Theatre company gives old favourite a fresh outing

Drama: They've tramped streets with Macnas, opened the Special Olympics and tackled some of the most challenging issues relating to disability. Now Galway's award-winning Blue Teapot Theatre Company just want to have some fun - with two mean dames and their young step-sister, Cinderella.

The new interpretation of Cinders opened in the Nun's Island Theatre, Galway, last night, and runs this week for six performances. It may travel to Dublin, and has also been booked for this year's Baboro international children's festival in Galway.

The theatre company based in the Brothers of Charity, Renmore, has just received the State's first acknowledgement of the importance of drama for people with disabilities. This has come in the form of a small, but very welcome Arts Council grant.

"And it's tough at the top," quips Frank Butcher from Fr Griffin Road, Galway, who is one of Blue Teapot's five core members. Butcher and his colleagues, Richard Mannion from Dunmore, Co Galway, Patrick Becker from Kinvara, Co Galway, Kieran Coppinger from Mervue, Galway city, and Valerie Egan from Craughwell, Co Galway, have been rehearsing for Cinders since last September with drama training programme director Niamh Dillon.

Before that, the troupe had completed a highly successful national tour with Personal Outcomes, that's the one!, a play devised for people with learning disabilities and their trainers in relation to rights and responsibilities. "We helped to write the script, based on our own experiences, and spent nearly six months staging it in Dublin, Belfast, Newcastle in England, Sligo, Ennis, Co Clare, Limerick and Athenry, Co Galway," said Butcher and Mannion.

Blue Teapot was established by Fiona Coffey and Claude Madec within the Brothers of Charity in Galway more than 10 years ago. The aim was to provide a creative outlet for adult clients, and one of the company's early highlights was Millennium Fable, which played in Galway and Limerick and received a Better Ireland award.

Funding secured from the Department of Education in 2001 allowed for a full-time drama training programme to be established. Enter Niamh Dillon, formerly of Galway Youth Theatre. She worked with 16 participants on developing new performance skills over a three-year period, availing of assistance from a voice teacher, two dance teachers, and practitioners of physical theatre, drama and music.

As Dillon outlines in a training manual which she wrote with several colleagues three years ago, she has drawn on the experience of Brazilian drama practitioner and political activist Augusto Boal. He has used techniques such as image theatre and forum theatre to engage people in finding solutions to problems which were particular to their lives.

The image technique involves participants identifying a problem and illustrating the image of it by creating a statue of it. Forum involves devising a play which has an unresolved problem at its heart, and this allows the audience to assist in exploring solutions.

Issues such as transport for people with disabilities were explored in educational productions like Pat's Problem. A man with a learning disability who wished for, but could not get, a job was the subject of Pascal's Story in 2001. The following year, the group staged a large-scale production about relationships, entitled Blue, which played at Galway's Black Box and the Draoicht Arts Centre, Dublin.

Cinders runs at Nun's Island Theatre, Galway at noon today and Thursday, and at 8pm on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Tickets are available from the Galway Arts Centre at tel: (091) 565886.