EatinIreland 2009 version

...and we're back!

It's either the end of one very long day, or the start of the second day of the journey. We're here at the Absolut Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival.

After last year's successful visit with three plays (Some Are People, Tom Cruise Get off the Couch, and Emily Breathes), we applied again with two plays. J. Stephen Brantley's Break and my own The Adventures of... Both are already peripatetic pieces: Break's been done in Provincetown, New Orleans, and twice in NYC; Adventures has been seen at Wings, EAT and the Sam French Festival, and is currently gracing the pages of Best Short Plays for 3 actors, 2008 (Smith & Kraus).

So, you know, we're sending the good stuff.

To the left is the fine J. Stephen Brantley, posing next to a gay trashcan. That is, as soon as you get off the plane in Dublin, you start to see advertisements for the festival everywhere! So the first thing everyone does when they arrive is take a picture of the trashcan. It's becoming a tradition.

J., Jamie Heinlein, stage manager Terra Vetter and I flew from New York last night (Saturday), and arrived early this morning in Dublin. I didn't sleep much, well, really at all, because it was a packed plane, and I had an exit row seat (great for leg room, not so great for the seat going back).

Our other actors (Hunter Gilmore and Jason Alan Griffin) also made their way to Dublin...we trusted they'd be at tech rehearsal, which began at 11:30 at the Cobalt Cafe.

We made our way into town from the airport, and I checked in at my hotel, while the rest of the outfit left their bags at the Grafton Capital Hotel (just off Grafton St., notably closer to all the venues than last year's lodging).

Because I straddle at least two worlds at all times, I went to the Fitzwilliam and checked in; I'm editing Frommer's Ireland this year, and any trip here falls under the definition of research. Lovely, wonderful research.

And met the gang at the head of Grafton St. Over breakfast at Bewley's Cafe, I remarked that Nanci Griffith has a song called "On Grafton Street," which references Bewley's. J. remembered the song, and we talked about how much we love Nanci Griffith, which is another point of contact between the two of us!

Here's a link to Nanci performing On Grafton Street.

We made it to tech up on North George St. afterward, and it was lovely to walk around Dublin on a Sunday morningm before the crowds began to swarm, and when the streets and the air still smelled fresh and moist.

The Cobalt's a lovely performance space: it's an old Georgian mansion which is also an art gallery and a bar, and living space for its owners. There's a parrot that never stops calling and singing upstairs, and a patio in the back that called for drowsy sitting on a Sunday morning.

We marked both shows, and since the lighting and sound were minimal, it didn't take long to work through them. Everything is about sight lines in this space: there's no rake whatsoever, and the audience sits in chairs that begin just beyond the archway of a living room. They close the shutters on the streetside windows, and there are a few red velvet drapes on stage right wall, and the back between the windows. There's a fireplace stage left. I expect the playing space isn't much larger than the original Caffe Cino, and you know they got a lot done there.

We finished surprisingly quickly, for a tech, thanks in large part to Vickey Curtis, who is managing the venue (and who wrote one of the plays, and is acting in it!). We first met her last year, when she was one of the Irish playwrights in the shorts programme (in Ireland, I use the Irish spelling), and she introduced us to Moritz (yes, like Moritz in Spring Awakening), who would be running the lights.

We finished up just as Chris Weikel arrived...Weikel, of course, is the author of the play Pig Tale, which is here under the auspices of TOSOS, with even more of our friends, following its successful run at Wings late last year. We did an invited dress with the Pig Tale boys last Monday, and it was good to see us all playing in a different space, and all the actors on their toes figuring out how to best use it.

We followed Weikel around the corner and went up to the furnished apartment he's sharing with some of his crew, and then back up Grafton St. for lunch; and I peeled off and went back to the lovely hotel with Mark Finley (TOSOS Artistic Director) where we checked in with the rest of the world and talked theater, here today and what we're hoping to do the rest of the year.

On Grafton St., we saw a sand sculptor putting the finishing touches on a statue of a pig, which I figured was a good omen for the TOSOS guys, and Mark threw a euro in the hat. (Though as you will note below, it is a GIRL pig).


And then I put in a wakeup call for 4:30(pm), because we had to be back at the theater at 5:30 for a runthrough...and answered the call and went back to sleep.

Leaping out of the hotel AT 5:30, I grabbed a cab uptown (Just like New York!) and got to the venue well, close enough to when I was supposed to be there.

We got a first look at the other plays that we will be sharing the bill with, starting with a one-woman mini-musical that will start the show in a suitably decadent manner; Fraulein von...something something (I don't have a program with me, and I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce it! Which may get me a spanking come tomorrow night).

Then Break breaks the ice for EAT, followed by a play called Seamus & Seamus (set in heaven), Vickey's Two Girls and a Ring; Brian Merriman's Seventy, and Adventures (there's one more show on the bill, which is going to be last, because the people performing are performing a full length that starts at 8pm several blocks away. Good luck fellas! You're going to need it!)

And we managed to finish up the runthrough at an entirely reasonable 8-ish pm. Dinner beckoned, and we headed back across the Liffey to Temple Bar, accompanied by the delicious Rian Corrigan (who was also in the shorts program last year, and is practically an honorary Irish member of EAT), and another actress (names...I'm terrible with names...) who is appearing in a production of Michael Collins. (Interestingly, two other shows running at major venues in Dublin are All My Sons and a stage version of The Shawshank Redemption). I suggested (nudged) us in the direction of the Bad Ass Cafe, which is one of my favorite tacky joints anywhere. The author of the Ireland book and I go back and forth on it, because I think you need a tacky joint (or three) in a book, and she is looking for stuff that's a little more authentic. I argue that it's authentic kitsch.

There are little trolleys that run on cables near the ceiling (at least in some parts of the room), and they clip the orders to them and send them over to the kitchen. So I tucked into a plate of bangers and mash....(mmmm. Mash). and everyone else likewise got something hearty. Burgers, soups, salads, pizzas: all recommendable. It stays in the book.

And the beautiful weather is still holding late of an evening, and I got back to the room, and tried to catch up a little (helped somewhat by the Manhattan I ordered at the bar and brought up to the room with me).

But now, the spirit is willing (it's almost always willing), but the body is saying: SLEEEEEEP!

The lovely bed calls me (really, I am so tired I can hear voices):
Pretty, isn't it?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz