The Project Arts Centre’s long-anticipated Project 50 season continues this week with a contribution from Project regulars Pan Pan. This new season, celebrating the 50th birthday of the Project Arts Centre, has seen innovative new work that embodies the pioneering role of the theatre in the Irish art world. From electronic opera to commemoration-inspired dance, the season embraces the wide-reaching spectrum of contemporary theatre – and Pan Pan’s latest work is no different.
Pan Pan’s new play The Importance of Nothing takes Oscar Wilde as its jumping-off point, specifically his time in Reading Gaol. Set in a prison where drama therapy is 24 hours a day, it follows facilitator Lady Lancing (Una McKevitt) who has dedicated her life to conducting anti-homophobia workshops. Using the life and works of Oscar Wilde, she pushes her patients (Andrew Bennett, Mark O’Halloran and Dylan Tighe) to the limits as they re-imagine Wilde’s work, threading it through his life and the social conventions that ended him.
The timing of this production couldn’t be more apt, just as a wave of fear comes crashing in from across the Atlantic for the safety of LGBT people amongst other minorities. Activists have argued that since the passing of the marriage referendum, straight people have become complacent about gay rights, assuming the problem was fixed after the yes vote. To what extent such issues will be addressed in the production, if at all, is uncertain, just like most of Pan Pan’s work. Since its foundation in 1991 the company have strived to be different, experimental, unpredictable. Director Gavin Quinn has described The Importance of Nothing as more of an “experiment” than a play, and as with all their work it will surely be different to what has come before.
The Project has been the saving grace of Dublin theatre for half a century. If you wish to pay homage, there’s no better production to do it with.
The play is running until November 19th.
