upstate live
Upstate Live is the professional performance and production company of Upstate Theatre Project. The company has produced several original dramas in its home base of Drogheda and has toured much of this work throughout Ireland and abroad.
Recent production
THE ONES WHO KILL SHOOTING STARS
A new play by Conall Quinn
Cast: John Currivan, Duncan Lacroix, Aine NiLaoghaire, Karl Quinn, Conan Sweeny
Director: Paul Hayes
Set Design: Kieran McNulty
Lighting Design: Sarah Jane Shiels
Composer: Trevor Knight
Costume Design: Sinead Roberts
"It is magnificently theatrical... Conall Quinn’s writing and dialogues are at times breathtakingly poetic and yet hilarious, too." -Irish Theatre Magazine
"An extraordinary production…With new writing, the sense of something special happening is very strong. Delivering it involves vision and more energy than you can imagine. New writing is a bit like the birth of a star. Catch it if you can." -Drogheda Independent
Conall Quinn’s new play is a surreal tale of love and death set on a County Louth beach during World War II.
Henry is on the look out for German submarines but all he really wants to do is fire his flare gun, Alice has decided to run away from home again, and Edward’s wife is blowing kisses at him. There’s also the body of the American pilot to bury…
"Look out! Oh holy God, look out! That’s what all the shooting stars will say. They’ll say, There’s that coastwatcher Henry Neary, he’s the one who kills shooting stars with his unrequited love."
This is an original and highly entertaining work by a writer who has just won the Stewart Parker Trust Award for the best Irish debut play.
Fintan O’Toole on “The Death of Harry Leon” (Conall’s last play, for Ouroborus Theatre Company which has won the Stewart Parker Award)
"It is, surely, the kind of work that a national theatre is for." Irish Times
Commissioned by Louth Local Authorities for Drogheda Arts Festival 2010