Director's notes Pints Pounds & Pilgrims
The wind on Inishbofin bears with it the briny mist of thousands of miles of frigid North Atlantic currents. The island itself is rocky and frail, its stubby cliffs relentlessly battered and carved jagged by millions of tons of roaring ocean waves.. Its inhabitants are scattered in the uncertain shelter of various coves and outcroppings across its rumpled two-miles width and five-miles length. Its isolation is total, as if purposely cast adrift from the richly cultivated vineyards, jeweled cities, and jutting snow-capped mountain peaks of western Europe.
To access it demands of you a six-hours flight, many more bleary hours navigating precariously narrow, twisting, and rutted Irish lanes often teeming with flocks of unimpressed sheep, and a bouncing and endless ferry crossing.
So what better reason for a highly skilled and warmly regarded but hopelessly underfunded American company, The Theatre Outlet, to scavenge for donations and sleeplessly journey there to perform, of all things, a newly written Irish tragedy with a cast consisting of two Pennsylvania German descendants, one Irish-American, and one honest-to-goodness, brogue-wielding Irish lass!
We had the privilege of accompanying them there--- where they were met with nothing but gracious and insistent hospitality, respect, and admiration for their searing production. We documented their adventures, and, now, have wildly reinvented the entire business into the little play you're about to witness.
To access it demands of you a six-hours flight, many more bleary hours navigating precariously narrow, twisting, and rutted Irish lanes often teeming with flocks of unimpressed sheep, and a bouncing and endless ferry crossing.
So what better reason for a highly skilled and warmly regarded but hopelessly underfunded American company, The Theatre Outlet, to scavenge for donations and sleeplessly journey there to perform, of all things, a newly written Irish tragedy with a cast consisting of two Pennsylvania German descendants, one Irish-American, and one honest-to-goodness, brogue-wielding Irish lass!
We had the privilege of accompanying them there--- where they were met with nothing but gracious and insistent hospitality, respect, and admiration for their searing production. We documented their adventures, and, now, have wildly reinvented the entire business into the little play you're about to witness.