INSPIRED BY TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, Waterdonkey Theatre’s new show, Love Song, receives its premiere at the Town Hall next week, running from February 10 to 13.
The production will present an experimental exploration of an eternal theme. Continuing to develop their own style of evocative and emotive theatre the Galway ensemble invite playgoers to join then for an evening of reflection and sensuality.
During a break in rehearsals, cast member Duncan Lacroix outlined how Waterdonkey are approaching Eliot’s famed poem.
“The idea of engaging with Prufrock started off one day when we all brought in poetry to read to each other and that particular poem just seemed to have so much charge to it, and residue,” he says. “What we aim to do in the show is to try and recreate that kind of atmosphere, rather than simply take a kind of analytical approach to it. So we’ve been working toward a kind of experiential piece that we hope achieves the same kind of effect that the poem leaves you with.
“It’s not a staging of the poem as such, we’re deliberately moving away from that sort of representational theatre. We’re trying to evoke elements like the kind of dreamlike quality which the poem has and its sense of isolation.”
Love Song is Waterdonkey’s fifth original production to première in Galway. Returning after Pigeon Racing: Advanced Techniques, Heart, and To The Back of Beyond (performed at Electric Picnic 2009 ), it is a production in which the company explore love and the areas in between.
Waterdonkey’s work is created through a process of responding to the world they see around them and the people they are surrounded by. Love Song is a glimpse into the world of love both present and absent through their eyes.
“We use Eliot’s text to generate some of our own writing as well as we respond to the content of the poem and its themes,” explains Waterdonkey’s Zita Monahan.
Waterdonkey’s choice of dates for Love Song proves fitting on two accounts; the proximity of Valentine’s Day makes it thematically apt and February 2010 is also the centenary of Eliot’s commencement of work on the poem, which was eventually published in 1915.
Waterdonkey’s Love Song features Claire Louise Bennett, Rosemary Sweeney, Duncan Lacroix, Martin Sharry, and Zita Monahan. The production, which is about an hour long, runs at the Town Hall studio from Wednesday February 10 to Saturday 13 at 8.30pm nightly.
Tickets are €12/10 and are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777.
