HOW many first time playwrights have had their work co-opted by an established theatre in the capital? Not enough to fill a Mini Cooper, that’s for sure. Yet Limerick’s Adrienne Lee, a young veteran of Impact Theatre Company and numerous productions, has her play ‘Striptease’ taken on board by Dublin’s respected Focus Theatre. It premieres this week, running nightly until Saturday 4. Oddly, ‘Striptease’ was a compulsory assignment, a play being required by UCD to sign off on her Drama and Performance Masters degree.
Expect a dark comedy, a light-hearted look at two married couples and family going through a bad time.
“It’s a story with eight characters, four of them family, and has the sub theme of cancer running through it,” she tells Limerick Post prior to her Focus debut. “The word ‘cancer’ is never mentioned, nor is there any reference to medical personnel nor to treatment or death. ‘Striptease’ takes a subversive look at the illness and there’s a lot of comedy here, believe it or not. The title of the play is about how much people who experience cancer lose physically – often their teeth, their hair, weight, how they age. This striptease is about getting to the human soul”.
And soul and heart is often what carries us through anguish and disease. Family, partners, friends, fellow sufferers feature in this veiled dramatic work in which suggestion and allusion do the work, not visceral visuals nor the medicine cabinet.
“I wanted to give every human being hope, because there is always hope. Also, that it is this moment right now that is important, not two years down the line but right now”.
Adrienne Lee is a Moyross woman who went to the Salesians, did much in as many local productions as she could, and then went on to two diplomas in Maynooth relevant to Drama, Theatre and Speech before her current Masters: “Impact Theatre really was the beginning of the journey”.
Her company ‘You and Me Productions’ has created ‘Striptease’ with Andrea Scott directing and Limerick support from musician/ actor Mark P. O’Connor who scores the work with his own composition; Trevor Furlong as designer and documentary maker Paddy Cahill.
To those who can help platfrom this 60 minute production in Limerick, contact Lee on 085-2754057.
