4 Bloody Plays is the succinct and sanguine title of a May season of theatre from Bottom Dog. Limerick’s newest theatre company, which Arts page reported on during unFringed Festival, is going to challenge its skills and resources with a series of Sunday night productions.
Set aside 8pm for a couple of hours on Sundays May 10, 17, 24 and 31 for a rehearsed reading each night of one classic play steeped in blood and guts.
“4 Bloody Plays are a lead-in to our full play in November, a take on Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy”, says Mike Finn, one of Bottom Dog’s founders. “I am rewriting this tragedy so it will be a new play, based on blood and vengeance, which so much of theatre is about”.
Point made. Keeping the unfunded Bottom Dog primed until then is this May initiative that was floated to 50 actors and theatre practitioners.
“The response was overwhelmingly positive,” notes Finn. “We have chosen four tragedies that range from the Greeks to the 20th century in Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding, written in the 1930s. I don’t know of any company that can offer a full play anymore as the costs are too big. We are anxious to do something but have not any money and so have decided on these readings. The plays are certainly not seen in Limerick and the readings are full length renditions and open to everyone”.
Richie Ryan, director of CentreSPACE on St Alphonsus Street, has given over his venue free of charge for rehearsals and the public reading. The public are not asked to pay for a ticket but can donate what they can afford – think cash.
Actors of the calibre of Sinead Fahy, Stephanie O’Keeffe, Gene Rooney, John Finn and Jean McGlynn will feature in 4 Bloody Plays, which will read in this sequence at CentreSPACE, 8pm:
May 10: Paul Meade directs Medea, Euripedes.
May 17: John A. Murphy directs Macbeth, Shakespeare.
May 24: Myles Breen directs Salome, Oscar Wilde.
May 31: TBC for Blood Wedding, Lorca.
