Month: March 2012

Graduate students of drama at the New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Humanities will return to the Trinity College Dublin campus from July 22nd to August 11th this year to pursue intensive study in Applied and Community-Engaged Theatre. 

I am delighted to join the programme as a teacher and director once again.  This will be my seventh year associated with the programme, which is part of a triangle of Study Abroad opportunities that also sees some of these students spend three weeks pursuing Theatre-in-Education in London and thereafter proceeding to Rio to learn Theatre of the Oppressed methods under direction of members of the late Augusto Boal’s troupe. 

It is always challenging and refreshing to work with the NYU students and with my fellow Irish and American colleagues on the summer program.  Bring it on!

Following a brief technical delay, the (three!!!) plays that make up The Border Chronicles Trilogy are now available to download from the PLAYOGRAPHYIreland website at their standard purcahse fee of 20 euro per script.  To go directly to the relevant pages, click here: http://irishplayography.com/search-simple.aspx?playtitle=&authorfirstnames=Declan&authorsurname=Gorman&includeirishlanguage=true

The trilogy comprises Hades (premiered 1998); Epic (2001) and At Peace(2007).  Drawing from mythologies of Greece, Ireland, West Africa and the Baltic region, each of these plays was devised, written, and set within the year in which it was premiered.  As such, these dramas were an attempt to present a contemporaneous, live  chronicle of borderlands life as the major political events of a decade unfolded, while at the same time avoiding didactic realism by drawing from the surreal anarchy of ancient shapeshifting myth and lore.

PLAYOGRAPHYIreland comprises two comprehensive online searchable databases and catalogues: Irish Playography (all new Irish plays produced in English since the formation of the National Theatre in 1904) and Playography na Gaeilge (all new Irish plays produced in Irish since 1975).

The texts of The Border Chronicles have not previously been published or available to a general readership, although sample extracts can be read on this website and anyone wishing to find out more can contact me at declangorman@yahoo.co.uk.