The Sacred Sow

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What is Home? How do you get away to find your dreams and when do your dreams become your nightmares? When do we come of age and how do we make a break from our parents and strike out on our own? Irish playwright ELEANOR CUMMINS takes a hard look at the traditions of Ireland, and what happens when those traditions come into contact with the wider world. From the Travelers to Eastern European immigrants who come to seek a better life, the pressure on the traditional Irish way of life can be too much for those who aren´t ready to accept the changing world.

The journey of THE SACRED SOW starts as an entry to the 2007 Prague Post Playwriting Contest. It then received a workshop in the Fall of 2007 which resulted in a staged reading of the play. CUMMINS and BRIAN CASPE, the director, decided to take the play to a wider audience at the 2008 Prague Fringe Festival, which invites nearly 40 companies from around the world to take part in a week of innovative and thought provoking theatre you can´t find anywhere else. Productions range from the experimental non-verbal to traditional theatre to music concerts. The Prague Fringe descends on Mala Strana for the last week in May with round-the-clock events in 6 venues (see www.praguefringe.com/2008/ for complete details and schedule). The play will continue to grow after the festival with a tour of Ireland and England.

Biographies
EILEEN POLLOCK: Eileen met Eleanor in Galway for the controversial women’s theatre company, Taboo. At that time she had just finished being Molly Kay, the brothel keeper in Ron Howard’s ‘Far and Away’, and was still notorious as Lilo Lil in the long-running BBC sitcom ‘Bread’. Since then she has continued to tour with many of Ireland’s foremost companies, most notably DubbelJoint, who were also the originating producers of her ongoing one-woman show, ‘Kathleen, Mother of All the Behans’.

Apart from playing a series of wonderfully nasty witches in various Christmas pantomimes, her most cherished recent roles have been as Sharon in Owen McCafferty’s ‘Scenes From The Big Picture’, at the Royal National Theatre, London; the Widow Quin in Synge’s ‘Playboy of the Western World’, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester and Madge in Brian Friel’s ‘Philadelphia, Here I Come’, on tour round Ireland and Great Britain with A.R.T.Northern Ireland. Memorable recent film roles have been: as Mrs Finnucane, the money-lender in Alan Parker’s ‘Angela’s Ashes’ and Helen Pottinger, the retired Scottish missionary in Sid McCartney’s ‘A Love Divided’. She has just finished writing ‘On the Cut’, a play with music about two women doing ‘war work’ on the British canals in the 1940s.

ELEANOR CUMMINS: Eleanor Cummins studied literature, especially Irish drama which reflected social changes in Ireland from 1900 to the present. She is influenced by theatre and it’s relation to social and political events and by writers who present the oppressed, hidden and ugly side of life. Beckett’s plays have a broad sweep which means you can relate to them psychologically regardless of nationality. Nationality has a bearing of course on the writer but most of all theatre has to make people engage with the story, the humanity of a story, hence themes writers explore are relevant to people anywhere who struggle to survive.

BRIAN CASPE: Brian grew up in California and studied music at the University of California, San Diego. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. In LA, Brian studied acting at Playhouse West where he learned Meisner technique. He moved to Prague in 2002 and has been working as a professional actor in films (Hellboy, Illusionist, Revelations, Young Hannibal, Solomon Kane, Wanted, among others) and commercials (Oskar, Pepto Bismal, Bass Ale, Stella Artois, Bacardimore than 30 in all). He founded the Prague Playhouse in 2003 as a way to work in English-language theater while here in Prague.

THE PRAGUE PLAYHOUSE: The Prague Playhouse is dedicated to bringing quality English-language theater to Prague. From its first production in 2003, the Playhouse has grown both in size and scope and now produces 4-5 English language plays per season along with various play readings, workshops and seminars. In its effort to nurture and promote local artists, the Playhouse also offers acting classes twice a week, specializing in the Meisner technique, and has started to organize interviews with industry professionals on life and work as a professional artist. The Prague Playhouse website serves as a meeting point and information center for Prague’s performing artists as well as artists outside the country who are looking for what’s happening in Prague.

Welcome to the citys eagerly awaited annual marathon of theatre, dance, comedy, music and film from around the globe. All shows are in English, Czech or are non-verbal and are programmed so that you can see up to 6 shows a day and over 30 shows over the 8 days of Fringe Festival Praha. Shows take place from the afternoon to late evening, most last for an hour or so with time between to zip from venue to venue and grab a bite to eat. Enjoy a warm welcome at our fringe club where you can join the fun, meet the artists and swap notes with other fringe goers on your “hot tickets” for the day…its the fringe way from Edinburgh to Adelaide, now entering year seven here in Prague.