Shakespeare wrote his plays not to be read, but to be heard – and that’s particularly important, I would think, in a culture such as the Irish culture, which goes back to such an oral tradition – a passing on of all the experience through sound, either through song or story, or through humour, in a much stronger way than in the English tradition”.
Mark Rylance, Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, London 




by Andy Hinds

In the late Spring of 2003, it came to me the time was here finally to mount a production of a play that had fascinated me for the past twenty years. It was ‘All’s well That Ends Well’, a play considered one of Shakespeare’s most strange and ‘difficult’ plays. Having made a definite decision to face the challenge of staging the play, it seemed something completely outside myself took hold of my imagination. Over the following few days the idea of mounting this one play quickly expanded to include the notion of staging a season of three plays, a season of three very different Shakespeare Comedies. Almost as quickly, the idea grew into the notion that this season should be the first of many seasons. A season of Ancient Greek dramas, for example, a season of Jacobean plays, etc. The picture of a permanent and full-sale Irish classical theatre company filled my head. Soon I dreamed the company would offer ongoing training opportunities to younger and experienced theatre practitioners; opportunities to develop and keep toned the imaginative and technical muscles particular to staging and performing classic texts. I realised the project was going to draw together various strands of my working life so far, my years working as a Director, the many years experience as a classic acting teacher both in Ireland and in England and my years of teaching the European classics of naturalism at UCD. I felt as ready as I could be.

I had encountered the ferocious energy and exacting standards of Marie-Louise O’Donnell not much more than a year before, when she had brought a production of a play I had written to DCU as part of an arts festival she had founded and run there for a number of years. In the year since then, The Helix seemed miraculously and suddenly to have sprung whole from out of the earth and Mare-Louise had become an artistic programmer there. Marie-Louise’s own love of the classics, her experience as a professional actor, her experience as an arts facilitator and drama-teacher and now as a programmer in this jaw-dropping new venue, all these things, I thought, made her the perfect partner in bringing Classic Stage Ireland into the world. It took little work to persuade her. Then Nick Reed, overall Director of the Helix, gave the partnership his blessing, offering theatre, rehearsal space and marketing. The rest was up to CSI.

When brazenly approached, a few wealthy individuals who believed in the enterprise made donations to the nascent CSI sufficient to convince me the rest could somehow be found. An advisory committee of artistically minded and socially well-connected people was formed. They helped us identify sources of other patronage and a promotional video was made using well-known Irish actors working for gratis.

Until the six weeks before rehearsals began, more than a year after the idea occurred, the company was still being run from the laptop on my kitchen table. Just as this was becoming unmanageable and the work overwhelming, DCU came through with the office space and office equipment in the building adjacent to the Helix. We hired a general manager, we selected and hired a large cast, we hired a full production team; we were paying wages (small wages, but wages) we were a new Irish professional theatre company devoted exclusively to full-scale production of the great world classics.

Andy Hinds
Artistic Dirctor of Classic Stage Ireland