A class act – students all fired up for Festival show

A series of short plays, staged under the umbrella title The Today Show, will premiere next Monday, May 3, as part of Galway Theatre Festival.  The production is by students on the Acting and Theatre Performance course at the city’s Galway Community College (GCC), and the plays reflect the ups and downs of living through lockdown.

Seven of the pieces have been written by the students and four are from the Tiny Play series, which was created last year by Dublin-based company, Fishamble, a leading producer of new Irish writing.

Under the guidance of the GCC theatre course co-ordinator Catherine Denning and other professionals, the 12 students have been involved in every aspect of this production.

In addition to writing and performing the pieces, they’ve designed and constructed a range of sets, organised the technical aspects of the production and filmed each other’s plays for the finished show that will be streamed next Monday night.

On a sunny Friday morning, students James Kilcullen and Klera Balandina are in the theatre room of Galway Community College for our interview, while Ciarán Murray joins online. Catherine Denning, who’s also in the theatre room, shares the students’ enthusiasm as they explain how this project evolved in what has been such a tough year for young people.

The drama students, who are from all parts of Ireland, had signed up for a course that would offer practical training in a live environment. But for much of this year, that couldn’t happen.

As May approached, the 12 had to decide if they wanted to stage an end-of-year play and if so, what form would it take.

Would they stage it in a theatre and record it for broadcast? Or would they perform it on Zoom?  They decided Zoom was a non-runner – this is a theatre course and their show would have to be performed in a theatre.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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