Introducing Fergus Kealy

Hey Everyone,

Wednesday at the Fringe Launch the full cast of "Victor and Gord CUBED" were all together for the first time. The launch was good fun and we looked like a tribe in our matching Victor and Gord CUBED T-Shirts! Many thanks to Michael and Pete Reddy for sorting those out for us.

I first met Fergus in 2006 when my friend Veronica Dyas and I cast him in a show i'd written in college "The Backwoods Boys". It was the summer before our final year and we showed the play upstairs in The International Bar in Dublin. Fergus played the youngest brother of 3, Mani, and he had to lie on the not so clean floor as the audience came in, walked over and around him, and tried to squeeze into their seats in the tiny space.

We've met a few times since and chatted about some day working together again so I'm really looking forward to the next few weeks of rehearsals working with himself and Jay. Last night the three of us read through their individual interviews together. It can be difficult reading your own words back to yourself and to other people.I asked them to take their time and direct themselves through it, so to read something from their own interview and then stop and listen to the other read. Jason called it "Pass the paragraph"!! They both finished their interviews at the same time which really interested me because they are quite different lengths. In terms of working co-operatively with each other i think this bodes very well.

Going from directing 2 people in January in Victor and Gord (Vickey and Aine)to 4 people in June for "Victor and Gord, Ali and Michael" and now to 6 for this show in September feels like a unique experience and can be also a little overwhelming at times. Six big personalities, organising rehearsal schedules that suit everyone, producing and directing...but its exciting too because as with the past two shows the result of our rehearsals is impossible to predict. Whether or not introducing two new cast into it will change the form and structure of the existing piece completely or leave it intact is impossible to predict right now. I reckon it will. And then I reckon it won't. Fergus asked me how rehearsals would proceed going forward and I said we'd be making it up as we go along...that's the fun bit!

Best,
Una