Young Irish Film Makers

Dreamstuff Youth Theatre, the stage production unit of Young Irish Film Makers, have begun casting sessions for four of Shakespeare’s plays to be staged as part of their 2nd Shakespeare in the House festival in association with Rothe House on Saturday 27th and 28th June 2009. The performances will be performed on a custom built stage as open air productions in the middle yard of Rothe House. The yard will be converted to resemble a Tudor open air playhouse.

All the Dreamstuff junior and senior actors will be involved in the productions. The junior company (8 to 12 year olds) are restaging last years comedy hit play A Midsummer Night’s Dream as well taking on the difficult Macbeth which the seniors staged last year. The senior company (aged 13 to 17) will stage a re-imagined Romeo and Juliet, and the hilarious The Comedy of Errors. Cast lists will be on the website soon.

Each play is abridged and runs about 45 minutes. Two plays will be staged each afternoon in the original Shakespeare Middle English text. Over 40 young people will be on stage for the plays and Devious Theatre Company will also be performing in the house during the festival. Full programme details soon.

Rothe House is a historic house in Kilkenny and a unique example of a Tudor merchant’s townhouse in Ireland. The building of Rothe House and Shakespeare’s stage writing career almost exactly mirror each other.

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, in England in 1564. While his exact birth date is unknown, it is most often celebrated on April 23, the feast of St. George. The building of Rothe House began thirty years later in 1594 by John Rothe Fitz Piers and 1594- 95 was the first performance of Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first staged between 1595 and 1596.

The third house was completed in 1610 the year Shakespeare retired from the theatre and six years before his death on April 23, 1616. The first performance of Macbeth is not known but scholars place it somewhere between 1603 and 1607. The earliest account of a performance of the play is April 1611, when Simon Forman recorded seeing it at the Globe Theatre.

Dreamstuff Youth Theatre has already staged full scale productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth by William Shakespeare in the Watergate Theatre. Several of the young performers have gone on the third level degree courses in Drama in Ireland and England, Angela Barrett has just completed her Drama degree in Middlesex University and soon joins Dreamstuff as its full time Director, and the boy who played Romeo in our 2004 production is completing his second year in Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

The premiere performance of all the plays will be held for parents in Film Makers yard on our Open Day, Saturday 20th June. Full details on our website soon.

Popularity: 4% [?]