Noel Coward's FALLEN ANGELS

“An ambitious production…Blacklight Productions are a relatively new company and you cannot but admire the scale of their ambition.”

Chris O’Rourke, The Arts Review.

The roaring twenties. Two women. One ex-lover.

For our 2019 production of Noel Coward’s Fallen Angels, our audiences were transported back to London in 1926, to watch the scandal of Noel Coward’s ‘Fallen Angels’ unravel in old-Hollywood black and white.

Actors, set, costume – all made-up and treated to appear in total black and
white, paying homage to the earliest stars of the Silver Screen.

Silent movie montages and original composition from Karima Dillon-El Toukhy supported a physical style that borrowed form early movie greats like Chaplin and Keaton.

All that, and the one and only Detox (RuPaul’s Drag Race) gave our aesthetic approach the seal of approval with a cheeky like on twitter!

Check out our production gallery here.

To see what audiences thought of Fallen Angels, have a look at our audience reaction videos.

Have You Seen This Girl?, Cliodhna McAllister for SASH 2019

A missing girl. A desperate plan.

We were delighted to partner with our friends at Purple Hare for this original work, as part of SASH 2019.

We took a filmic approach to bring Ellie to life - the latest girl to vanish in a small town plagued by the unexplained disappearances of a string of young women.

Using embedded multimedia, and experimenting with disembodied audio, we channelled the style of Grand Guignol to create a real thriller piece!

Check out our production gallery here.

Produced in collaboration with Purple Hare for Smock Allies, as part of 2019's Scene + Heard festival at Smock Alley. 

Butterflies & Moths, Colm Doran for Scene + Heard 2018

"What are you looking at? What do you want? Remorse?"

Blacklight kicked off 2018 with Colm Doran's tragi-comic take on mental illness and navigating toxic relationships - Butterflies & Moths.

We armed our audiences with glow sticks, blasted out some Peaches and Megadeth, and watched a misfit group of friends unravel in this exciting piece of new writing.  

An abused partner, a desperate friend, and spinning paranoia take centre stage, as one woman's reality is questioned. When everything she thought was true seems to be a lie, she needs to take control. At any cost. Things got hella messy. 

Check out our production gallery here.

Produced in collaboration with Ciara Smyth for Smock Allies, as part of 2018's Scene + Heard festival at Smock Alley. 

Who Will Carry the Word?, Charlotte Delbo

"There must be one who will return."

For our second major production, Blacklight undertook the challenging staging of Charlotte Delbo's Who Will Carry the Word? 

With a cast of women in the double digits, we told the stories of the French Resistance fighters of WW2. 

A stripped back set, a filmic directorial approach, and an original score from our own Karima Dillon-El Toukhy, allowed us to create what has been described as "one of the most singular and worthwhile theatre going experiences in Dublin this year." Laura Marriot. 

Take a look at our production shots in our WWCTW Gallery, and check out our reviews here. 

Just Dawn Nua, Ronan Lynagh for Scene + Heard 2017

 

"Ourselves, as gaeilge as in English."

For 2017's Scene and Heard festival at Smock Alley, Dublin, Blacklight was delighted to support Ronan Lynagh in the production of his spoken word debut - Just Dawn Nua.

Through a haunting hybrid of Irish and English, Ronan Lynagh’s Just Dawn Nua reflects on our myriad identities -  As people. As people of Ireland. As Ireland herself.

Multimedia, liquid language, and stark storytelling meet in the middle in this spoken word performance - an arresting piece of new writing from a bold new voice in Irish theatre.

Producer: Louise O'Meara for Smock Alley's Generator Programme. 

Stitching, Anthony Neilson

"We will fix it, we will mend it..."

For our inaugural venture as Blacklight Productions, we chose the dark and starkly emotive Stitching, by Anthony Neilson. The venue was the Back Loft, a small theatre space that encouraged an intimacy between actors and audience and helped generate an intensity that escalated throughout the discomfiting denouement.

We experimented with projection mapping and cutting edge sound techniques to create a 'tense' atmosphere that challenged the audience's boundaries of comfort.  

The play, dealing with questions of male-female power dynamics and investigating the emotive theme of abortion, was particularly significant in 2016, at a time when these issues were at forefront of the political discourse in Ireland.

Check out our photos from the set of Stitching, November 2016.