'The Mai' by Marina Carr

description

About Mephisto:

Mephisto Theatre Company is a Galway-based ensemble of theatre practitioners. We started making shows in 2006 when we met as post-graduate students at NUI, Galway. Since then, we have successfully produced high-quality, accessible shows throughout Ireland and the UK, including ‘The World's Wife’ by Carol Ann Duffy (Cúirt International Festival of Literature 2009, Brighton Festival Fringe 2010); 'The Morning After Optimism' by Tom Murphy (Black Box Theatre 2009); 'Grenades' by Tara McKevitt (Galway Theatre Festival 2010; Mayfesto at TronTheatre, Glasgow 2011; Bewley's Cafe Theatre 2012); and 'The Honey Spike' by Bryan MacMahon (Town Hall Theatre, Galway 2011). We have produced plays by writers from Oscar Wilde to Abbey New Playwriting Programme's Tara McKevitt and our work has been lauded:

“…extraordinary…” – The Irish Times

“...this is spirited, breathtaking theatre” (5 STARS) - The Irish Examiner

“…powerful…” - The Scotsman

'The Mai' is our 20th production and builds on our successful run at the Town Hall Theatre in 2011 with 'The Honey Spike' by Bryan MacMahon. For that production the Town Hall Theatre invested financially in us, as they are doing with 'The Mai'. With a cast of thirteen and demanding production requirements, 'The Honey Spike' was "an epic step in the company's 5-year theatrical voyage", (Irish Theatre Magazine). In August 2012, we're taking an even bigger leap.

The Project:
‘The Mai’ by Marina Carr is a play about love, the kind that chews you up and spits you out. It's a play that centres on four generations of women from the same family who struggle to come to terms with effects of their love and how it can be damaged but remain true; a play that our female actors will relish. With all the plays in the world to choose from, we chose this one, chiefly because Marina Carr is one of Ireland’s most popular and gifted modern Irish playwrights.

From opium-smoking, oar-wielding matriarch Grandma Fraochlán, who forever laments the death of her beloved Nine-Fingered Fisherman, to The Mai herself who tears her world apart and re-builds it again and again for her passionate but absent husband Robert, to their 16-year-old daughter, Millie, who is just beginning to learn about the punch that crazy love can pack, ‘The Mai’ re-imagines the timeless Celtic myth of Coillte and Bláth, and gives the audience a story that will lodge deep down in their bones.

Why do we need your help?
‘The Mai’ is our most ambitious play yet – a challenging and moving play, a large cast, performing on the main stage of the Town Hall Theatre, Galway - and we have engaged a professional team of theatre practitioners to stage this ambitious production. We are fortunate to have some financial support from the Town Hall Theatre and we are looking to raise just over 10% of our budget here on Fund it for design costs needed to compliment the dream-like, elegiac quality of the script, and to get us over the line and give the production the staging it deserves.