrestingly and get the players’ blood moving, and simple tall tripods of staves from which we hung banners, flags, shields and emblems. All made by the students and easily portable. Cliff and I collaborated on the flyer and were quite proud of that one.

Developing a Play with
the Tuamgraney Theatremakers 

This play was developed with a mixed age group from 13 to 20years old called  The Tuamgraney Theatremakers. Through games, improvisation  and discussion we worked through various ideas for a play.

1917 Russian Play

The formative event in Irish land history, the Bodyke Eviction was a tremendous group improvisation but did not have traction for the group to want to develop  further. It is a great theme but the group cannot be forced. We played around with sieges and extreme events and recreated the 20c Leningrad Siege, reputedly the worst siege in history. Russia has magnetism for teens with its extremes of intensity which  has a natural resonance with teenagers.

I brought in two Chekov one act comedies to kick off the new year which were hugely popular. As characters grew: the mentally damaged poet in the asylum, the bullying landowner, the obsessed, the lovesick and the bored, cooks, old aristocrats and a put upon dispossessed goatboy. Soon we had our tale which synchronised  with the Bolshevik Revolution only a hundred years earlier. The turbulence sets the scene as the Rostapovitch family are catapaulted into their country home, a month earlier than usual and so set the cook, the locals and their own family into a hilariously corkscrew comedy where each person has a driving momentum that inevitably clash, create friction and eventually resolution.

Hypnosis was hugely popular in Russia after the trauma of the Great War, offering a serendipitous plot mechanism and comedic potential, as well as alluding to a serious historical conflict which is played out on a larger and a smaller scale  in this farce.

If you want to use this play contact me 
Suitable for ages 13 to 21 years and up

A Wild Goose Chase

....is a play ALFA is producing this year. This is another farce loosely based on the life of Richard Puckridge, an Eighteenth century inventor who created the first glass harp. The first scene opens in a dance academy in Cadiz where an obsessive dance teacher, Consuela, unfolds her plan to steal the harp with the help of her seafaring brother, Alejandro and so inject new life into the great Spanish Ranfanfanfantasticofandango that may otherwise be eclipsed forever by the new French dance of ballet.

Against a background of The Great Frost of 1739, the Irish Penal Codes and the secret Hedge schools and the role of music for both men and women in the 18c, this madcap comedy is stuffed with music and dance and offers us a gallery of characters who are hurled together as the story unfolds: Irish grave diggers and  ghosts, smugglers, a pedantic dictionary compiler, identical cousins, one French one, one Spanish, a trio of singing sisters and Richard Puckridge and his sister Lettice, to name a few.

A brief excerpt from
A Wild Goose Chase

Many of the parts were inspired by what we revealed through improvisation. Other parts came unbidden to serve our story which is ultimately about fusion, blend diversity and tolerance. We are all brothers and art is not competitive but life affirming.

Next week we begin rehearsing with Stephanie Keane who is bringing her fantastic blend of Irish and Iberian dance as seen in her work with band Sporco Blanco. Dawn Zabala Dickey has been working on music with classical songs from Handel and Purcell. This week  we move into traditional Irish folk songs.