Community Theatre – Petty Court Sessions

Dunshaughlin Harvest Festival is fast approaching but the buzz already started a couple of months ago when Oulala Productions were approached by the festival committee: they wanted to bring the old courthouse back to life and give festival-goers a taste of the Petty Sessions as they used to be, back in the 1800s.

A period piece, site-specific, in its original setting, involving research, writing, costumes and enthusiastic performers from the community... what else could we ask for?

We got to work and immersed ourselves in the dark but fascinating times of the Famine, of Meath and its colourful characters, of quirky cases, moving human stories and how the good people of Dunshaughlin may have travelled to escape the hunger. In our writing, we could not ignore the political background of the times and had to include a very well-know English gentleman who changed the fate of many Irish children. We could not leave out the (in)famous Workhouse either... which, from the staff or the inmates, caused the most shenanigans? I'll say no more! Just maybe that we are thrilled to be part of this wonderful project; how much we have learnt so far and laughed and cried... and that's before the rehearsals even started!


Is it a coincidence that our last stage production was set in a courthouse, too? Maybe the Law likes us... let's hope it will last and that the only time we will have to stand in front of a Judge again, will be to adjust his wig and help him with his lines!

See you all on the 23rd, 24th and 25th of September in Dunshaughlin's Courthouse.

Work it, make it, do it, makes us...

Today I helped to transform Trinity college into an institute for the permanently bewildered. At first we wanted to create a prison but we felt that an asylum would be more in keeping with the air of manic holiday-making as tourists hotfooted it around the yards and green spaces in search of celtic treasures. I was taking part in the Ahead of the Game workshop organised by Make-and-Do-PlayFair . It was led by Duncan Speakman, director of Subtlemob and all round instigator of silent street events. Duncan likes invisible theatre, the kind that happens while watching people move through everyday life. He likes technology, the kind that everyone has in their pockets - mobile phones, headphones, mp3's. He showed us how to use these everyday gadgets to create cinematic soundscapes which made the brick and stone buildings of Trinity fade away in front of our eyes.

We took turns experimenting with headphone tours. The university became a playground, a puzzle or a pilgrimage, depending on how we varied the sensory layers. We could scale it up visually or bring it down to microscopic level, speed it up to panic stations or slow the pace back through the use of voice and sound effects. In the afternoon we created a walking tour of the new state of the art Trinity Centre for the Permanently Bewildered, complete with cobble-stone therapy, bicycle recreation and other progressive rehabilitation techniques.

We learned how to create ghosts using cameras. We learned how the simplest of actions can have the most unexpected and unintended of consequences. We played mobile-phone hide and seek. Even the tourists played their part, walking around in circles and stopping every now and then as they tried to figure out what exactly they were supposed to be looking at. Rules of game-playing became apparent as we experimented. There were rules and a lot of the time they were asking to be broken.

It was great to just spend the day with like minded mischief-makers. Workshops are great for that. I also loved the fact that it was quick and easy to create little worlds and to see people enter them. It was quick to see what worked and what didn't and how to change it next time so that it worked better. It was the sort of workshop where you are sitting on the bus on the way home, thinking of different scenarios and how to pan them out using different methods.