Plays

Following a hugely successful run at Cork Midsummer Festival ‘19, The Bluffer’s Guide to Suburbia went on to present at the Dublin Theatre Festival ‘19 @ Project Arts Centre.

It’s nearly 20 years since Finn left his family home in the Dublin suburbs for a chance to be the next darling on the indie circuit. But his music career has gone down the tubes, the blinding London lights have burned him out, and he’s on the ferry home with empty pockets and his guitar strap between his legs.

From the concrete jungle of the N31 to a painfully hip music festival on the white sands of the Aran Islands, The Bluffer’s Guide to Suburbia lovingly exposes a generation of adult children living back in the home, struggling to fit into the nuclear family ideal, and trying to make music in the face of rental crises and global catastrophe.

Following the success of Mimic (2007), Alice in Funderland (THISISPOPBABY/Abbey Theatre 2012) and Deep (2013), Ray Scannell made his DTF writing debut with this new apocalyptic black comedy with live music and original songs.

This production was funded by the Arts Council.

Photos by Colm Hogan (video & additional pic by Laura Sheeran)

• Written and composed by Ray Scannell

• Directed by Tom Creed

• Set and Lighting Design by Sinéad McKenna

• Sound Design and Additional Composition by Peter Power

• Costume Design by Saileóg O’Halloran 

• Video Design by Jack Phelan

• Produced by Naomi Daly and Maura O’Keeffe

   

  Performed by Ray Scannell, Peter Power and Christiane O’Mahony

The rise and fall of Ireland’s first House Music club

SWEAT@ Sir Henry’s

It’s the summer of 1988 and Cork’s emigration generation are following the beat… in perfect time, for a Music Movement simmering from Ireland’s first House Club.

Sir Henry’s was the spiritual home of Cork’s first generation of House fanatics. Deep takes us on a journey through the peaks and troughs of an era. Through the rose-tinted, smiley-faced, glasses of hapless vinyl-junkie, Larry Lehane.

Part fiction, part-documentary, Deep features interviews with the club’s main figures and footage of nights at the club.

(Premiered at the Cork Midsummer Festival 2013. Supported by an Arts Council Theatre Project Award. Developed at MAKE, a residential workshop facilitated by Cork Midsummer Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, Project Arts Centre and Theatre Forum, and Fringe Lab with the support of Dublin Fringe Festival)

(2014 National Tour funded by the Arts Council Touring and Dissemination of Work scheme 2014)

Photos by Mark Duggan

Previous Presentations: Venues, Autumn 2014

• October 14th, The Dock Leitrim

• October 17th & 18th, Half Moon Theatre, Cork

• October 25th, Riverbank Arts Centre, Kildare

Previous Presentations: Festivals, Summer 2014

• 8pm, July 3rd, 69, O’Connell Street, Limerick as part of the Make A Move Festival

• 9pm, July 10th, The Factory Performing Space, Quay Road, Sligo as part of the Cairde Festival

• 7.30pm, July 14th and 9.30pm July 15th – 19th, Raddission Live Lounge, Galway as Part of the Galway International Arts Festival

• 9pm August 9th & 10th and 13th – 17th, Cleere’s Theatre, Kilkenny as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival

• 9pm, August 29th, Cultivate Sound Stage @ Global Green

• Electric Picnic
  

Mimic

Written and Composed by Ray Scannell

Directed and designed by Tom Creed

Julian Neary, a professional Mimic and comedian who found fame early but whose fortunes have plummeted, returns home to Ireland expecting to find the island of saints & scholars he rebelled against as a child. But finds instead a barren landscape of abandoned houses and ghostly shopping centres. Using extreme storytelling and powerfully emotive live music, Mimic is a blackly humorous near-futuristic fable on National Identity.

First performed at the Cork Midsummer Festival 2007, Mimic played the Galway Arts Festival ‘08 (‘One of Europes most important cultural events’ – BBC) the Kilkenny Arts Festival ’08 (An international festival that is becoming a viable alternative to Edinburgh  The Guardian) and Dublin Fringe Festival ’08, where it picked up an award for ‘Best Male Performance’.

Mimic went on to perform internationally at PS122, New York as part of the COIL Festival 2010, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris 2010 and the Irish Arts Center, New York 2011. As well as the Bristol Old Vic Proms in 2014.

Performed and underscored on a piano, this one-man tour-de-force is a unique and entertaining vision of what happens to a nation that forgets its heritage.

Photos by Michael McSweeney & Colm Hogan