Rising
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New play commemorates 100 years since Irish Easter Uprising
Friday, 28 October, 2016A drama lecturer from Bath Spa University has written a verbatim play about the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland.
Dr Helena Enright was commissioned to write the play, Rising, in 2015. She drew on contemporary texts, archive material, philosophical texts, poetry and newspaper articles surrounding the uprising. Verbatim theatre is often referred to as documentary theatre as it is an art form that focuses on using precise words used by people at the time of the event.
The 1916 Easter Uprising was an armed rebellion from Irish Republicans who hoped to gain independence for Ireland and end British rule.
Dr Enright is working with director Tom Creed along with a cast of 20 young people from Dublin to bring the play to life. The cast are a part of the Dublin Youth Theatre and have conducted research around the play themselves, including interviewing their own contemporaries about how the play’s content is still relevant to Ireland today.
Dr Enright said: “The play is an exploration of art as activism, music as mobiliser and theatre as propaganda machine. One of the strong points of this show is that it deals with contemporary issues that are still relevant in Ireland today, one hundred years after the uprising for independence. I think that the audience will engage with the outstanding energy that the young cast has.”
The play opened in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin on the Peacock stage on Wednesday 17 August and runs to Saturday 20 August. It starts at 8:00pm, with a Saturday matinee at 2:30pm.
Tickets are €18 / €16 conc.
