Latest news with #GateTheatre
Irish Examiner
13-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Examiner
Why school can be the best medicine for children in hospital
Every morning across Ireland there are parents contemplating whether their child really is 'too sick' to go to school. Meanwhile, the pupils of Temple Street Hospital School, at CHI at Temple Street, are attending classes from their hospital beds and even isolation units to avoid missing out on the childhood experience. All the while, its teachers are doing everything in their power to help children thrive, despite inadequate staff numbers and limited resources. The principal of the hospital school is calling for an end to staffing shortages at the facility amid struggles to provide one-to-one classes for its young patients. Ann Higgins was speaking as HOPE congress 2025 takes place this week in Dublin. Hosted by HOPE — the hospital teachers of Ireland — the event includes everything from panel discussions to testimonials from former patients, and the staffing challenges facing hospital teachers across Ireland. Ms Higgins said her school currently has 18 school-going patients. While the hospital classroom can facilitate small groups, many of the children are unable to leave their hospital beds. This poses obvious challenges for the team, which is made up of two secondary and three primary school teachers. Despite their limited numbers, staff members including deputy principal Ciara Jenkins have been doing everything they can to ensure kids don't miss out on important educational milestones including school tours. The Gate Theatre and Dublin Zoo were among the locations visited by some hospital school students who have been well enough to enjoy temporary leave from hospital. Teachers also take a proactive approach by individualising lesson plans to cater to the child's interests. Ms Higgins is keen to see the team expand to ensure more children suffering from illnesses and physical trauma receive individual attention. She said urgent action is needed in response to staffing issues. 'It is groundbreaking what is happening here at the moment because we're going to have the National Council for Special Education reviewing our staffing allocation. This is really important because we don't have enough staff here. The first thing any hospital school will tell you is that we are pretty much predominantly understaffed. This is because our staffing allocation hasn't been reviewed by the Department of Education for years. 'For example, today our deputy principal had 18 children on two wards. These are not like the children you have in your run-of-the-mill classrooms. Students are in wards. They are in beds after surgery. Some of them can't get out of their beds. Teachers come to kids in isolation with PPE equipment. We are talking about every type of need. These children, generally speaking, need one-to-one support but this is just not possible.' Temple Street Hospital School principal Ann Higgins. Picture: Gareth Chaney She expressed hope that their concerns over staffing levels will be listened to and heard. 'We had our first visit from the NCSE and we've been told that there will be a second visit looking at our staffing. Obviously time is of the essence. We are fighting to have our voices heard. 'The recently-formed National Association of Special School Principals are supporting us too and have written to the NCSE to try and ensure that we have our staffing review done in a timely way. This will help us look at what staffing we're going to have on site for September. It will enable us to do recruitment in line with every other school in the country instead of always being on the back foot. 'It's really difficult because we are presented in here every day with a different number of children. For us, every single day is like the first day of September. 'We have a database and we upload our enrolment for the day and every day that's different. It's very challenging for teachers because they might have children who are here for a longer stay. Those children would always be prioritised for the teacher. However, we also have a cohort of children that is changing literally on a daily basis. Hospital schools are categorised by the Department of Education as special schools. However, up until recently we weren't supported by the NCSE. 'It's a huge development to think we will be supported by them. This is also a huge milestone for hospital schools.' The principal spoke about what sets hospital teachers apart. 'The teachers have to be thinking on their feet constantly. They are the most creative and intuitive teachers because they need to be. 'Other teachers in schools can plan for their whole year in advance. Our teachers have to plan every day. They may even make a plan for the following day. However, that can go belly up for all kinds of reasons.' She described the positive impact their school has on its pupils' social and emotional development. 'There was a little boy here who was due to start junior infants last September. When the time came for his first day of school he just wasn't well enough. It was an awful shame he was missing out on meeting all his classmates. His teacher and our teacher worked together and they organised for him to have a zoom call every single morning he came to the hospital classroom. They clicked into his classroom down the country and watched all his little pals. Every one of them could see him and they made sure he was doing the same activities as his classmates in the school at the same time. It meant that when the time came for him to go back to school they all knew him. 'The teacher often came on screen and chatted to him so that when he was eventually well enough to attend school for the first time they were all familiar to him.' Teachers at the school often liaise with other frontline workers to establish the best way forward for the children. 'We don't work in isolation. We're part of a multidisciplinary team where there will be a lot of discussion with people involved in all of the disciplines including speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy. This is never a teacher going off on a solo run. It's always a team decision when deciding if a child is well enough to do their exams.' She lauded the determination of her students. 'Children are often sitting their junior search exams here. They can be children who are here for a long period of time. Some think they have missed out on the opportunity until we explain that we can set ourselves up as an exam centre and collect the papers from a nearby school. The children and their determination is the most important part for me. We had a young man who did his junior cert here last year who started his exams in the hospital classroom only to find he was in too much pain to sit in the chair for long periods. He continued the rest of his exams from his bedside and was facilitated in doing his exams there. We will do everything we can to be as adaptable as possible.' Deputy principal Ciara Jenkins said the school experience can normalise hospital for many children. Temple Street Hospital School vice principal Ciara Jenkins at CHI at Temple Street. Picture: Gareth Chaney 'It mimics the school experience for them in a way that normalises hospital,' Ms Jenkins explained. 'The kids are used to coming and learning with other children in the classroom setting, so it certainly helps with that kind of thing. 'They also make little pals as well. The kids often ask about their friends and are keen to catch up with them. 'They know what's expected of them in a school setting whereas the hospital can be an uncertain environment for them. It's scary sometimes. When it comes to their health you know that the children don't have a choice but in school we try and offer lots of choice to make them feel that little bit of control. They want to be able to experience normality.' A Department of Education spokesperson said the department 'provides funding and staffing for schools attached to seven hospitals where children are treated as inpatients'. 'The department also funds education provision in a small number of on-site schools attached to Camhs inpatient units. 'As part of the annual special school staffing review, the staffing arrangements for hospital schools and schools attached to Camhs units are currently being reviewed. 'The National Council for Special Education is leading on this work and engaging directly with these schools. The outcome of the review process will be communicated directly to each of the schools concerned.'
Extra.ie
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Gate Theatre to bring classic show to 3Olympia this summer
Brian Friel's classic play Dancing at Lughnasa is set to have a run at the 3Olympia Theatre from June 27 to July 26. Produced by the Gate Theatre, which previously staged the show in a sold-out run last year, the revival marks the first time a Gate show has been presented on the 3Olympia stage in 35 years, since Sean OCasey's Juno and the Paycock in 1990. 'We are thrilled to rekindle our historic relationship with the Olympia Theatre', said Gate Theatre Executive Director Colm O'Callaghan. 'Our strategic vision is that of an 'Open Gate' where everyone has access to great theatre, and playing to 3Olympias summer audiences is a great way to help us realise this and to expand our audience.' O'Callaghan also added: 'Collaborating with 3Olympia also means that our own stage is available to deliver on other key strategic goals such as premiering contemporary international plays.' The critically acclaimed production will be once again directed by Caroline Byrne, and features a cast including Lauren Farrell, Peter Gowen, and Pauline Hutton. Set in 1936 in the fictional Donegal town of Ballybeg, Dancing at Lughnasa follows the lives of the five Mundy sisters. The play originally premiered in 1990 at the Abbey Theatre and has since become one of Friels most celebrated plays. Considered one of the greatest Irish playwrights of all time, Friel's body of work also includes other classics such as Translations , Philadelphia Here I Come! , and Faith Healer . Tickets for Dancing at Lughnasa are on sale now and can be found here.
Irish Times
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Lovesong writer Abi Morgan: ‘I feel incredibly grateful to be here. It's nearly seven years since Jacob collapsed'
Like the bond between the couple at its heart, Abi Morgan's Lovesong has endured over the years. 'Weirdly, the older I get, the more I see in it,' she says of the play, which opens shortly at the Gate Theatre in Dublin . 'It is one of those things that keeps giving with plays: they come back to haunt you in a really lovely way,' says the Emmy and Bafta winner, who wrote Lovesong when she was in her early 40s, almost 15 years ago. 'Perhaps because I am down the ageing process a little bit more – I am now in my mid-50s – and I'm in a long relationship, I understand the context of how you run a long journey with someone.' First performed in 2011, the play centres on Billy and Maggie, who have been married for more than 40 years when her health begins to deteriorate. This elicits memories of their younger selves, who we see moving through the same suburban house and garden in an earlier timeline. READ MORE Produced many times around the world since, Lovesong offers a tender portrait of what it means for love to survive the passage of time. It is lightly metaphysical in the sense that time is presented as fluid – Billy imagines life 'wired like a filmstrip' – and we see the older versions of the characters interact with their younger counterparts. 'It is a play that has that kind of fluidity, but it's also about a long marriage, and I guess I have reflected on that and all of the things that it brings up, which are to do with illness and mortality, and the domestic ebb and flow of your day and the way that starts to form your relationship and become the backbone of your relationship,' Morgan says. 'That is absolutely the core of Lovesong, so it is a play that I feel more and more warm towards as the years go on.' Although one of its themes is assisted dying, the rising political profile of this issue in many countries, including Ireland and Britain, isn't the key reason for its lasting relevance and appeal, Morgan believes. 'I think most theatre companies around the world are looking for small plays that have big ideas within them, and then, I guess, at the heart of it, it's a love story, and love stories are always compelling,' she says. Abi Morgan: 'I feel incredibly grateful to be here and standing and alive.' Photograph: Lorna Milburn While there are some sadnesses in the couple's marriage – the play also touches on childlessness and the temptation to be unfaithful – it is not about late-life regret. 'There are key moments between the younger William and Margaret where you see they are really wrestling with what they expected their life to be and what it is actually going to be,' Morgan says. In one scene they share a 'very painful moment' as they overhear a child's birthday party on their street. 'There's a sense of regret in that moment. But once they carry through life, the older Billy and Maggie feel a huge sense of pride, relief and nourishment in the fact that they have managed to survive and stay together,' Morgan says. 'I don't think it's a play that deals with regret. I think it's a play that acknowledges that life is painful and complicated and you don't always get what you want, but perhaps you get what you need.' Originally built in the workshops of the innovative London-based company Frantic Assembly , Lovesong was always designed as a piece that would have 'a very strong sense of movement' in its staging, so there is logic to the fact that in Dublin it will be directed by David Bolger , artistic director of CoisCéim Dance Theatre . 'It was great to find a director who has such a strong background in choreography,' Morgan says. 'I also think it is quite lyrical, and there's something in it that will really benefit from having Irish actors playing those roles.' The cast is Nick Dunning and Ingrid Craigie , both of whom have worked on Morgan projects before, as the older Billy and Maggie, with Naoise Dunbar and Zara Devlin as the younger version of the couple, identified in the script as William and Margaret. Zara Devlin and Naoise Dunbar as Margaret and William and Ingrid Craigie and Nick Dunning as Maggie and Billy (background). Photograph: Kate Bowe The Welsh writer, who lives in London, wouldn't usually come to see one of her plays after its first run, she says, but Morgan is so 'intrigued' by the Gate's production that she hasn't been able to resist it this time. 'I feel a little bit like an interloper coming over to have a look. I'm a tourist on it,' she says. Morgan was born in Cardiff in 1968 to an actor mother, Pat England, and director father, the late Gareth Morgan. (They divorced when she was 13.) She went to seven schools during a peripatetic childhood as her mother chased theatre work, then studied English and drama at Exeter University before pursuing a career as a writer. Best known as a versatile and prolific screenwriter, Morgan has a CV that is neither shy of hits nor lacking in critical acclaim. Her film credits include The Iron Lady , Suffragette and Shame (which she wrote with its director, Steve McQueen ); on television, she earned a Bafta for the grim but essential Channel 4 one-off Sex Traffic, in 2005, and – to her surprise – an Emmy for The Hour, the BBC's 1950s-set TV news drama, in 2013. More recently she created and wrote The Split, a lively BBC drama series ( available on RTÉ Player) about a family of divorce lawyers and the clients they represent, and is now executive-producing The Split Up. This spin-off about a British-Asian family law firm, written by the 'tremendous' Irish-Indian screenwriter Ursula Rani Sarma , will go into production later in 2025. Morgan has also just delivered the script for a spy feature with her most regular collaborator, the producer Jane Featherstone, of Sister Pictures , and is developing a new show for Netflix after her stunning series Eric debuted on the platform last May; like Eric, it will explore 'a really dark world'. Then, in the new year, she hopes to work on an adaptation – likely for television – of her extraordinary book This Is Not a Pity Memoir, an honest and gripping account, from 2022, of the collapse of her partner (now husband), the actor Jacob Krichefski, with a brain inflammation called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. Krichefski, whose condition was caused by the drug he had been taking for his multiple sclerosis, was in a coma for six months. When he emerged he was suffering from a delusional misidentification disorder called Capgras syndrome. He was convinced that she was an impostor, not the real Abi Morgan. The real Abi had gone away somewhere. In the middle of this heartbreak and distress – relayed in the book with droll skill – she was diagnosed with breast cancer . How is Jacob now, and how is she now? 'I'm great. I feel incredibly grateful to be here and standing and alive, and it's actually been nearly seven years since Jacob collapsed, but he's fantastic, you know, much improved,' she says. 'The book was really a beautiful way to share the experience with the world. People have responded so warmly. It has been an incredible way to connect with other people who have experienced the kind of rare form of encephalitis that Jacob had, but also any kind of acquired brain injury or traumatic brain injury.' Morgan feels that she's 'on the other side of it now', and says that they're both thankful to be able to move on with their lives, with their two children, Jesse and Mabel, 'now cooked and off and out in the world'. Abi Morgan with her husband, Jacob Krichefski, and their children, Mabel and Jesse. Photograph: Lorna Milburn The time feels right to return to the crisis. Even as it was all unfolding, as she writes in the memoir, she couldn't help experiencing 'every new punch and blow with a kind of masochistic fascination', knowing that for a writer 'everything is material'. When catastrophe hit she was working on the second series of The Split; she felt 'very lucky' to have a show up and running throughout her own illness and treatment. The show's third series went on to focus on mortality and grief. 'That definitely came out of my experience, but it was also testament to the amount of love and support I got, not just from the creative team but also from the audience who kept following it, and then also, on a personal level, from my own family and friends,' she says. Morgan also feels lucky to be getting paid for writing in 2025, given the 'really difficult time' the screen industry is going through amid a pullback from the global surge in production spending. 'It'll be okay,' she says. 'It'll come back in some form, but it's definitely having a bit of a reconfiguration and a reassessment right now, and commissioners on both networks and streamers are nervous about what they commission and how they sell work.' Among the projects she hopes will go ahead soon is a film of Jennifer Egan's novel Manhattan Beach , which revolves around a female diver and a gangster in 1940s New York. Her adaptation marks an extension of her fascination with the city, which also permeates the enthralling 1980s-set Eric, in which Benedict Cumberbatch stars as a television puppeteer whose son goes missing. [ Manhattan Beach review: A luminous New York story Opens in new window ] The six-parter – about 'the darker parts of ourselves, but also how that is reflected in the city' – was influenced by a spell she spent in New York in the mid-1980s, when a stint looking after a child made her think about how easy it would be to get lost there. It is exceptionally evocative, with Morgan and the production team using the 'incredible footage' available from television, music videos and stills photography to bring the period back to life. 'Putting a show like that on a global streamer was interesting, because it just really travelled in a way that it wouldn't have done if it had been on the BBC, for example,' she says. 'Working in the vernacular of America and New York', as she had also done with McQueen on Shame, from 2011, was a 'really intriguing' opportunity, though she adds that it is always 'sort of part of the job' as a writer to be the outsider who stands back and observes. Morgan recently started writing a new play – her most recent one opened in 2017 – and is 'finding it hard', she says. 'I don't know whether that's just because with screenwriting you have to sell your idea so much more before you even get the commission. You have to have a very realised idea to get something greenlit.' But it felt important to return to writing for the stage. 'Theatre was the place where I found my voice and I really found my authorship, and that is something that I've carried through to today. I think part of going back to that now is to reinvigorate my voice again, because with screenwriting you are part of a huge collective of everybody from script editors through to producers through to commissioners. 'And the thing I love about it is that it is collaborative, but the thing that is sometimes hard about it is holding on to your voice within it.' In the meantime, Morgan hopes that her voice, as expressed through Lovesong, will find an appreciative audience at the Gate. Although Billy is 'raging at the loss of Maggie', the play is not consumed by mortality. It is about the intimacy and security of our closest relationships and the imprints we leave on one another – a reassuring theme in mixed-up times. 'You know, they found each other, so I hope it's an uplifting play, ultimately,' she says. 'One of the gifts you have with life is that you have to squeeze out every inch of it.' Lovesong opens at the Gate Theatre , Dublin, on Wednesday, May 14th, with previews from Friday, May 9th; it runs until Sunday, June 15th
