The year is 1916. A young man arrives to the hills of County Clare by night. He is on the run, looking for refuge after his part in the Eastern Rising in Dublin. After some time trying to find his way on the mountain side, two strange figures emerge from the dark, and offer him guidance. It soon turns out that they are not ordinary people, but the ghosts of that infamous twelfth century couple, Dermot and Dervorgilla, who have been held responsible for the first invasion of Ireland by foreign armies. They need the young man’s help.
With Thoor Ballylee is now closed for the winter season (though visitors to exterior and grounds are welcome), Yeats enthusiasts must find their fun elsewhere.
Thankfully, with this dramatic staging, DancePlayers returns to Galway with another astonishing production of a rarely seen Yeats play. Their highly acclaimed performance of The Only Jealousy of Emer was a highpoint in Thoor Ballylee’s 2018 season and the Galway Theatre Festival. With original music, movement, and staging, this new imagining of Yeats’s play about violence and history promises to be even better. Set in the Burren, as the ghosts circle Corcomroe Abbey, Co. Clare, near Thoor Ballylee, The Dreaming of the Bones is in this production coming home to the west.
DancePlayers presents
The Dreaming of the Bones
By W. B. Yeats
Thurs-Sat 7-9 November at 8pm
Sunday 10 November at 1pm with performer Q&A
O’Donoghue Theatre, NUI Galway
Running Time: 40 mins without interval
Tickets: €5 Concession / €10 Standard
Booking and more information:
https://the-dreaming-of-the-bones.eventbrite.ie/
https://www.facebook.com/DancePlayersCompany/
The Dreaming of the Bones is a one-act dance piece by W. B. Yeats. Written in 1918, it is one of the earliest plays by an Irish writer for physical theatre, with dance, masks and music. With its topical subject and completion only two years after the Rising, it was deemed too problematic for the public stage for more than a decade, hence no attempt was made to produce it until its belated premiere in the Abbey Theatre in 1931. Since then, it has become one of Yeats’s most frequently played dance dramas both in Ireland and abroad. Inspired by the Japanese Noh theatre tradition, Yeats wrote this piece for an empty stage, where movement, gesture, masks, spatial relations and dance all contribute to act of storytelling.
After their acclaimed debut at the Galway Theatre Festival with The Only Jealousy of Emer in 2018, DancePlayers Company returns with a new staging of The Dreaming of the Bones in an attempt to exhibit the qualities of dance plays to the full, thus showing the availability of Yeats’s play texts for contemporary audiences. The play will be staged with movement and live music, composed exclusively for the performance.
View the on site Burren video promo here
Listings Information
The Dreaming of the Bones
Venue: O’Donoghue Theatre, NUI Galway
Dates: 7 – 10 November 2019
Time: 8pm on Thursday 7th, Friday 8th and Saturday 9th November 2019, 1pm on Sunday 10th with open Question and Answer session from the director and performers.
Running Time: 40 mins without interval
Tickets: €5 Concession / €10 Standard
Booking and more information:
https://the-dreaming-of-the-bones.eventbrite.ie/
https://www.facebook.com/DancePlayersCompany/
Credits
Directed by Melinda Szuts
Music Akos Lustyik
Choreography Jeremie Cyr-Cooke
Lighting design Sarah Timmins
Stage manager Aisling Fitzsimons
Masks and design Yvette Picque
Gergely Kuklis violin
Nicola Geddes cello
Gilles Dupouy harp
Cast: Aimee Banks, Kashi Cepeda, Jeremie Cyr-Cooke, Conor Gormley, John Rice, Una Valaine
Melinda Szuts is a Galway-based director and researcher at the O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance at NUIG. Melinda has been involved in many theatre productions both in Ireland and her home country, Hungary in previous years. Her theatre credits include many Yeats productions, both as actor and as director.
DancePlayers is an ensemble newly founded in Galway in 2018. It is a group of professional theatre makers and musicians who produce collaborative pieces for physical theatre. Their production of Yeats’s The Only Jealousy of Emer had a successful series of performances at Galway Theatre Festival and in Yeats’s tower, Thoor Ballylee in Gort, Co. Galway
Thoor Ballylee 