One of the highlights of Kilkenny Arts Festival 2022

Artistic Director of Rough Magic, Lynne Parker is looking forward immensely to her return visit to Kilkenny with her creative production of Shakespeare's The Tempest. While some may have been idle during the pandemic, Lynne and her company didn't let it diminish their creative output.

The director outlines just how productive they were in the face of COVID restrictions: “With Solar Bones we were performing all the way through the pandemic and we made a film of our production of Hecuba and we also produced Tonic last year so in some ways we've managed to keep really busy.”

Rough Magic is an enduringly popular feature at Kilkenny Arts Festival and always receives an enthusiastic welcome from audiences.

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Lynne observes: "It's like our fifth visit because we started in 2018 and we had agreed to do a three year stint on open air Shakespeare but of course COVID got in the way, so we've ended up – this is our sixth show with Kilkenny since 2018. So, the whole thing got extended but that was something that we were delighted to do because we enjoyed working with the Kilkenny Arts Festival so much, and loved coming to Kilkenny for the festival.

She continues: “There has been quite a lot of outdoor theatre since the pandemic because of course the indoor theatre has been so reduced in terms of the social distancing and all that. But we were experimenting anyway from 2018 onwards and what we've done - last year , we did a kind of workshop presentation of The Tempest in the Fitzwilliam Square Gardens because we wanted to use amplification to really deliver the poetry of the text. So that was something that we did with actors on mikes and with sound design and music by Denis Clohessy, That was very helpful in putting together the production for this year, where the actors will certainly be outdoors but they'll all be 'miked' and the voices will be treated as needs so that we can deliver what is a nuanced poetic text even in an unconfined auditorium.”

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On her decision to cast a woman, namely Eleanor Methven in the role of Prospero, she explains: “Firstly, it's because Shakespeare, as wonderful as he is, does not offer enough female roles of that calibre and we have such a mighty contingent of female actors in this country, particularly Eleanor Methven who really is someone who can command a stage and command one of these great roles. So, you can't do it in every play but his part lends itself extremely well to a very subtle, complex, powerful woman and we found it to be exciting to take that step and see what ripple effect it had on the rest of the play: particularly with the relationship of Miranda her daughter which is a complex one with any parent, but the mother daughter relationship is particularly strong and this has really given us a chance to look at that.

She continues "Prospero is a very passionately loving mother but she is also an extraordinary strategist. She's brought her daughter up to think for herself as well so what's interesting is working out how much the magic has an effect on the relationship as well."

Of Miranda, Lynne notes, "She has not been groomed to be a socialite: she has been brought up as a strong individual woman with agency, so she hasn't learned the social guile that you need which Ferdinand has come across."

As a female director, the appeal of these self-determining women characters is strong. "Its something I have seen grow", she explains.

"Its been enriched in theatre in Ireland over a number of years now, which is extremely satisfying."

Lynnes' decision to do the Tempest was directly influenced by her leading actor. "Well, I was really thinking of something that I wanted to do with Eleanor because Eleanor and I had worked many times." 

"So I knew she that she was ready for something as big as a this. It really all came together. It was a happy accident that we were looking at this play and then I was also looking for something really exciting for Eleanor to do." 

The Tempest promises to deliver a magical experience for theatre lovers in the parklands of the equally magical Kilkenny Castle. The lyrical revenge fantasy will receive a dramatic and creative spin from Rough Magic, who take their own name from lines of text in Shakespeare's fantastical play. 

The Tempest ran as part Kilkenny Arts Festival from August 5 to 13 2022 at Kilkenny Castle Park