Christian Gottlob Neefe and the Bonn National Theatre, with New Light on the Beethoven Family

When the Bonn stage was closed after the death of Elector Max Friedrich in 1784, the director of its theatre company, Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Großmann, decided to leave the city to further his career elsewhere in the Rhinelands. During the next few years, he was kept informed about developments in Bonn by two of his erstwhile colleagues, Christian Gottlob Neefe and Nikolaus Simrock, whose correspondence paints a vivid picture of musical life in the city during the later 1780s. The new Elector, Maximilian Franz, permitted a visiting troupe to perform during Carnival each year, but repeatedly delayed the decision to re-establish a resident troupe. In 1787 Christoph Brandt, a singer in the Bonn Hofkapelle, attempted a home-grown initiative, perhaps to test the market for a new permanent company. Although this failed almost immediately, a single, well-attended public rehearsal of Monsigny’s Le Déserteur was given, in which Johann van Beethoven made what was probably his last stage appearance. In a letter dated 14 May 1787, Simrock rated his performance ‘zimlich gut’. In the event, a new Bonn troupe was not recruited until 1789, when it featured the young singer Magdalena Willmann. Neefe and his musical colleagues were relieved finally to be able to resume their theatrical careers.

Transformative Aesthetics: Between Remembrance and Reconciliation in Contemporary Northern Irish Theatre

This article explores the ways in which two recent plays by the Tinderbox Theatre Company in Belfast – Jimmy McAleavey's The Sign of the Whale and David Ireland's Everything Between Us – engage with current political debates in Northern Ireland about how to deal with the ‘legacy of the past’. Both plays dramatise the uneasy tension between the demands for remembrance and reconciliation. I suggest that they give rise to a ‘transformative aesthetics’ that proposes an un-remembering of the past to make way for a transformative re-remembering for the future. This process, however, does not imply an easy resolution or transcendence of the antagonisms, debates, and traumatic memories. Instead, it suggests an intense and complicated engagement that sits in vexed opposition to the restorative conception of reconciliation and both a politics and a political context of ameliorative forgetting that dominates the Northern Irish Peace Process.

Inventors:Marconi's Device for Dialling the Dear Departed, The Flying Fenian

Two short site-specific pieces performed with others at the Royal Ulster Agricultural Show for Kabosh Theatre Company, as part of their continuing effort to broaden theatre audiences. One, using the form of the Edwardian melodrama, tells of Marconi's efforts to create a device to communicate with the dead. The second tells the tale of the Christian Brother who invented the submarine, John Philip Holland.

Get Gaddafi

An experimental short stage play responding to unfolding international events. It was presented by Tinderbox Theatre Company as part of a drama festival, 'Pick n Mix'

The Joy and Roy of Irish

A short play as part of theatre company Kabosh's walking-tour-with-performances 'The West Awakes', focusing on aspects of the history and culture of West Belfast. My piece dramatised the contribution of Belfast Protestants and Unionists to the Irish language.

The Virgin Father

A full-length play for Tinderbox Theatre Company presenting a radical interpretation of the New Testament as told through the eyes of St Joseph.

Weirdwolf

A public rehearsed reading for Tinderbox Theatre Company as part of the Pick n Mix drama festival. An allegory for mental illness this blackly comic play tells the story of a man becoming a werewolf.

X/Y

A collaboration with the Sonic Arts Research Centre (QUB) and Tinderbox Theatre Company, this lab explores how writers can collaborate with experts in sonic design. The collaboration will result in an initial performance on March 12 2014 (entitled 'X/Y') at the Sonic Arts Research Centre that is open to the public. The audience's comments will then be fed back into the creative process for re-drafting and re-recording. A final performance is planned for the Belfast Festival.

Performing 'The Tragedy of Mariam' and Constructing Stage History

Since the rediscovery of Elizabeth Cary’s drama, The Tragedy of Mariam, the play and its author have generated a veritable critical industry. Yet little has been written about performance, a lacuna explained by a reluctance to think about Mariam as a theatrical creation. This article challenges the current consensus by arguing for the play’s theatrical imprint and by analysing two 2013 performances – a site-specific production at Cary’s birthplace, and a production by the Lazarus Theatre Company. Throughout, Mariam is engaged with in terms of casting, costume, lighting, set and movement, issues that have mostly been bypassed in Cary studies.

Som da Maré: Um Projeto Participativo de Arte Sonora

In May 2014, the participative Project Som da Maré brings together the creative energy of a group of inhabitants from a cluster of favelas in Maré (Rio de Janeiro)* through the sonic arts. The work recalls everyday experiences, memories, stories and places. These memories elicit narratives that leave traces in space while contributing to the workings of local cultural.

The result of four months of workshops and fieldwork forms the basis of two cultural interventions: an exhibition in Museu da Maré** and guided soundwalks in the city of Rio de Janeiro. These interventions present realities, histories and ambitions of everyday life in the Maré favelas through immersive sound installation, documentary photography, text and objects.

Som da Maré brings together various groups of participants who together have developed themes, materials and strategies for the articulation of elements of everyday life in Maré. Participants include secondary level students under the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) “Young Talent” scholarships and their families, post-graduate students at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), PhD students from the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Queen’s University Belfast) and members of the Cia Marginal, a theatre company based in Maré. The project also counts with the participation of academics from music, ethnomusicology, visual art and architecture at the UFRJ and a partnership with the Museu da Maré. Over thirty people have come together to make this project possible.

POINTS OF VIEW: Multi-Roling Performance in Ireland in the 1990s, Part 1 (Layering)

This series of posts will consider the acting techniques required for this style of performance with reference to four productions from the 1990s in which two actors took on multiple roles: Frank Pig Says Hello (1992), Co-Motion’s stage adaptation of Pat McCabe’s novel; The Butcher Boy, Corca Dorca’s production of Disco Pigs (1996) by Enda Walsh; DubbleJoint’s production of Stones in his Pockets by Marie Jones (1996) and its subsequent award-winning revival which I produced at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre in 1999; and Kabosh’s production of Mojo Mickybo by Owen McCafferty (1998). The discussion will focus primarily on my own empirical exploration of the demands multi-roling places on an actor through the direction of recent revivals of Mojo Mickybo for Belfast’s Chatterbox Theatre Company (2013) and Bedlam Productions (2015).