Edgar I Nothing Am — Dramsoc
Article by Katherine Brasseux
TONIGHT September 20th at 8pm
TOMORROW September 21st at 8pmÁras Mac Léinn, NUIG, Galway, Ireland
Bank of Ireland Theatre
Tickets: €5 (for students)/€8
Tickets available from Socsbox
The productions features Davin McGowan as Edgar, Daniel O’Gorman as Edmund, and Kevin Murphy as Gloucester. Edgar I Nothing Am is directed by Ariyan Bhatti.
The play tells the story of Shakespeare’s King Lear, but focuses on the sub-plot as opposed to the main plot. It makes use of Shakespeare’s poetry, music and movement to tell the story of Edgar, the legitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, who, as a result of his illegitimate brother Edmund’s trickery, is forced to go into hiding and disguise himself as a madman.
The play deals with themes of family, power and loss.
“This piece was devised, so I cut up a script of King Lear and just kept the parts I felt were relevant to the story I wanted to tell (the story of the side-character, Edgar). In our rehearsals we used that script as a base for our scenes, going through it and cutting the lines we felt were unnecessary.
From there, as a collaborative effort between myself and the cast, we devised movement-based pieces. Over the course of five weeks, we came up with a show that tells the story King Lear but from a different character’s perspective. We wanted to make use of the full theatre space, and used as little props and set as possible.” — Aryan Bhatti, Director.
