The Adventure Continues

Saint Mary's University

Tuesday 2nd of December
Well we have been here for a few days now and everything seems to be going smoothly for the most part. I can’t say much for the actors, since I’m not in their acting class. On my end I am keeping busy in the office as well as playing the kind of liaison between the actors and the administration. This covers any meeting times or schedule changes from the administration or opinions on performances from the actors.

Monday was the official start of the program, which began nice enough with a reception to go through the itinerary and meet Patrick Sutton, one of the acting teachers, Amy Dawson, who was in charge of the program, and Nicole, who was to guide us to the events and plays we were going to see during our time here. Once all the business was out of the way, the acting class got underway and I was given the grand tour of the office complete with introductions. Once that was out of the way I started working and three hours later it was time to get some lunch since the acting class was finished.

After a lunch break, the group, myself included, went on a walking tour of Dublin with Mary Fitzpatrick. The tour took about two hours but we saw a huge amount of Dublin in that time. It was a selected tour so we saw the big things and it was a good preview to the cultural events we’re going to see during the week. We saw Christchurch, Trinity College, The Four Courts, as well as the Georgian Doors and various other sites. There was a lot that we didn’t have time to see but she told us about.

After this we took a short walk thanks to our guide Nicole to our first class with Dennis O’Brien. He was teaching us about Irish Literature to give some background to the scenes and monologues that the actors were performing. The class focused more on our perception of what we thought Irish literature was before we learned about it. We spent the next hour and half learning the basis of Irish literature, and how it is used and seen today.

That night we went to see The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at the Abbey Theatre. I really liked this show, which was a satirical look at the events that lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler before World War Two. The characters were fantastic and a few graduates of the Gaiety School were in the production. Parts of it were rather comical and others were very serious and some even scary. It was a long show but it kept my attention with a great script and technical work.