a place where anything can happen by Pat Kinevane
From a very early age - growing up in a rural village outside Cobh - I was fascinated by the idea of a stage, an audience and the exchange between both. My friends and I would rob my Mam’s curtains and sometimes my Dad’s boots and even though I was from the working class, we would pretend to be Kings and Cinderellas on top of boxes covered with old bits of lino or carpets. We pretended to be elegant, angry, happy and sometimes incredibly sad, but all the time we were having fun with our innocent imaginations. I knew even then that this thing called ‘theatre’ was a part of my love of life and my love for it grew. I began to make fully detailed stages from the cardboard boxes that our groceries came in! I made characters from paper, coloured their costumes with crayon and stuck them on to old school rulers so I could move them about. I made scenery from old hankies and greasproof paper. I even designed a matchbox- trapdoor for the villian to fall through! All the time I was having the best of play, escaping to my world of make believe.....a place where anything could happen. To this very day, I do the same. I look forward to each performance with a duty... a duty to deliver the best work I can for a generous audience... an audience that has given their time and headspace over to the show... an audience who has given me their trust to deliver the story with my fullest effort. And I try my best because I am still of a working class and humbled by that. The audience is drawn to the stage, and the exchange between it and them. And after paying for their tickets, getting babysitters or parking and all that organised, it is time for them to escape into the world of their innocent imaginations, to a place of Kings and Cinderellas and elegance and anger and sadness and joy and make believe.... a place where anything can happen. See Silent by Pat Kinevane on the 9 Nov, page 9 for more details
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