News & Events

We’re delighted to announce our fabulous cast for Much Ado About Nothing; our return to Kilkenny Arts Festival. Venetia Bowe and Shane O’Regan will play the young lovers Hero and Claudio. Peter Corboy and Maeve Fitzgerald will be sparring as Benedick and Beatrice. Jack Mullarkey will play the scheming Don John, with Margaret McAuliffe as Margaret and Patrick … Continued

Congratulations to the 2018 Rough Magic team who walked away with the Best Ensemble trophy at the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards.

Rough Magic is delighted to have received an Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards nomination for the Rough Magic Ensemble 2018.

Two weeks before the curtain rises on Portrait, Rough Magic’s artistic director Lynne Parker discusses adapting the novel 100 years later, and why it’s important to bring Joyce out of Dublin.   Why did you choose to program Joyce this year, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in particular? We were … Continued

Katie Davenport is the brilliant designer behind the topsy-turvy world of Rough Magic’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Before the show opens in Kilkenny’s Castle Yard, Katie spoke about designing for all-weather outdoor productions, approaching her third Shakespearean play, and incorporating post-Soviet culture, punk, and “sequinned magic” on the night.     What is the concept and inspiration … Continued

Google Image search ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream poster’ and you’ll see a well-trodden formula in past productions of fairy queen Titania, donkey-head Bottom and an enchanted-looking wood. In Rough Magic’s production, there’s a six-year old with fairy wings in a laundrette and a chipper. Here, director Lynne Parker reveals how we came up with a … Continued

Supported by the department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, a number of leading theatre organisations have come together to initiate and formalise a position on Gender Policy. Over two years the companies have engaged in a series of discussions that have resulted in each organisation formulating its own gender policy statement with reference to … Continued

We’re delighted to announce our most exciting adventure yet – a new creative ensemble to take us on tour around the country and to two major festivals. Join us for great nights out, new people and new ideas. We’ll have a lot of fun as we celebrate two of the great architects of the English language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce – in … Continued

Lynne Parker, Artistic Director of Rough Magic, is directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kilkenny Arts Festival this August. She talks about staging an open-air production, why Shakespeare is relevant today, and how this show reminds us “we’ve all been eejits in love”. What attracted you to this text? I was seduced by the beauty of the language … Continued

We are thrilled that Shane Mac an Bhaird’s brilliant first play Melt has been nominated for a Zebbie Award by the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild.  Produced by Rough Magic for the 2017 Dublin Theatre Festival this funny, sophisticated fairytale featured Owen Roe, Rebecca O’Mara, Genevieve Hulme Beaman and Charlie Maher, directed by Lynne Parker and designed … Continued