Samhain Shona daoibh agud Breithlá Shona dúinn…
This time 12 years ago Strive Theatre was born! On the last week of October 2012, Ciarán and Andy met for a coffee in The Green Kiwi on College Rd. to start scheming about how to produce The Rooftops of Paris in an interesting way, that would get folk who don’t go to the theatre into theatre… We weren’t all that taken with where theatre in Cork was at at the time and we were aiming to find new ways to produce work and new audiences to engage with it…
We didn’t have a notion! But in the days that followed we spun around in Andy’s car on a mission for a venue/ materials/ partners/ support… We went up to Graffiti, who were super helpful! The then artistic director, the wonderful Emelie Fitzgibbon offered to help in whatever way she could, making tech equipment and costume stores available to us. As the idea wasn’t within Graffiti’s remit as an educational theatre company, she sent us to other potential venues. Having sussed out the Kino to no avail, we set our sights on Barrack St.
The play was set on Barrack St. and we were keen to present the show there, as a community theatre piece that had come directly from that community. We marched up and down the street. The late, great Tom Barry was the owner of Mr. Bradley’s at the time and had started using the bar to present small scale theatre. The space wasn’t really suitable for what we wanted to do, so despite Tom’s generous offer of the space, we had to keep looking…
We wandered into Nancy Spain’s and fell in love with the place. Andy and I were 19, so we would have missed out on the days when Nancy’s was an iconic Cork venue. It was barely keeping itself open at this stage and was under the stewardship of Tom Lynch, who had his own Celtic Pub busy next store… We were well taken by the decor and charm of Nancy’s and the space out the back had key features of our set already in place: a bar, a stage, seating… So we popped in next store to suss Tom out about doing the show there. Tom was an absolute gent. He showed us through the space and told us what the story was with it. We told him what we were about, what type of show the play was and why we wanted to do it there. The play was a social critique of the late days of The Celtic Tiger and it was set in a new-build apartment over looking the beer garden of Nancy Spains! Couldn’t have asked for a better venue really…
This meeting marked the start of the production process, and established a lot of the ideals of the company. We wanted ticket prices to be low as to not price anyone out from coming, and we wanted local people to come and see it. All of the businesses on Barrack St. were offered comps for them and their staff. We didn’t have a red cent and weren’t set to make many either, but we set about on a beg, borrow and steal method of attaining what we needed from a production and design point of view. As students we were able to use space in UCC for rehearsal and as we were in Drama & Theatre Studies and Dramat, there was no shortage of able theatre heads who were interested in being involved… We set a date for auditions, assembled the creative team and off we went…
Now, 12 years later, we still aim to produce theatre that stays true to the principles set out during that production. We are delighted to be working with a great team of people on our current project, Goll. The project has been cooking for 18 months and has great momentum behind it as we approach the end of the year. It is always exciting, and slightly sentimental, to be working for Strive Theatre in the autumn, as it brings back memories of those early days. It is a great honour to still be an active part of the Cork Theatre community and it really excites us to see what the coming months and years will bring…
Samhain Shona daoibh agus Breithlá Shona dúinn