Patrick Pearse’s The King debuts at the Mill.
Written by Patrick Pearse
Directed by Geoff O’Keeffe
Presented by Balally Players Theatre Company
Wednesday 30th March – Friday 1 April 8pm €14/12
(Post show discussions follow each performance with Brian Crowley, Elaine Sissons and Diarmaid Ferriter)
As part of the 1916 Anniversary celebrations, Balally Players Theatre Company present a vibrant, immediate and insightful reimagining of the rarely performed The King by Patrick Pearse. Fusing choral movement and voice, specially commissioned live music and a large ensemble cast, this will be a celebration of the artistic, political and cultural importance of Pearse’s work for the theatre. Written in 1912, The King is a conversation about the glory and savagery of war, and while Pearse hints at a yearning for sacrifice for the common good, he presents both sides of the debate. It becomes a medium through which Pearse can examine notions of Irish identity.
In this milestone year of huge cultural significance, the production seeks to remember a shared history through the creativity of a community finding new ways of telling old stories.
POST SHOW DISCUSSION EVERY NIGHT:
Wednesday March 30th : Brian Crowley
Author Brian Crowley is the curator of the Pearse Museum at Pearse’s former school Scoil Eanna/St. Enda’s in Rathfarnham, Dublin. Originally from Naas, Co. Kildare, he studied English and History in Trinity College and then completed a Masters in Museology in the University of East Anglia. Brian is a former guide in Kilmainham Gaol & Museum. He has been working at the Pearse Museum since 2001 and is also a director of the Irish Museums Association and has served as editor of its journal, ‘Museums Ireland’. Author of Patrick Pearse A Life in Pictures.
Thursday March 31st: Dr. Elaine Sissons
Dr Elaine Sisson is Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology and IADT Fellow at the newly established Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Dublin. She completed a PhD at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin. Her work addresses the importance of the visual in reconsidering textual biases within traditional literary and historiographical analysis. She is the author of Pearse’s Patriots: St Enda’s and the Cult of Boyhood (Cork University Press, 2004 repr. 2005) and co-editor of Made in Ireland Visualising Modernity 1922-1992.
Friday April 1st: Prof. Diarmaid Ferriter
Diarmaid Ferriter is one of Ireland’s best- known historians and is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD. His books include The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 (2004), Judging Dev: A Reassessment of the life and legacy of Eamon de Valera (2007) and Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (2009). His most recent book, Ambiguous Republic: Ireland in the 1970s was published in 2012. He is a regular broadcaster on television and radio and a weekly columnist with the Irish Times.