Blue Raincoat Sets 25th Anniversary Programme

Blue Raincoat, Ireland's longest running theatre ensemble are celebrating their 25th anniversary with a diverse programme of work which will take them from their native Sligo to New York and Barcelona, performing in the company's myriad theatrical styles.

Highlights from their year include:

A new play, Shackleton by long-time collaborator Jocelyn Clarke

An outdoor performance of WB Yeats' On Baile's Strand on Coney Island Beach, New York

The second A Country Under Wave summer Festival - nominated for a 2016 Irish Theatre Award - celebrating the Theatre of WB Yeats in site-specific locations around Sligo

A revival of the company's 1998 production of Alice Underground by Jocelyn Clarke

This spring, Blue Raincoat will present a new play, Shackleton, which will feature work from long time collaborators, writer and dramaturg Jocelyn Clarke (First Cosmonaut, Flann O'Brien Trilogy) and designer Jamie Vartan (The Last Hotel, The Walworth Farce, Ballyturk) along with the Blue Raincoat ensemble. Shackleton tells the story of an episode on Ernest Shackleton's incredible Antarctic expedition, through movement, video and puppets. The production coincides with the centenary of the return from Antarctica of Shackleton's Endurance expedition in 1916 and will premiere at the Factory Performance space in Sligo on 23 March.

In May, the ensemble will tour WB Yeats' On Baile's Strand to Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York to play as part of Cuala2016, New York City's Irish Cultural Festival. Blue Raincoat have performed this tale about the madness of Cuchulain in a number of beaches in Sligo, drawing crowds of over 1000 to the spectacle in 2014 and 2015.

Blue Raincoat's ambitious A Country Under Wave Festival has been nominated for a 2016 Irish Times Theatre Awards for its imaginative restoration of the theatre of WB Yeats. The Festival last year ran from June to August and featured full outdoor productions of On Baile's Strand, Purtatory and At the Hawk's Well along with a two day event which saw all 26 of Yeats' plays performed in different locations around Co Sligo. The Festival saw 3,500 people attend over 60 individual events, staged from June to August. A Country Under Wave will take place again this year from 18 July - 5 August.

The company are delighted to debut work by a member of the Blue Raincoat ensemble, MacDiarmada by Bob Kelly, his first play which will feature in Sligo's Cairdre Festival in July. In November two of the company's WB Yeats' plays, At the Hawk's Well and The Only Jealousy of Emer will take the ensemble to Barcelona.

Blue Raincoat are Ireland's longest running theatre ensemble and have won the reputation as one of the country's most respected and creative theatre teams, synonymous with a range of theatre styles from classical Shakespeare to the absurd and expressionistic worlds of Ionesco and Flann O'Brien.

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