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A Belfast homecoming for Quietly
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President Higgins visits the Royal Shakespeare Company
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Twelfth Night Rehearsal Room
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Performing Ireland exhibition at NUI Galway
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Designers of the future
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Warming up for the satirical Heartbreak House
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A performance under the stars on Heir Island
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Creating a space for playwrights
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The Waste Ground Party in the rehearsal room
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110 Anniversary video
Rory O’Neill aka Panti Bliss makes a post-show oration at the Abbey Theatre.
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentThe Abbey Theatre’s first performance of Owen McCafferty’s Quietly in the writer’s home town of Belfast was a momentous occasion. This extraordinary human play, about life in the aftermath of the Peace Process, was given a wonderful warm reception on its opening night at the Lyric Theatre. You could hear a pin drop throughout the performance but by the end of the play the audience were on their feet in rapturous applause. This was a memorable night for writer Owen McCafferty and the Abbey Theatre.
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentPresident Higgins and Mrs. Higgins visited the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire on the final day of their State visit to the U.K. Fiach Mac Conghail, Director of the Abbey Theatre joined them along with Gregory Doran, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. They were given a backstage tour before being treated to a short performance from the RSC’s production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. President Higgins was presented with The Complete Works of Shakespeare, signed by the acting company. The President gifted the RSC a copy of The Book of Kells. They later visited the nearby 16th century birthplace of Shakespeare.
In his speech at the Royal Shakespeare Company, President Higgins spoke about the evolutionary nature of Ireland’s relationship with the English language:
“Today I want to acknowledge a great truth: the English language that we share, if it was once the enforced language of conquest, it is today the very language in which we have now come to delight in one another, to share our different and complementary understandings of what it means to be human together in this world, transacting in the currency of words.”
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentSome of Ireland’s most exciting theatre artists will bring a fresh and modern perspective to Shakespeare’s renowned comedy Twelfth Night directed by Wayne Jordan. This moment captures the energy of the rehearsal room in preparation for opening on the Abbey stage. 450 years after Shakespeare’s birth his plays still fascinate and challenge directors and actors today.
Photo by Ros Kavanagh
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentSaileóg O’Halloran and Niamh Lunny from the Abbey Theatre’s costume department put the final touches to costumes in preparation for the launch of Performing Ireland 1904 to 2014 at NUI Galway.The exhibition includes the first digitised items from the NUI Galway & Abbey Theatre Digital Archive project.
Launched as part of our 110th anniversary celebrations this year, Performing Ireland 1904 to 2014 tells the story of the Abbey Theatre from its foundation by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1904 through to its work today. It offers a unique insight into Irish life on and off stage over the past 110 years. This exhibition also showcases digitised artefacts from the initial phase of the NUI Galway & Abbey Theatre Digital Archive project, a landmark moment in the digitisation process.
The Abbey Theatre Archive contains over one million items including master programmes, press cuttings, video recordings, scripts, posters, production handbills, photographs, music scores, audio files, minute books, costume and set designs and administrative records. It is the largest digitised theatre archive in the world. It will take three years to digitise the full archive which is estimated to be completed in September 2015.
Minister Ruairí Quinn, Minister for Education launched Performing Ireland 1904 to 2014 on Thursday on 1 May 2014. It is housed in NUI Galway’s new Hardiman Research Building for humanities and social sciences and can be viewed until October next.
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentThe Yeats Design Residency is an innovative partnership between the Abbey Theatre and IT Sligo to help nurture the talents of young theatre designers in Ireland. Students were asked to create a model set for A Cry from Heaven by Vincent Woods and The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh. Similar to professional set designers, they worked within a design brief, budget and timeline as part of the project. Sonia Norris from Fivemilebourne, County Leitrim was one of seven finalists shortlisted for this year’s Yeats Design Residency.
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentOur 2014 production of Aristocrats directed by Patrick Mason, former Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre is in rehearsal at present. Actors Tom Hickey and John Kavanagh have played the role of Casimir in the past. Here they are pictured with Tadhg Murphy who plays Casimir in this production.
Photo by Ros Kavanagh
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentProps play an integral role in any theatre production. They dress a set and bring to life the world the playwright imagined. Props inhabit the space the characters find themselves in and can help create an important narrative for a particular scene.
In the Abbey Theatre, props are reused and recycled to fit the needs of a given production. One such piece used in Aristocrats is the oak desk in the library. American academic Tom Hoffnung works at this desk while chronicling the stories and memories of the O’Donnell family. This desk has been part of the Abbey Theatre props department for over 25 years.
Every other prop on stage has been used in some capacity in previous productions including the footstool, which appeared in Brian Friel’s adaptation of Three Sisters in 2008.
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentActors Lisa Dwyer Hogg (playing the character of Ellie Dunn) and Nick Dunning (playing the character of Hector Hushabye) will star in the Abbey’s first ever production of Hearbreak House by Bernard Shaw. Our summer production gets underway on 14 August 2014.
Written and set immediately prior to the First World War, Heartbreak House is a dark comedy about a society on the edge of a precipice.
Shaw was a major supporter of the Abbey Theatre and was closely involved with the Abbey Theatre through Yeats and Gregory right from 1904 through the late 1920s. He was president of the Irish Academy of Letters during the 1930s.
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentThis moment captures a special outdoor performance of Maeve’s House on Heir Island as part of the West Cork Fit-Up Festival, the first time ever an event like such took place. On arriving at the venue to perform Maeve’s House on Tuesday 29 July 2014, the decision was made to move the performance outside owing to the beautiful evening and setting the island provided. What followed was a wonderful experience for the 100 audience members with Eamon Morrissey performing as the sun set on the island. Maeve’s House is an Abbey Theatre commission and tells the story of a curious connection between actor and writer Eamon Morrissey and one of Ireland’s best loved short-story writers Maeve Brennan.
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentHere is Rebekka Duffy, our Yeats Design Assistant who re-designed the Peacock Bar to cater for 50 aspiring writers who took part in a writers salon with special guest playwrights including Owen Mc Cafferty, Eugene O’ Brien, Gary Keegan and Feidlim Cannon. Everyone buckled down for a few hours work and then discussed the craft of playwriting afterwards. Owen Mc Cafferty advised playwrights; “don’t be afraid to use your red pen. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. “While Eugene O’Brien talked about story-telling; “you can have great characters and great dialogue, but do you know what your play is actually about?’”
In the afternoons, the Literary team met with 39 emerging writers for a Q&A session about the work of the Literary team who read and respond to up to 450 scripts a year, play reading groups and master-classes with playwrights Marina Carr, Arthur Riordan, Philip McMahon and Michael West.
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentRehearsals are underway for The Waste Ground Party, a new play by Shaun Dunne. Here are the cast pictured on day one of rehearsals. The cast include: Louise Lewis (far left, front), Lloyd Cooney (second from left, second row), Jasmine Russell (third from left, front row), Gerry Stembridge, director (centre, back row), Shaun Dunne, playwright (centre, back row), Ger Ryan, (centre, front row), Alan Mahon (right).
From Dublin, Shaun is a graduate of the Abbey’s New Playwrights Programme, an 18 month intensive development programme. The Waste Ground Party was written on the programme. This play is the 25th new play the Abbey Theatre will produce in the last five years.
Theatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
Share your momentTheatre happens when people come together. Every line, laugh, kiss has been witnessed by you. Help us reel in the lived history of the Abbey Theatre. Share your moments and memories with us.
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