Page 138 - Gonzaga at 60
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GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
Glengarry Glenross,
brilliantly directed
by Brian Regan
Twelth Night to allow a large group of revellers to dance to ‘Moondance’ at the duke’s party.
It is striking to recall the support given by the Jesuit headmasters, Hubert Delaney,
Dermot Murray, Noel Barber and Peter Sexton. This support took a variety of forms. Hubert
Delaney had introduced drama as a Saturday morning opion. Each of the later three saw the
appropriateness and possibiliies of the use of the college chapel as theatre; all airmed their
sense of the educaional value of the acivity by absorbing much of the lack for the disrupion
caused by plays and operas. On his arrival as headmaster in 1992, Patrick Pots made the irst
serious investment in drama (and almost certainly the safety of the school) in commissioning a
rewiring of the lighing rig and increasing the annual budget allocaion to school theatre.
There have been memorable performances over the years: Kevin Lynch (’76) and Nicky Devlin
(’91), who both played Thomas Becket in Murder in the Cathedral, Aran Maree’s (’87) Macbeth
(Lady Macbeth was played by Emma Donoghue, then in Muckross, who has been short-listed for
the 2010 Booker Prize for her novel The Room), Michael Coonan’s (’01) Proctor in The Crucible, Eoin
Casey as Salieri and David Sweeney as Mozart (’00) in Amadeus; Michael Fitzgerald (’98) as Mack
the Knife, and Rossa Fitzgerald and Daniel Bevan as Malvolio and Feste respecively (’02).
Since 2000, there have been outstanding performances too, among them Bill Lafan (‘05)
Top: The Wind That in Billy Roche’s A Handful of Stars, Richard Breatnach (’04) as Richie Roma (Glengarry Glenross),
Shakes The Barley ,
from Element Films, a and Ciaran O’Rourke (’09) as Saint Just in Danton’s Death.
production company run There have also been producions of quite outstanding quality. Everyone has his or her
by Ed Guiney, Gonzaga favourite; few have long memories. One oten hears menion of Twelve Angry Men staged in the
class of 1984. Below:
Mephistopheles (Michael year in which its director had had a bout with radiaion therapy and had decided to do something
Fitzpatrick ) conducts the easy that would require no complicated seing or efects, and simply involve teaching a small
mayhem as Faust (Jack
Gleeson) learns group to act. Since 2003, Brian Regan and Caroline Staunton have brought to their producions
an absolutely gited direcion and understanding of drama and stage that the present writer can
only wish he’d learnt in thirty years. Both have put their innovaive stamp and sense of purpose
on a tradiion that is now irmly established. Each has been uncompromising in staging plays of
intrinsic and educaional value.
Plays are not only for actors, and the educaional acivity of drama lies equally in the creaion
of space for the acion. Drama is problem solving: confroning a text, choosing a dominaing
themaic interpretaion, deining a seing to contain and inform the acion. The limitaions of
stages built more as concert plaforms or for school award ceremonies cause other issues. The
greater the limitaions, however, the greater the challenge and the opportunity. How to present
the batleields of the First World War in the second act of The Silver Tassie; how to create
a workable veil between current acion and a character’s memories in Amadeus or to project
GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
Glengarry Glenross,
brilliantly directed
by Brian Regan
Twelth Night to allow a large group of revellers to dance to ‘Moondance’ at the duke’s party.
It is striking to recall the support given by the Jesuit headmasters, Hubert Delaney,
Dermot Murray, Noel Barber and Peter Sexton. This support took a variety of forms. Hubert
Delaney had introduced drama as a Saturday morning opion. Each of the later three saw the
appropriateness and possibiliies of the use of the college chapel as theatre; all airmed their
sense of the educaional value of the acivity by absorbing much of the lack for the disrupion
caused by plays and operas. On his arrival as headmaster in 1992, Patrick Pots made the irst
serious investment in drama (and almost certainly the safety of the school) in commissioning a
rewiring of the lighing rig and increasing the annual budget allocaion to school theatre.
There have been memorable performances over the years: Kevin Lynch (’76) and Nicky Devlin
(’91), who both played Thomas Becket in Murder in the Cathedral, Aran Maree’s (’87) Macbeth
(Lady Macbeth was played by Emma Donoghue, then in Muckross, who has been short-listed for
the 2010 Booker Prize for her novel The Room), Michael Coonan’s (’01) Proctor in The Crucible, Eoin
Casey as Salieri and David Sweeney as Mozart (’00) in Amadeus; Michael Fitzgerald (’98) as Mack
the Knife, and Rossa Fitzgerald and Daniel Bevan as Malvolio and Feste respecively (’02).
Since 2000, there have been outstanding performances too, among them Bill Lafan (‘05)
Top: The Wind That in Billy Roche’s A Handful of Stars, Richard Breatnach (’04) as Richie Roma (Glengarry Glenross),
Shakes The Barley ,
from Element Films, a and Ciaran O’Rourke (’09) as Saint Just in Danton’s Death.
production company run There have also been producions of quite outstanding quality. Everyone has his or her
by Ed Guiney, Gonzaga favourite; few have long memories. One oten hears menion of Twelve Angry Men staged in the
class of 1984. Below:
Mephistopheles (Michael year in which its director had had a bout with radiaion therapy and had decided to do something
Fitzpatrick ) conducts the easy that would require no complicated seing or efects, and simply involve teaching a small
mayhem as Faust (Jack
Gleeson) learns group to act. Since 2003, Brian Regan and Caroline Staunton have brought to their producions
an absolutely gited direcion and understanding of drama and stage that the present writer can
only wish he’d learnt in thirty years. Both have put their innovaive stamp and sense of purpose
on a tradiion that is now irmly established. Each has been uncompromising in staging plays of
intrinsic and educaional value.
Plays are not only for actors, and the educaional acivity of drama lies equally in the creaion
of space for the acion. Drama is problem solving: confroning a text, choosing a dominaing
themaic interpretaion, deining a seing to contain and inform the acion. The limitaions of
stages built more as concert plaforms or for school award ceremonies cause other issues. The
greater the limitaions, however, the greater the challenge and the opportunity. How to present
the batleields of the First World War in the second act of The Silver Tassie; how to create
a workable veil between current acion and a character’s memories in Amadeus or to project
