The Beauty Queen Of Leenane – Behind the Scenes Photos

The past few weeks have been pretty overwhelming, it’s taken me quite a while to put it all in perspective and even now I’m not sure I can sum it all up.

In such a short amount of time, so many things in my life have changed. It seemed fitting that in the midst of moving house after six long years and with so many things changing around me, that I would be involved in a production that was completely different to anything I’ve ever done before, an experience I will never forget for so many reasons.

After Devious Theatre’s production of Trainspotting, Watergate manager Ger Cody asked me if I would read a script; Martin McDonagh’s iconic ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’. I had heard a little about the play but was really unfamiliar with it. I read it and loved it, I knew it was something I had to be involved in; the great script, it would be a great part to play and it was a rare chance to work with Kilkenny’s oldest theatrical institution, Watergate Productions.

Unfortunately, due to issues with getting the rights for the play, the production went on hold. Months passed by and sadly I began to think it was never going to happen. Until I got a call from Ger, the rights had been secured and the play would run in November. That’s when I first felt a bit nervous. The first script reading took place on the Watergate stage a few weeks later, with the cast assembled for the first time, sitting in a circle on the stage reading together. Myself and Clare Henriques were welcomed into the group for our debut production and from the initial reading the play began to take shape.

Weeks of rehearsals passed by, moving between the Watergate stage (when it was available) and a large room in the Heritage Council building. Slowly but surely, the scenes and movements were blocked out, lines were learned and characters began to appear. Anticipation seemed to be growing for the production, people were approaching me in the street, constantly asking about the play.

Rehearsals grew from working on single scenes to running several scenes together. Having full cast rehearsals was an amazing experience, getting to work with actors I’ve admired for years was more than a little intimidating. Going from being the eldest in a troupe to being the youngest was a strange transition to make, but the constant warmth and encouragement from Ger, Brendan, Mary and Clare throughout the rehearsals made me feel truly welcome.

The week before the show came, we made the move to night-time rehearsals on the Watergate stage, as the set began to appear around us. Each night the progress was clearly visible as props, costumes and lights were added to the mix. Scenes were run countless times, constantly tweaking and changing things. The Friday before the show opened I moved house, it was an exhausting experience in itself, and not something I’d recommend the weekend before a play opens. That night we had the tech rehearsal and on the Sunday morning we had our full dress and tech rehearsal complete with rain and fire on the stage. All we needed now was an audience.

Monday came and I was overwhelmed by “good luck” phone calls, emails, text messages and comments. I was more than a little nervous as I walked the new route to the Watergate, arriving to discover good luck cards and that the opening night was sold out!? I don’t think I can describe accurately how I felt; the Monday to Saturday run was the longest production I’ve ever done and to open to a full house on a Monday night was a truly awesome and terrifying experience at the same time. At the end, as we walked out for the curtain call that first night, the audience rose to their feet. It was an amazing feeling and every night that followed we were treated to the same reaction from the audience.

The response and feedback to the play has been so overwhelming, two weeks on and people are still approaching me every day to talk about it. It’s been great to hear the different thoughts and feelings we provoked in people and their theories on what happened in the end.

It’s been a month of changes for me, in every aspect of my life and I’ve learned so much about myself. Getting to play such a great character in such a great play, working with an awesome cast and director on a truly awesome set. I really can’t accurately describe how I feel about the whole thing but I’m very proud and grateful to have been a part of it.

I have to say a huge thanks to director Ger Cody for giving me the opportunity, for his constant patience when I wouldn’t slow down and his encouragement throughout. Having known Ger for years I always thought he was legend. I now feel like I know him a lot better and I realise that he’s even more of a legend than I first thought. He told me so many hilarious stories and I’ve learned so much from his direction.

I also have to thank my fellow cast; for so many awesome memories, for making me feel so welcome and for so many moments shared with each of them. From the whole cast referring to my piercings as “facial crockery” to the whole cast on their hands and knees searching for pieces of that crockery, that would end up dropped each night. I’m also pretty certain that the audience were quite unaware each night as they took their seats, that backstage the cast were dancing to the jigs & reels being played in the auditorium, quite a funny sight to behold with everyone in full costume & makeup. The quote of the week had to be “Up your oul hole Missus”, a phrase the cast would shout at each other regularly and after the curtain call each night we shared a group-hug.

Trying to keep a straight face on stage opposite Mary Cradock as Mag was no easy thing and every night there were moments in the final scene where myself and Claire could never make eye contact for fear of exploding into laughter. Although I didn’t get to share a scene with Brendan, we did share a dressing room and each night we had so many wonderful conversations; the man has too many funny stories and theories to sum up. I feel privileged that he shared them with me and helped me to develop my character as well as showing me how to do my own makeup for the first time.

I have to thank the Watergate Staff and the crew for their amazing work and encouragement; thanks to Pat, Maurice, Donal, Andrew, Colette and Aidan for adding the magic touches. Finally, thanks to anybody who came to see the play, the response has been truly inspiring.

Over the course of the production I took hundreds of photographs; after spending the past few days sorting and organising them I have narrowed it down to a collection of 39 photographs that capture the production from my point of view.

Taken over a 7-week period, the collection of shots ranges in style; from black & white shots from the early days of rehearsals on the Watergate stage under the dim house-lights to colourful rehearsals in the Heritage building, right up to the week of the play with full set, costumes, make-up and lighting.

Although I didn’t manage to take a photo of myself in character as Ray Dooley, I spent some time working with wireless flash triggers to produce some promo shots based on Ray’s beloved swingball set and his favoured Kimberley biscuits.

You’ll find my favourite shots from the collection on the Oss237.com homepage and you’ll see the complete collection of 39 images here on my Flickr account.

As always any feedback, comments or criticism are welcome. I’d love to hear what people think. I hope to spend the next few weeks clearing a huge build-up of photographs from the past year and moving house has presented me with a host of new locations and light sources to experiment with so I have plenty of new shots on the way.

For now please check out my brand new behind the scenes shots from the Watergate Productions ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane‘.

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane: “Beauty is funny – tragic too” – KilkennyAlive Review

The local amateur production, directed by theatre boss, Ger Cody, had a marvellous cast of four, veterans Mary Cradock and Brendan Corcoran and relative drama newcomers Claire Henriques and Ross Costigan.

As usual Mary and Brendan were superb.

But particularly pleasing was the fantastic performance of play deb Claire Henriques who revelled in the very difficult role of a mother-domineered daughter.

Ross was the talented fourth member of an excellent team that fully deserved the end of play standing ovation from an appreciative audience.

The story was one that has been played out all over Ireland for generations.

It was the tale of a 40-year-old woman, Maureen (Claire Henriques) who was completely dominated by her roguish and quite elderly mother (Mary  Craddock) who craved undivided attention and was intent on keeping her offspring as a house slave.

But along came a would-be-suitor in the shape of Brendan Corcoran who brought romance into the life of the daughter of Connemara.

That situation certainly didn’t suit mother who got up to all sorts of nasty tricks in a bid to crush any possible life of love for her daughter.

The fab four thespians played their respective roles with real feeling and while entertaining with some really funny lines, they also brought home the tragedy of a mother-daughter tradition that has led to heartbreak and despair for thousands of women, and indeed many men, over the years.

The play was yet another triumph for local talent, proof, as if proof was needed, that the home-grown product is the soul of local theatre.

Well done to Ger Cody on a production to be truly proud of.

The play continues tonight, Friday, with the final curtain falling after the Saturday performance. Curtain up is at 8pm each evening and there is a 15-minute interval.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane: “A beautiful darkness” – Kilkenny People Review

The following review was published by Tess Felder in the Kilkenny People newspaper on Friday 27th of November 2009. The above photo was taken by Colm Gray.

“MUSIC is the space between the notes,” wrote the composer Claude Debussy, and he could easily have been referring to the Watergate Productions’ Beauty Queen Of Leenane which is on the local stage nightly until Saturday.

The play by Martin McDonagh, of In Bruges and The Cripple Of Inishmaan fame, centres on a 40-year-old woman and her cantankerous elderly mother who live together in a cottage in rural Ireland in the 1980s. As the woman, Maureen Folan (Claire Henriques) comes face to face with a chance-in-a-lifetime romance, her mother Mag (Mary Cradock) does all in her power to block the opportunity, afraid that her daughter’s success in love would leave the elderly woman either alone or put into a nursing home.

Maureen’s love interest, Pato Dooley (Brendan Corcoran), a somewhat shy but honest man home briefly from England, communicates his love via a letter to be delivered by his youngest brother, Ray (Ross Costigan), whose boredom and occasional laziness can get in the way of him doing the right thing.

As can be expected, the Watergate crew have pulled out all the stops for this production under the direction of Gerry Cody, with impressively realistic effects and a wonderful but simple set.

The four actors deliver their lines adeptly, and yet – crucially – much is left unsaid, the unspoken arguments and at times affection passing wordlessly between them. Mary Cradock is a perfectly crotchety old woman, shouting orders for tea and porridge at whoever happens to be in the room with her, while Claire Henriques manages to convey both the warm longing and the cold cruelty the character possesses, changing demeanour in an instant when turning her attention from Pato to her mother.

Brendan Corcoran meanwhile presents Pato as a genuine man, working hard to make a living for himself and do right by the people in his life. He is particularly good as a steady middle ground in a scene he shares with the two women, and in a solo scene as he conveys his feelings from England.

Ross Costigan’s Ray delivers plenty of comic relief as promised and is a wonderful foil for the harsh Mag. He especially comes into his own in his longer final scenes, where it is clear the character has good intentions but doesn’t quite know what to make of these two unpredictable women.

It has been said before, but it is worth repeating how fortunate Kilkenny is to have this calibre of theatre locally. This is a dark play and it requires a good deal of skill to convey this depth while also keeping the audience laughing throughout the performance, and staying true to the characters from start to finish.

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane starts tonight!

Have you voted yet!?

Voting is still open in the final round of Busker2009, the Kilkenny 400 Busking Competition in association with KilkennyMusic.com.

If you haven’t cast your vote for your favourite busker yet then click here to go to Busker2009.com and check out video performances by the six finalists; Sean Watmore, Quintet Tarantino, Fionn O’Hargain, Vicky Day (above), Annie Chambers and Beef Supreme. One of these finalists will walk away with a €1,000 cash prize!

Voting closes this coming Friday at 11:59pm. And don’t forget that you must click the link in the confirmation email to make sure your vote counts. If you don’t click the link in the email to confirm your vote, your vote won’t count!

Tune into KCLR96FM tomorrow around 3:15pm to hear more about the competition.

Mata Hari – Fast Way (Music Video)

Back in March I posted a behind the scenes video from my photo-shoot with Mata Hari; as the lads recorded their first music video.

The video for “Fast Way” has just gone online; awesomely shot and cut by student filmmaker Ivars Burtnieks.

As I mentioned before, the video was shot in a freight container in the Hebron industrial estate but it also features footage of the classic rockers in the studio recording. Much to my surprise I even make a little cameo in the video, if you look really closely at around 3 minutes and 30 seconds you’ll spot me setting up for my promo shoot with the band.

If you missed it before then you can check out my behind the scenes video and promo shots from the shoot with Mata Hari here.

Well done to Ivars for doing a great job with the video for “Fast Way”, you can check out more of his videos here on Youtube and you’ll find Mata Hari here on MySpace.

Vote for “Once I Counted Birds”

“Once I Counted Birds” a new short film by ArtLinks Director Cathy Fitzgerald is currently entered in the UK Guardian’s Climate Change film competition 1MinuteToSaveTheWorld.

This new film incorporates old footage taken by Cathy on a biodiversity research trip to Suwarrow; a remote, un-peopled atoll in the Cook Islands, South Pacific, in 2000. Suwarrow is an important breeding place for seabirds of all types including the rare and very large Masked Booby; her and fellow scientist Rhys Jones collected data was later published in the NZ Forest and Bird Journal 2001 and the project was a jointly sponsored UN and Cook Island project. While the trip may look idyllic, Cathy almost drowned when the yacht she and her colleague hitched a lift with was hit by a freak wave. Her new digital camcorder was destroyed but her old Hi8 survived to take this footage.

Many years later, Cathy is now actively involved in promoting ecological, permanent forestry in her small woodlands in Ireland; she blogs and creates works about converting her 20 year old spruce plantation to a permanent forest using Pro Silva, close to nature, forestry methods. She believes that small local ecologically based actions can have a positive effect globally and personally.

You can vote for “Once I Counted Birds” here; simply give the video a rating. From what I can tell, it is the only Irish entry in the competition and I think it would be great to see Cathy win given her huge interest in ecology/environmental politics & film and years of hard work promoting the Arts in Ireland.

The voting closes this Friday and don’t forget to follow Cathy’s EcoArtNotes on Twitter for updates and new work.

Vegetarian Kilkenny: 7th Monthly “No Meat & Greet!”

Busker 2009: Final Voting Is Open!

Voting is now open on the final six acts in the Kilkenny 400 Busking Competition; Busker 2009.

After seven months and countless hours of street music, the final round of busking for the competition took place on the streets of Kilkenny on Saturday with finalists Quintet Tarantino, Sean Watmore, Vicky Day, Beef Supreme (above), Annie Chambers and Fionn O’Hargain all competing for the €1,000 cash prize.

As always voting is open to the public so please go to Busker2009.com to watch the six video performances by our finalists and cast your vote for the best busker of 2009.

You will get an email asking you to confirm your vote and please note that only confirmed votes will be accepted.

Voting closes at 23:59 GMT on Friday November 13th.

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane: Rehearsals Continue

Rehearsals for the Watergate Production’s upcoming show ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’ stepped up a notch last week, over the past month we’ve slowly but surely been blocking and rehearsing individual scenes,  but last week saw the first rehearsals with the full cast all together for the first time.

It’s already proving quite an experience for me;  most show’s that I’ve done in the past, I was surrounded by familiar faces, working with a lot of the same people over the years as we all moved away from Dreamstuff to Devious.

Now with the Watergate Production, I’ve gone from being one of the older actors in a group to being the youngest in the cast and I don’t have the familiarity of how people work, like I’ve always had before. Even the play itself is very different to anything I’ve done. But I’m not complaining, it’s all very exciting, fresh and challenging for me.

I’m slowly moving away from the script and finding my character – Ray Dooley; a young chap with a love for Kimberley biscuits and Australian day-time television shows. He is “continually bored” by his surroundings especially when used as a messenger between his older brother Pato (Brendan Corcoran) and love interest  Maureen Folan (Clare Henrique).

Everyone involved in the show has been very encouraging so far, I’m constantly learning little tips & tricks by working with them and hearing endless hilarious stories. It’s also great just to be rehearsing on the Watergate stage; normally I wouldn’t get on the stage until a few days before a show and then everything has to be tweaked accordingly but we’ve been using the stage for the past few weeks, with furniture and rough marks already in place for the set.

It’s already less than a month to the opening night; we’re all very excited by how the play is shaping up and people keep approaching me in the street to tell me how much they’re really looking forward to it. The next few weeks will be filled with rehearsals, we’ve got the photo-shoot coming up and the set will soon be under construction. It’s all falling into place and I’m very excited. I’ve started bringing my camera’s to rehearsals but it’ll be a while before I get a chance to work on the photos.

For now check out this brand new shot on the Oss237.com homepage taken during rehearsals this week; my script sitting on the front row of chairs in the Watergate with my Sb800 positioned on the ground using a wireless trigger at half power to light the chairs in the background. As always comments, feedback or criticism would be appreciated… oh and don’t forget to book your tickets for the show!

The Watergate Theatre Company presents Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’ in the Watergate Theatre 23rd-28th November.

For ticket bookings call: 056-7761674