Conor McPherson's Triple Bill

Presented by Heart N Crown Theatre Co.

February 25th - March 1st 2008

8.30pm

Admission €16/14 (one show), €25 (Triple Bill)

This Lime Tree Bower (Feb 25th and March 1st)

Frank (Sean Briggs) works in the family "chipper" in a quiet seaside town of South Dublin; his younger brother Joe (Conor Quinlan) nurses a non-sexual schoolboy infatuation with the charismatic but significantly named Damian; their sister's boyfriend Ray (Mike Kinsella) is an arrogant, philandering philosophy don. Each has his own wants - teenage love, intellectual glory, or the chance to take down the local shark down several pegs. Frank and Ray show holes at their respective cores, Joe fells a similar look which is part of the adolescent experience. Turn and turn about, they give their individual accounts of a week in which Joe sees Damian's true colours, Ray disgraces himself and Frank pulls off an unexpectedly high-yield robbery.

The Good Thief (Feb 26th and 28th)

The unnamed thief (Callaghan O' Connell) has quite a yarn to spin, full of violence and betrayal and half-expressed feelings. He's a former army vet who works as a small-time enforcer for a local hood named Murray, scaring people who owe money, killing someone if they need to be killed. He's obsessed with his ex-girlfriend Greta, a local tramp who can't stop cheating on him. She's dating Murray now, and he takes small moments of pleasure in knowing what he's now going through.

He encounters Murray while chatting with a couple at the local pub, and Murray gives him a commission. He's tasked with frightening a wealthy local man named Mitchell, and Murray gives him a small advance. Our protagonist wakes up the next day hung over and considers not doing the job, but since he's already been paid he goes through an epic (and hilarious) series of hangover remedies and soldiers on. Upon arriving at the house, he is almost immediately thrust into a power struggle that will leave a number of people dead, and force our storyteller to flee for his life with Mitchell's wife and child in tow. McPherson's script follows the thief's constricted longing for some kind of connection, but mostly concerns itself with telling a ripping good yarn.

St. Nicholas (Feb 27th and 29th)    

A cynical and jaded drama critic (Robbie Gallagher) falls for a beautiful young actress. In pursuing her he meets a group of modern day vampires, who offer him eternal life. His part of the bargain is to feed their bloodlust.

Please ring Stephen Kenny for more information or to book tickets for any of these shows - 085 141 6928

Flesh

Venue: Smock Alley Theatre
Dates: Friday Feb 22, Saturday Feb 23
Times: 8pm both Nights and Matinee at 3pm on Feb 23rd
Tickets: €15 Adult, €10 concession, GSA student tickets €7.50

Cork Gaiety School of Acting Adult Theatre Company Comes To Dublin, Exploring The Controversial Topic of Sex Trafficking In Their Original Play 'Flesh'

Imagine your daughter...

Imagine your wife....

Imagine that one special woman in your life...

Imagine you never hear from her again.

Sex trafficking is amongst the three primary sources of income for criminal organisations.  Women apply for jobs and suddenly vanish, only to reappear as prostitutes.  The criminal organisations responsible for it use rape, threats and violence to turn the victims into unwilling money machines for their business.

The Cork Gaiety School of Acting has devised a play that not only explores the suffering of these victims, but also the motives of the clients; the users of trafficked women; whose lust continues to make violent sex the profitable industry that it is.

In this play we attempt to come to terms with the reality of sex trafficking through the powerful medium of theatre.  It is our belief, and our hope, that just one evening of insightful, brutally honest theatre might motivate people, subtly alter their attitudes, help them to understand aspects of the human experience, and even empower them to change.

However, in dealing with this topic, we are entering disturbing territory.  The process of finding this play was fuelled by the enthusiasm of the actors, the feeling of being involved in something bigger than the individual, the innocent hope of having an impact. And maybe, as a result of dealing with the difficulties of keeping the audience's emotions high, arousing their deepest sympathy and disgust, but not their sexual violence, we can find a new form of theatre, and a new way for theatre practitioners to voice their deepest concern about the violations of human rights and ethics that are becoming more and more apparent in western civilisation.

Tickets for ‘Flesh' are available from The Gaiety School of Acting, 1890 258 358.

ALL PROFIT WILL GO TO THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST SEX TRAFFICKING AND AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL.