Chained Bodies - A Final Year Showcase

21 Mar 2023

This is a Final Year Showcase from Theatre students at UCC. Chained Bodies explores themes of entrapment and struggle.

This event is Free but Ticketed - Booking Essential

Tickets available via https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/chained-bodies-tickets-591851974187

CHAINED BODIES…

… is the title chosen by this year’s group of Final Year students from the UCC Department of Theatre for their Performance Projects. Their task has been to take a previously published short story, poem, myth or legend of their choice and adapt it for the 20-minute piece of theatre. What might seem like a straightforward task on the face of it is complicated by the study of Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation, which rejects the notion of fidelity to the original as a measure of the validity and success of the adaptation or as a key to understanding. The original text becomes a pretext for devising and the final result may or may not be faithful and may not even attempt to re-tell the story. A fragment may be taken and expanded, or a theme questioned, or the story told from a different perspective. Central to the task, however, is that the adaptation should work as a piece of theatre in its own right and make sense to an ‘unknowing audience’, that is, those who have no knowledge of the adapted text, as well as to a ‘knowing audience’, who will find pleasure in the variations and deviations from the story they are familiar with. For the latter, as Hutcheon argues, ‘repetition without replication’ is key to the pleasure we derive from adaptations. Although the pieces are being assessed as part of the students’ degree programme, this event also showcases the original, self-led pieces by our emerging theatre practitioners.

A common thread running through the three pieces that make up CHAINED BODIES is the constraints that are imposed upon human beings – by others, by ourselves or by fate... We hope you enjoy the work!

‘L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.’

 Jean Jacques Rousseau

AN CORPÁN (adapted from ‘Teig O’Kane and the Corpse’, by Ernest Rhys, English translation by Dr Douglas Hyde)

… explores a world where our own choices – be they good or bad – are the very making of us, where it can have unforetold consequences to take everything in the ‘real world’ for granted. When Teig’s actions bring him into contact with the supernatural, we’re prompted to wonder how far a man will carry his burdens in order to put them to rest and earn his redemption.

Briste Gaeilge Productions: Bridget Brabazon, Morgan Comerford, Fern Kealy, Daniel McCarthy

THE HAPPY PLACE (adapted from ‘The Ones Who walk away from Omelas’, by Ursula K. LeGuin)

… is a modern adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. The prosperity and excess of The Happy Place appears perfectly utopian on the surface, but is everything as it seems? We look into the lives of its citizens as they contemplate a difficult decision that can change everyone and everything they know. They must face the uncomfortable realities that support their way of life, and decide what they’re willing to live with..

18 Peaks Productions: Danielle Aherne, Ciara Caball, Francis Lim

CRAVING (adapted from ‘The Hunger Artist’ by Franz Kafka)

The artist is hungry. For love. For achievement. For attention. For the dreamed body.

Is it right? Is it wrong? How much can we push our limits?

Do it. Don’t stop. You can be anything.

Let’s build a puppet.

The Red Group: Felix Akir, Leon De Bruijn, Ryan Farrimond, Stine Hulgard, Lilla Kedves, Andrea Martinez

Final Year Projects Coordinator and Mentor: Bernadette Cronin

Production Manager: Aoife Clarke

Stage Manager: Karizma Garcia

Tech Module Coordinator: Fionn Woodhouse

Technical Manager & Lighting Design: Declan Leonard

Technical Assistant: Ben Burns

Press Officer and Curator of Granary Foyer Exhibition: Madhura Sengupta