We began our program on UC Berkeley campus and spent a week getting to know each other, rehearsing scenes from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and reading plays and critical writings including W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory's Cathleen ni Houlihan, J.M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World and Patricia Burke Brogan's Eclipsed.
Although we have only been in Ireland for one week, we have already been incredibly busy- settling in, welcoming artists into our classroom, going to class, and traveling to Cork for the Cork Midsummer Festival.
Our group: 20 students* and 2 teachers (Charlotte McIvor and Christine Nicholson). We have one month in Dublin at Trinity College, Dublin and plan to make the most of our stay.
To give you a sense of how busy we have been, here is our schedule for
just this first week! More detailed posts to come, but we'll begin with a basic rundown.
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After a campus tour, we went to Joe Joyce's The Tower at the New Theatre, which portrayed the relationship between writers James Joyce and Oliver St. John Gogarty. Famed Beckett actor Barry McGovern had to sub in for Tom Hickey at the last minute, and he and Bosco Hogan put on a great show with 30 minutes notice.
We read Mark O'Rowe's Howie the Rookie and welcomed actor Bern
Deegan into our class to perform a reading from the script.
Moments later, Sabine Dargent, one of Ireland's leading designers and
technical theatre artists, came into our classroom and led us through the
trajectory of her career, the meaning of scenography as an art and her
individual process for several shows including Fabulous Beast, Liam O Maonlai and Michael Keegan-Dolan's Rian which we got to see at the Cork Midsummer Festival this past weekend. Let's just say that production ended with many of us dancing on the stage!
In acting class, we performed our first scenes, Elastic Scenes from Waiting for Godot, and we got our scenes from the canon of Irish plays. We also got quizzed on these plays!
We then watched and read Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs and took the Luas out to the production of a new play by Focus Theatre at the Civic Theatre, Arthur Thomas Fanning's Griswold. We got to attend a talkback with the actors and playwright afterwards.
After more work in acting class, we then traveled to Cork together by bus and much excitement was had over sheep, dancing horses and castles.
Our line-up at the Festival?
Rian at the Cork Opera House on Friday.
We split up for Siamsa Tíre, The National Folk Theatre's What
the Folk! throughout the weekend.
Finally, we all went to Dylan Tighe's Record at Half Moon
Theatre together last night.
Our collective verdict on Cork and the Festival = love.
Charlotte and Christine are now doing work as we get ready to head back. Stay tuned for more details and our continuing adventures!
*UC Berkeley Irish Theater Today 2012 students: Saba Bekele, Mayhan Bimar, Kambrya Blake, Katherine Burriss, Danielle Diaz, Juan Garcia, Lauren Hart, Ariel Jacobsen, Fion Lau, Galvin Mathis, Kody Messner, Maya Miesner, Emma Nicholls, Ani Nina Oganyan, Julia Price, Alana Reese, Diana Vergara, Kasondra Walsh, and Moni Wright.
UC Berkeley in front of the Trinity College, Dublin Berkeley Library.
Our now traditional shot!
