Every year, second-year students of Drama and Theatre Studies and TSM Drama students are tasked with producing the second-year show at the Samuel Beckett theatre, and this year the show comes earlier than usual. Produced in partnership with a theatre company run by Trinity graduates, Sugarglass Theatre, Spectres of Gorky is a project inspired by Matthew Minnicino’s contemporary adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s play Children of the Sun – a condemnatory meditation on the Russian aristocracy, written in prison during the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Rather than staging either Children of the Sun or Minnicino’s adaptation, Spectres of Gorky is comprised of five distinct responses to the play, these being two pieces of new writing from Ultan Pringle and Robyn Gill respectively, two sets of short scenes devised by second year students, and a central devised performance piece. “There’s ghostly presences, there are repeating motifs, and all of the spectres are responses to Gorky’s text”, says Sinéad Ní Fhionnagáin, one of the five directors of the play.
Speaking about the lead-up to this week’s performances, Ní Fhionnagáin notes how it has greatly differed from previous years. Because of the change in the academic year structure in Trinity, he said,they have a lot less time to prepare. “Usually we’d get like six weeks working with these artists … That didn’t happen this time”, he said. “We did a number of introductory workshops, we did that in like week 13, and then we were divided into our different groups and we came back a week early, we did full time rehearsals from pretty much 10 to 10.” Though this shortened and unfamiliar approach was challenging, Ní Fhionnagáin goes on to assert how the experience has made the large ensemble in tune with one another, artistically and personally. With 24 cast members performing, this piece serves as the first opportunity for many of the students to work of a show of such scale.
The second-year show is a landmark both in the Trinity theatrical calendar and in the careers of students who will go on to be prominent figures in Irish theatre. With this year’s production breaking new ground in its development, Spectres of Gorky will surely be of interest to Trinity theatre-lovers. Spectres of Gorky runs from January 31st to February 2nd at the Samuel Beckett theatre.
