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"There is so much to excavate through banter, wordplay, song and sadness that one exits ... captivated and definitely unsettled." **** The Irish Times
Supported by the Arts Council and Cork City Council, with further support from The Everyman, Cork Midsummer Festival and Garter Lane Arts Centre
The Settling
The Settling opened to much acclaim in the Granary Theatre at the 2023 Cork Midsummer Festival.
In the silence he heard soft footsteps. A girl stands in his doorway. A sneeze, a sigh, and...“Tell me a story”. In a collapsed cottage Old Man and Little Girl spend their days eating tinned pears, telling stories, and digging holes. Old Man is reckoning with his past. His daily functioning relies on the companionship of the mysterious child, but their fragile co-existence is fractured when the weight of his past comes to bear. Exploring the personal and mental consequences of complicity, enter Gavin McEntee’s world between reality and imagination - and see what happens when we must finally bear the weight of our actions.
Writer Gavin McEntee
Director Deirdre Dwyer
Cast Raymond Keane, Katie Honan, George Hanover
Set Design Deirdre Dwyer
Lighting Design Sarah Jane Shiels
Sound Design Kevin Terry
Costume Design Jessica Healy-Rettig
Producer - Fin Flynn
Company Liaison and Production Support - Ronan FitzGibbon
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FOUND
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Bridget Jones meets Indiana Jones, with talking fish, in a joy-filled night of theatre, traditional storytelling, and music directed by Julie Kelleher.
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Found premiered in the 2023 Cork Midsummer Festival, before going on to the Clonmel Junction Festival.
Inspired by writer and performer Aideen Wylde’s deep connection to the province of Newfoundland, Canada—her ‘backwards genealogy’—FOUND is a wild, and weirdly wonderful mishmash of traditions, from here and there, that make the Irish of both places ‘a people divided by time’.
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Supported by the Arts Council, with further support from The Everyman Theatre, Clonmel Junction Arts Festival, Cork Midsummer Festival and Garter Lane Arts Centre.
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“An interrogation of the myths and mists of the Irish diaspora.” **** The Irish Times
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Written by Aideen Wylde Directed by Julie Kelleher
Line Producer - Hugh Farrell Sound Design by Tyler Kieffer
Set and Lighting Design by Brian Mitchell Music by Kevin McNamara
Costume/Props by Medb Lambert Production Manager - Hanan Sheedy Company Liaison - Rosie O'Regan
Production Support by Ronan FitzGibbon
Cast:
Aideen Wylde, Aidan Crowe, Fiona McGarry, Cathal Ryan and Siobhan Callaghan
OUR TETHERED KIN
Aeni and Abrafo are two children abandoned on the edge of the darkest of Woods. Our Tethered Kin tells their story in a world where the beast that guide the hand of man are seen on stage. It is a story of what happens when you reject these parts of yourself and what happens when you give them free reign. It is a story of two paths through the Dark Woods told through music, puppetry and movement.
(Photo by Enrique Carnicero. Feat Claire Keating and Graham Butler-Breen)
Our Tethered Kin premiered in the Everyman, Cork in February 2023 before going on to a sell-out run on the Abbey Theatre’s Peacock Stage.
Written and designed by Ronan FitzGibbon
Directed by Gavin McEntee and Evan Lordon
Movement Direction by Charles Sandford
Line Production by Sadhbh Barrett Coakley
Assistant Producer - Aideen Wylde
Music by Emily Donoghue
Sound by Fiona Shiel
Lighting by Sara Jane Shiels
Costume Design by Deirdre Dwyer
Production Management by Donal McNinch
Stage Management by Aoife Byrne
Assistant Stage Management by Andrew Crowley
Performed by
Claire Keating, Katie Honan, Raymond Keane, George Hanover, Rosie O’Regan, Dylan Kennedy, Emily Kilkenny-Roddy and Graham Butler-Breen.
Made possible with the support of The Abbey and The Arts Council. Special thanks to The Everyman, Graffiti Theatre, the Dalata Group, Bruce Perkins Furniture, Kathrin Greif-Maher, Carl Kennedy, Rachel Ní Bhraoinain, Conall Morrisson, Conall O’Riain, EPIC Productions and Enrique Carnicero.
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"Beautifully staged" - Irish Times
"A masterclass" - The Arts Review
BLACKWATER BABBLE
What makes a good singsong? What makes a great one? This is a story of forty Summers spent trying to answer that question. Forty Summers of rowing down the Blackwater river stopping in every pub along the way. Every noble call. Every session. Every maudlin ballad that killed a night and every table-thumping favourite that saved one!
Blackwater Babble premiered in the 2018 Cork Midsummer Festival with a sell-out run in Callanas Pub, before going on a National Tour in January of 2020.
Written and designed by Ronan FitzGibbon.
Directed by Joe Meagher
Produced by Sadhbh Barrett-Coakley
Costumes by Deirdre Dwyer
“Like a deeply etched portrait hanging on the wall of the pub.” ~ Liam Heylin, Evening Echo
(photo by Enrique Carnicero)
(Featuring Aideen Wylde and George Hanover)
LEVIN & LEVIN
Levin & Levin is the story of Bubbie and Ida, escapees from the Russian pogroms of the early 1900s. Dressed as boys to save their lives, the girls eventually become Europe’s most famous male impersonators. But on the night of their Broadway debut disaster strikes, and the Levins are forced to question everything they ever thought about everything they ever knew…
The Creative Team were Bryan Burroughs, Veronica Coburn, John O’Brien, Deirdre Dwyer, Ger Fitzgibbon, Alex Petcu, George Hanover and Aideen Wylde
Levin & Levin made their first curtain at The Everyman Cork, April 2017; Dublin Fringe Festival 2017
“an ambitious [..] whirlwind history” – Peter Crawley, The Irish Times
Presented with thanks to The Everyman, The Arts Council of Ireland, Cork City Council, Fishamble New Play Clinic
Dark Kingdom
DARK KINGDOM
Dark Kingdom is a theatrical adventure inspired by the world that Kevin Barry’s writing evokes. Focusing primarily on The Wintersong from There Are Little Kingdoms and Ernestine and Kit from Dark Lies The Island, this adaptation invites the audience into an unwholesome and deliciously vicious version of an Ireland that is both familiar and uncanny.
The show premiered at Cork Midsummer Festival 2016, GRANARY THEATRE, 17TH – 26TH JUNE 2016.
The Creative team were Rosie O’Regan, Eadaoin O’Donoghue, Deirdre Dwyer, Chris Schmidt-Martin, Rob Moloney, George Hanover and Aideen Wylde with performers Damien Punch, Noelle O’Regan and Karen Kelleher
”a sly and surreal production in which BrokenCrow, a wickedly good company, take on bigotry and presumptions about the elderly as a conservative generation” ~ Chris McCormack, Musings and Intermissions
Presented with thanks to the Cork Midsummer Festival, MAKE, an artist development programme and residency initiative of Cork Midsummer Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, Project Arts Centre and Theatre Forum.Lead Artist: Rosie O’Regan
(photo by Izabela Szczutkowska. Featuring Karen Kelleher, Noelle O’Regan, Rosie O’Regan, George Hanover, Aideen Wylde and Damian Punch)
(photo by Enrique Carnicero. Featuring Mark D’Aughton, Ciaran Bermingham, Tadhg Hickey, Eadaoin O’Donoghue, Dominic Moore, Dominic Kelleher and Nicholas Kavanagh)
ENTER JULIET
It’s a matter of life or death.
Enter Juliet is a darkly comic tale of the abandoned mad. It is a riveting story of the starving and trapped, of power struggles, lunacy and the stories we tell ourselves to get through the day.
Trapped and long since forgotten, our group have fallen into a social order, an order that is challenged by one of their rank producing an ill-remembered, mongrel Shakespearean play. They perform and are rewarded with food from a hatch. So they perform again and again… and again… but the food doesn’t come. Still they cling to the hope that their patchwork play might save them but are so weak and addled that they can no longer even remember their real names.
Must the show really go on?
Enter Juliet premiered on the Everyman Stage in July of 2014.
Written and Designed by Ronan FitzGibbon (with contributions by Ger FitzGibbon)
Directed and Designed by Gavin McEntee
Performed by Ciaran Birmingham, Mark D’Aughton, Tadhg Hickey, Nicholas Kavanagh, Dominic MacHale, Dominic Moore, Eadaoin O’Donoghue and Sonya O’Donoghue.
Produced by Dawn McAllister
Lighting by Eoin Winning
Sound by Peter Power
Costume Design by Deirdre Dwyer
Stage Management by Claire O’Connell
Production Management by Kay O’Mahony
“A dark thriller with plenty of suspense.” – Chris McCormack, Musings and Intermissions.
Made possible with the support of the Arts Council. Special thanks to Graffiti Theatre and Hickey’s Paints.
Lead Artist: Ronan FitzGibbon
LIFEDEATH
BrokenCrow were delighted to bring to the stage our second collaboration with award winning poet Adam Wyeth. Lifedeath is an absurd satire where the sands of truth and reality are constantly shifting under Thom and Carol. Beneath the veneer of a drawing room farce, a surreal psychological drama begins to unfold. Looking through the fractured lens of a dysfunctional family, Lifedeath breaks the constraints of plot, structure and character, to explore wider themes of identity, humanity and imagination.
This show premiered in the SHOW Festival @ TDC, Cork before going on to the Bandon Engage Festival.
Written by Adam Wyeth
Directed by Eadaoin O’Donoghue
Music by Chris Schmidt-Martin
Performed by Paula McGlinchey, Chris Schmidt-Martin, Ciaran Birmingham and Aideen Wylde.
Lead Artist: Eadaoin O’Donoghue
“A well paced play that refuses to take itself seriously” Colette Sheridan, Irish Examiner
(photo by Enrique Carnicero. Featuring Chris Schmidt-Martin and Ciaran Bermingham)
(photo by Enrique Carnicero. Featuring George Hanover and Jon Whitty)
BUG
An incredible psychological thriller by Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts.
This gloriously paranoid rollercoaster of a play has shades of William Burroughs, with a dash of David Cronenberg and perhaps just a twist of David Lynch’s Wild At Heart.
It tells the story of the relationship between Peter and Agnes as they hold up in Agnes’s motel room and cope with a growing bug infestation, a violently abusive ex-husband, and a figure from Peter’s past who threatens to destroy the delicate fabric of the reality they have woven around themselves.
This show premiered on the Half Moon stage at Cork Opera House in 2013.
Written by Tracey Letts
Directed by Frank Prendergast
Designed by Deirdre Dwyer
Sound by Carl Kennedy
Lighting by Eoin Winning
Produced by Irene O’Mara
Stage Managenent by Aoife Cahill
“Compelling and Disturbing” – Liam Heylin,
Evening Echo
“BrokenCrow are making their voices heard.” – Irish Theatre Magazine
Special Thanks to our supporters who made this show possible through a GoFundMe.
Lead Artist: Frank Prendergast
HANG UP
Written by Adam Wyeth
Directed by Gavin McEntee
The phone rings. We never hear the voice on the other end of the line.
We just hear William. William taking the call. William pouring a drink. William making a noose. William walking the lines between life and death, between reality and the absurd depths of his consciousness.
Hang Up was Adam Wyeth’s first play and developed with the BrokenCrow Ensemble. Hang Up was presented at the Home Festival, Quarter Festival, Bandon Engage Festival, Galway Theatre Festival and Electric Picnic.
Written by Adam Wyeth
Directed by Gavin McEntee
Stage Management by Donal McNinch
“Thoughtful and compelling, this short piece of work is not one that allows you off the hook.” – Rachel Andrews (Irish Theatre Magazine)
Special thanks to all the staff at The Oval Bar, Cork.
Lead Artist: Gavin McEntee
(photo by Enrique Carnicero. Featuring Tadhg Hickey)
MADAME CHAVELLE
Autumn of 2012 saw the return of Madame Chavelle to Ballyvolane House. Fine dining combined to great effect with the House’s unique atmosphere and a play designed to have the audience jumping out of their seats before being glued to them.
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Set in Autumn 1919. Amidst the country’s turmoil three lost souls arrive at Ballyvolane House. They seek an audience with the mysterious Madame Chavelle. Each one has a tale to tell and an answer to find, but can she really do all she claims? Can she really speak with the dead?
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Written and directed by Ronan FitzGibbon
(Developed with Theatre Makers)
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Special Effects team of Gavin McEntee and Jack Healy
Performed by Dave Coon, Evan Lordon, Frank Prendergast, George Hanover and Paula McGlinchey.
Produced by Irene O’Mara
Lead Artist: Ronan FitzGibbon
(photo by Ronan FitzGibbon. Featuring Evan Lordon)
MANTLE
Mantle performed to sell out houses in April of 2012 at the Granary Theatre. It was Ronan FitzGibbon’s second script and the company’s first full production.
Eight characters. Four stories. One room. An entire century.
Mantle brings to life and examines moments of significance, both historical and personal, in the lives of its characters, all of whom have inhabited the same Cork City house which is the imagined setting for the play. Histories resonate and collide as the stories weave around each other on the stage, individual dramas come together with choir-like effect, allowing us a sweeping view of the lives lived within these walls over the course of a century.
Directed and produced by Julie Kelleher
Written and Designed by Ronan FitzGibbon
Lighting by Eoin Winning
Sound Design by Peter Power
Costume by Deirdre Dwyer
Lead Artist: Ronan FitzGibbon
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Performed by Tim Creed, Ger FitzGibbon, George Hanover, Bob Kelly, Charlie Kelly, Eadaoin O’Donoghue, Roisin O’Neill and Frank Prendergast.
“An Ambitious Debut” – Liam Heylin, Evening Echo
Made possible with the support of the Cork City Arts Office
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