creating adventures with young people in Newbridge, Ireland since 1996
#CrookedHouseStaysAtHome / Quarantine Festival
17th-29th March 2020
During March 2020, in response to the lockdown restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Kildare Youth Theatre hosted the Quarantine Festival. An online gathering of young people creating in multi-media, expressing their reactions to the current crisis, and making new work shared publicly online in social media channels, Quarantine Festival was part of the wider Kildare Youth Theatre movement #CrookedHouseStaysAtHome, which sought to bring our standard seasons into our homes during lockdown.
Projects created during the festival included;
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A Digital Photo Project (which can be viewed here)
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A Podcast Competition
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A Playwright Competition
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A 'Closed Mic'
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The video-based 'Vid-Nineteen'
View the original #CrookedHouseStaysAtHome Project Page here (now private).
The Act of Oblivion III: Queen's County
28th-29th February 2020, Riverbank Theatre
Queen’s County draws inspiration from the first trialed plantations operated by the English crown in Ireland in the 16th century in counties Laois and Offaly. The one in Laois became known as Queen’s County. This devised play explores displacement and alienation through the lens of young people’s experience today, and includes episodes on commuting, rural isolation, strangeness and belonging, in one character’s surreal train journey through County Laois en route home from Electric Picnic.
The performance was devised by Kildare Youth Theatre’s Senior Ensemble working in collaboration with theatre-maker Peter Hussey. It has been funded by the Arts Council’s Young Ensembles’ Scheme, and forms part of a sequence of the ongoing The Act of Oblivion series that explores the colonisation of Ireland.
(Click the arrows to scroll through some pictures from the show)
A Promotional Trailer
Some Audience Feedback:
"Really interesting, I loved the historical aspect, and the movement pieces were really intriguing" - Hannah
"An excellent representation of the colonisation of Ireland" - Aoife
"I could relate to it - and that made it really interesting" - Fergus
An edited, live performance of the show can be watched in its entirety below:
Decision Making and Self Reprocessing Training Course
3rd-9th February 2020, Logroño, Spain
For one week of February, four senior members of Kildare Youth Theatre traveled to northern Spain to an Erasmus+ funded project which involved learning decision making and mindfulness skills. Under the context of bringing these skills to both the stage and workshops, our team worked alongside like-minded individuals from Bulgaria, Italy, Greece and of course Spain.
From day one, the project involved intense group work, touching on ideas such as Howard Gardner's '7 Intelligences' and the '6 Thinking Hats' for effective communication.
The project was a blend of discussion and practical work, evolving meaningful conversations into short devised pieces which harbored the emotions felt by the groups.
"The inner gang and inner conflict [ideas] were touched on many times, which was a very emotional experience for most of the participants and really brought the groups closer" - Irish female.
With thanks to ON&OFF Theatro Spain
Drama For Youth Work Symposium
21st January 2020, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Maynooth, Co.Kildare
Drama for Youth Work is a Key Action 2 Strategic Partnership Project of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union organised by ON & OFF Teatro of Spain, BiondekBühne of Austria and Crooked House Theatre Company, Ireland.
This Symposium was a multiplier event of the project in January 2020 to which were invited student youth workers, and practicing youth workers from Ireland.
Speakers at the symposium were Anne O' Gorman, Youth Arts Programme, National Youth Council of Ireland, Maurice Devlin, Head of Applied Social Studies at Maynooth University, Laura O’Riordan representing ON & OFF, Lena Gattinger representing BiondekBühne and Peter Hussey
representing Crooked House.
Drama for Youth Work produced 45 videos and a manual on how to use drama activities in youth work, and filming of these projects involved the participation of Kildare Youth Theatre Members, more on this can be read here.
