Dowtcha Puppets comes to Corcadorca TDC with ‘Bríd’s Story’, a prequel to ‘The Line’. They will work for the week from November 12th and present their showing at 1:10pm (lunchtime) on Friday, November 16th.
Bríd is a young woman from Cork who becomes a convict in Van Diemen’s Land. In this production we aim to establish the character and develop an aesthetic that we can take forward to ‘The Line’.
‘The Line’ is an international collaboration between Dowtcha Puppets (Cork, Ireland), Black Hole Theatre (Melbourne) and playwright Nathan Maynard.
Set against the British invasion of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) at the height of the frontier war in 1830, ‘The Line’ examines invasion masquerading as settlement and the manipulation of exiled Irish and British subjects by the British crown to achieve the biggest land grab in history.
Our play studies this time through the relationship between Muka, a Palawa (Tasmanian aboriginal) woman and a Bríd, a pregnant, escaped Irish convict in 1830.
It’s an ambitious project on a design level. The cast uses only two actors who’s narrative takes place against a flight from the war and capture. The objective is for the action subsequent to the characters to be portrayed with shadow play, puppetry and projection.
The Theatre Development Centre (TDC) was established by Corcadorca in 2011. TDC is housed in Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street, Cork. Corcadorca make the space available to theatre makers free of charge so they may write, work with actors, and develop the technical aspects of a piece—but most of all so they have a supportive environment in which to create work for the stage.
