Creative Arts Project Sees Digital Model of the Abbey Theatre on its Opening Night in 1904 Launched
Posted on: 18 April 2011
A digital model of the old Abbey Theatre as it was on its opening night on 27th December 1904 was launched recently in the Samuel Beckett Theatre at Trinity College Dublin. The model is the result of a collaboration between historian, Dr Hugh Denard from King’s College London – currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity’s Long Room Hub – and Dublin-based, digital graphics company, NOHO. The new 3-dimensional digital model is opening up fresh ways of exploring the stories and histories of the early years of the National Theatre. The initiative was part of Trinity’s Creative Arts, Technologies and Culture Initiative.
The launch was followed by a performance, ‘S H I F T’ inspired by the ‘Playboy of the Western World’ riots in Ireland’s Abbey Theatre. ‘S H I F T’ is a 21st century, creative collision of devised and improvised live music, video art, sound and performance by young Irish musicians, artists and performers that takes as its impetus the defining moment of the riots.
On the same evening, Professor Jean-Michel Rabaté of the University of Pennsylvania, gave the Annual Samuel Beckett Lecture on ‘Beckett and Bathos’. The evening of innovation, scholarship and performance aimed to showcase the best in Irish Theatre research and contemporary Irish performance.
The Abbey Theatre, 1904 Project and ‘S H I F T’ are supported by the Creative Arts, Technologies and Culture Initiative, the Trinity Association and Trust, Trinity’s Long Room Hub, the Trinity Foundation, the School of Drama Film and Music, the National Library of Ireland, and the Abbey Theatre.
‘Creative Arts, Technologies and Culture’ is a major initiative launched by Trinity last year to spearhead a dynamic new approach to innovation by promoting the generation of new ideas, creative practice, connections and programmes across the Arts and Sciences, and between the City and Trinity. (www.tcd.ie/catc)
Background:
The old Abbey Theatre, formerly the Hibernian Theater of Varieties was acquired by Miss Annie Horniman in 1904 for the use of the Irish National Theatre Society. Joseph Holloway, architect, was engaged to renovate the interior of the theatre, which opened with performances of ‘On Baile’s Strand’ by W. B. Yeats. The ‘old’ Abbey Theatre remained in use until damaged by fire in 1951. The process of researching and creating the new, 3-dimensional model of the old Abbey is being tracked in detail on the project website (http://blog.oldabbeytheatre.net), so that visitors can follow the project.
The performance ‘S H I F T’ will consist of three ‘movements’, corresponding with the three acts of Synge’s Playboy of the Western World (storytelling, becoming, transcending), representing a complex matrix of cross-mappings onto three distinct strands: performance and protest at the Abbey Theatre, 26 January 1907 (approaching, spectating, rioting); digitally recreating the old Abbey Theatre (discovering, developing, displaying); and making S H I F T (devising, rehearsing, performing).