SLIGO'S award-winning Blue Raincoat Theatre Company has set itself a formidable task with its latest production: an adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which opens in the town next week.
"We want to present, theatrically, to an adult the kind of feeling you would have got as a child when the book was read to you," explains the company's artistic director, Niall Henry.
Lewis Carroll's classic children's story has been adapted for the stage by Jocelyn Clarke. In her adaptation, Carroll falls into the play and the characters take over the narrative. Henry says he wants the audience to appreciate the anarchy and radical qualities of Carroll's approach to story telling.
This is the company's 28th production in the eight years since Henry returned to his native Sligo from Paris (where he had trained at Marcel Marceau's company) to found the Blue Raincoats with Malcolm Hamilton, now full-time writer in residence.
As well as having a very loyal local following, the company has established itself on the national theatre scene. Its success has been recognised with awards from RTE, the Sunday Times and the Sunday Tribune. It has also won an AIB Better Ireland award in the arts category and was nominated for an Irish Times/ESB theatre award last year.
It is the only Irish company, apart from the Abbey in Dublin and Druid in Galway, to own its own theatre and also maintains one of the largest core groups of actors of any professional company in the State.
Keeping a core group of people has been a priority for Henry and there has also been a very strong emphasis on training. A total of 14 people are working full-time on the latest production.
Finding space in which to rehearse and perform was a priority in the early days. Henry and Hamilton, with very little cash, transformed a disused timber mill into the Factory Performance Space. The old stone building is now undergoing major refurbishment thanks to a £150,000 grant from the Department of Arts and Culture. It will reopen in May.
Alice's Adventures in Wonder- land is being staged at the Hawk's Well over five nights from Tuesday.
Henry says the company plans its work around three-year artistic policies. In the past, it concentrated on physical theatre and mainly staged classics or new works by Hamilton. However, since last spring it has been concentrating on doing new or adapted plays.
"We have been working for four or five years on a very visual, physical type of theatre and have come to a point now where we hope we are able to emphasise the right physical style for a particular play," says Henry.
He says he believes the company's greatest achievement is the fact that most of the original members are still with it. "There is a certain security in working with not all the same people, but a lot of the same people. You end up with a common language and you are able to assess problems in a different way than you would if you were working with a group of strangers. That's not such a bad thing in a world like theatre, which isn't a very consistent world."
An £80,000 grant from the Arts Council will underpin the cost of two productions this year. However, income from productions and touring in recent years has meant that the company's reliance on Arts Council funding has gone from 80 per cent of its whole budget to under 60 per cent.
Alice will also be taken on tour, first in May to Monaghan, Armagh and Larne, and in September to Waterford, Kilkenny, Galway and Dublin.
Of the decision to try their brave venture on home territory, Henry says it is "more of a benefit than an obstacle" and that they have received a lot of goodwill and support. However, support was not unconditional. "I wouldn't consider Sligo a very forgiving place. If the show is no good, people don't come."