Welcome to this year’s Festival Blog. Over the coming weeks we’ll be posting updates from many of the companies presenting work in the 2013 festival. We’ll have news from the cast and creative teams who are busy preparing in the rehearsal room as well as photos and videos of the work in progress.

Check back with us for more as the countdown to the Dublin Theatre Festival 2013 commences!

Friday, 6 September 2013

riverrun, TheEmergencyRoom and Galway Arts Festival


riverrun: TheEmergencyRoom and Galway Arts Festival

Another City, Another River: riverrun Sound Designer Alma Kelliher talks about the excitement of every new performance

riverrun will have its third incarnation in the Dublin Theatre Festival, previously having been to Galway Arts Festival and Kilkenny Arts Festival.

For my sound design I’ve chosen to immerse the audience in sound, as heard from within the river – the
sound of water rushing around you, the increasing pressure of water as you dive deeper into its depths. However, riverrun is no ordinary show. It has been described as ‘site responsive,’ adapting to each new space it inhabits, not attempting to hide any of the cracks, lumps or bumps that an empty theatre space has.




The challenge for me now is to deal with the acoustics of each new space, maintaining the integrity of the river sound while still allowing it to be its own new thing in each place. Druid Lane theatre in Galway is a small space with a lot of character and an intimate feeling. The Watergate Theatre in Kilkenny is more expansive, with echoes and resonances that evoke a much larger and more powerful river.

What will Project Arts Centre sound like? What kind of river will we encounter? The beauty of riverrun is that I won’t know until I get in there. It may be a violent, energetic body of water, it may be a more languid, gentle old river.

What I do know is that each time the creative team comes together, we start again, building a new atmosphere together so that riverrun is never the same twice. I live mix the sound at each performance, ebbing and flowing with Olwen so if she swims faster, I rush along with her, and if she feels like floating along for a bit, I ease the current. Whatever the river is doing, the audience is there at every bend and every rapid, travelling downstream with Olwen and out into the bay, part of a truly organic experience. 

Alma Kelliher, Sound Composition and Design

Images: Colm Hogan


Alma Kelliher
 


For more information and to book tickets, click here
riverrun runs Oct 2-6 in Project Arts Centre









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