HONEST Arts Production Co. has had a hot, happening year since ‘Waiting in Line’ premiered at John’s Square for Limerick City of Culture. Briefly, this is a three-hander play in which the actors play multiple parts, intercut storylines racing around the hub device of a Social Welfare office.
The set is eye-boggling, blank walls illuminated to serially present as a full kitchen, bedroom, disco, dole booth, café.
Co-writer and producer with actor Pius McGrath, Tara Doolan of Honest Arts also directs. She’s delighted to report a new Limerick platform for this show at UL on September 22 and 23 at Jonathan Swift Theatre on foot of “an invitation from UL Arts Office to perform there and get the students to go and see a young contemporary story”.
Her own company’s story is aglow for some time, their first time out with ‘Mid-Knight Cowboy’ making it to the New York solo show festival. On to Edinburgh and McGrath was reviewed in The Scotsman favourably.
“After we based ‘Waiting in Line’ [in Dance Limerick] we were counselled by some of our peers who thought we were in with a good chance of an Irish Times Theatre Award for our set design by Mario Beck. So we took the show to De-Light Studios on the outskirts of Dublin for a couple of nights and then were invited to the Adelaide Fringe Festival”.
That long haul was impossible for them but a more generous timeline into Toronto’s equivalent allowed them to gather financial support.
“It was there we won The Cutting Edge Award’ which is the only non-box office based award,” she explains. “It’s an unusual one but we got the only one that we could win”.
Other gongs at Toronto were driven by ticket sales – with Canadian acts inevitably having territorial advantage.
Note that this vigorous show ‘Waiting in Line’ is for o15s only and is told from many perspectives but without bias. If interested in this original, colourful work that has had characters and script develop considerably since its first staging, email your booking to [email protected]
