For the first time a theatre company will be taking up the post of Artists in Residence in Kilkenny Co Council Arts Office. Kilkenny group The Devious Theatre Company were delighted to be invited by Arts Officer Mary Butler to take up residency in the Arts Office. The group will be working in No 76 John Street until July.
Their aims for the residency are to develop new work, engage with new audiences and help develop a future generation of Kilkenny theatre makers. Along those lines they have just announced their new season of work, In The Future When All’s Well, which will see them perform three plays between now and July. The first of these plays will open in February. Scratcher, written by John Morton, is a dark, satirical comedy about unemployment and revolution. Scratcher takes place in a social welfare office as it becomes the scene of a violent and revolutionary siege. The cast includes Alan Butler, Ross Costigan, Amy Dunne, Ken McGuire, John Morton, Annette O’Shea and David Thompson. The play will open in Dublin as part of The Theatre Machine Turns You On Volume II, the second instalment of a festival of young, new work that first ran in Dublin 2009. It opens in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin on February 17th before transferring to Kilkenny where it will play in the Arts Office from February 22nd – 26th.
This will be followed by a new Kilkenny based work entitled Shifting, written by John Kennedy who will be working with the company for the duration of the residency. The final play in the residency is Smitten which the group previously staged in 2008. A new version of the production opens in June and will round off the season of plays.
In The Future When All’s Well takes a look at young Irish people in their 30s, 20s, and teens as they struggle to find their place in a country that doesn’t hold a lot of promise for them in the future. Each of the three plays explores the themes of emigration, unemployment, disillusionment, and restlessness and the company hope they will resonate with audiences in Kilkenny and beyond.
For information on the company, the residency and upcoming shows you can visit their newly relaunched website at DeviousTheatre.com
