Autumn Royale in Project Arts sells out and Rozzie is a sad Rozzie

OK, I know Kevin Barry is good but I am genuinely shocked that all 4 shows in Dublin sold out! That sounds silly, I know that I wouldn’t have guessed that they’d all go. His play, Autumn Royale is touring currently and it got a 5-star review in the Independent today. It is fabulous news for the Kevin but not so fabulous for me.

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Please, tour again, Kevin and this time I promise I will get the tickets the SECOND they come out. I’ll queue really early or something and bring coffee and breakfast and be the first in the queue to get those golden tickets!

Aumtun Royal-written by Kevin Barry is COMING! Full excitement overload!

A new play by Kevin Barry (Beatlebone and City of Bohane) is a-coming! Here is the story below…..

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May and Timothy are looking after the father – the father has long since taken to the bed.  Their own lives are curtailed, closed down, and they’re not getting any younger. Should they stay or should they go?

A dark, dark comedy, set on the northside of Cork city, Autumn Royal is a play about life and death, love and hate, hysterical dependency, jealousy, rage, horror, and homicidal notions – or, in other words, it’s a play about a family.

In case you did not know, Kevin Barry is the multi-award winning writer of the novels Beatlebone and City Of Bohane and the story collections Dark Lies The Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. Autumn Royal is his first piece written originally for the stage.

On in the Everyman Theatre, Cork: 

DATE AND TIME | MON 30 JAN – SAT 4 FEB, 8PM | PREVIEWS WED 25, THU 26 & SUN 29 JAN

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

07 February 2017-11 February 2017 7.45pm

The Dock, Carrick On Shannon

Thu 23 February, 8:30pm

I am hoping to get there if the M-boy can be cared for nicely by some kind girl or family member.

Get excited, bound to brilliant and dark….

 

Open University’s Writing Course-free!

I am studying an OU course on “Beginning writing fiction” at the moment, most of it is targeted at beginners. It focuses on how to get ideas, how to write and where etc. But, over the 8 week period, it has moved onto interesting and new content for me. For example, this week in Week 2, it discusses how to give feedback and how to accept it. I find this is a skill that I struggle with sometimes. It can be hard not to take things personally but this article teaches you how to take your ego out of your piece.

feedback

I have attached it below. The course can be located at www.futurelearn.com

commenting and receiving feedback

Review:The Amber Fury by Natalie Haynes

I read this book slowly at first but once it took off, half way through, I was fixated on racing towards the climax!
The Amber Fury is a psychological novel, a genre I haven’t read in a while and a guilty pleasure, to be honest.

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It’s a story about Alex, a teacher who we know is grieving but we don’t know why. We hear her story through direct narration and this intersperses with diary entries from one of her students.
Alex moves of Edinburgh from London to try to cope with her grief and loss and takes on a drama therapy class at a very challenging school type place. She has a full caseload and is warned off a certain group of students. One of these students is the second teller of the story. Alex teaches them all about Greek tragedies, probably not a good idea to teach about the passion of murder and mayhem as per Sophocles. She covers all the plays that I personally love, giving a neat summary for the non Greek tragedy reader. This works well as it seamlessly weaved into the story, with plays like Electra and Oedipus the King. It’s only when we start to see the students really engage with the themes and actions of the characters in the tragedies that we predict the real tragedy of the story.
This is a very engaging and well written story that paces along well, it’s a story about grief and about how humans simply want to connect with each other. A story of boundaries between student and teacher and how these can be manipulated. A story of a chaotic tragedy where the reader will feel sympathy for the good and bad guy. And they are the hallmarks of good Greek tragedy.
It’s published by Corvus Publishers.
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Riverrun at the Kilkenny Arts Festival

I caught “Riverrun” production in Watergate Theatre this afternoon. Riverrun is showing at the Kilkenny Arts Festival all week and it runs tonight and tomorrow for matinee and evening. Then, it’s gone!

If you want to suspend life and let go, if you love Joyce, if you hate Joyce, if you have never read Finnegan’s Wake or you have, if you want to be blown away by some serious stage presence in the form Olwen Fouéré then you must go!

Olwen is a fascinating lady to watch and listen as she interprets the voice of the river from Finnegan’s Wake. A sound dance that you will not understand but you will feel!