Profile: The Cup Theatre Company

Kate Gilmore & Clodagh Mooney Duggan

Kate Gilmore and Clodagh Mooney Duggan are now Cup Theatre's Executive Producer and Artistic Director respectively, both actors in their own right, and were there at the beginning for Cup Theatre's first tentative steps when along with a group of fellow students, they decided a company was worth setting up. "We all went to the Gaiety School of Acting and we graduated in 2013," Gilmore says. "Karl came in to do a career talk and he said that we should all be aiming to make our own work, and that he'd like to put on a play based on the work we'd done while in the school when training. He said you need to have a company to do that."

"It was really nice to come together once we had graduated," Mooney Duggan added, "and to form a company with the nine or ten of us we started with and work together, and to come here with someone we knew and admired." By here she means Theatre Upstairs and its Artistic Director Karl Shiels, The Irish Times describing it as 'a space that is as much an actor's theatre as a site of new creative opportunities', making it an ideal fit for a new company with new ideas.

Before meeting in The Gaiety School, both came to acting through different routes, admitting that their parents weren't 'show parents' at all. Gilmore liked 'odd things' and films, but there wasn't really any one moment, more of a gradual approach, to acting. "I had to wait until I was a certain age to say I want to do this so that they put me toward classes."

Mooney Duggan started in youth theatre "when I was about thirteen in Wexford with Tony McCleane Fay. It was about a half hour from where I lived and was something to do on Saturday. He was all about making your own work and doing new plays. The first show I did I fell in love with it there and got stuck with it ever since, couldn't get away from it."

Using your own imagination and making your own work was with them both from the beginning, helped along by a 'devising' module in the Gaiety School of Acting, where 'students learn practical ways in which new ideas can be developed and new work created'. Gilmore, who has either written or acted in all of their shows, commented that "We'd been making our own work since we started in the Gaiety. Now you have to start writing. That's what they do, they have a module that you write in, so we all had pieces before we left." 

This led to the company's first production Gaslights, described as 'a deliciously dark cabaret' that was directed by John Delaney that brought together the diverse pieces written by all involved during college and played a few weeks in August and September 2013 at Theatre Upstairs. 

"It went really well because we came out and didn't really know the ins and outs of making a company and a lot of it was done with the help of Karl and Laura and the nine of us coming together, kind of knowing what we wanted to say, but kind of having a form to explore that and to play. It's a safe place upstairs where you get a chance to make new work and experiment. A good learning curve," Mooney Duggan explains.

"It went really well," Gilmore agreed, "but the hardest thing was learning how to work with each other because we all have different ideas and different directions that we wanted to go in, and then afterwards the difficult thing was, because we are all such good friends, deciding if it was a real company, if it was going to do more work and who was going to lead that and who was going to let go and move on to do something else."

For a while it must have felt like nothing else would happen, as after Gaslights the company became dormant, until Gilmore submitted a piece she had written for the Collaborations Festival in March, 2014. That piece was accepted giving rise to a new problem: a company name was needed. A new name could be invented, but the idea of creating a new company for every new work seemed crazy. "I said to Clodagh 'could we do it under the 'Cup' name? Would you produce it?' We had to ask everyone else and they all said 'yeah, whatever you want to do'. So then we were the only ones who wanted to use it and keep going with it then. There was us and three others who said they want to still be involved."

The show was The Wickedness of Oz a bitter-sweet tale about a Dublin travel agent about to lose it all to a one-year travel visa, which in many ways was a turning point. It allowed the company to hone in on their main purpose, the idea of using different mediums, while creating their own voice and style. "Gaslights was a lot of different pieces, even though there was a tone to the show, there were a lot of different voices, whereas after Wickedness it became a single vision and single tone. The writing still changes, we went to a musical then back to straight play, but it was the same tone and voice," Mooney Duggan explains.

What looked like a 'one turn' company, was suddenly re-born with more potential and possibilities. Gilmore and Mooney Duggan were joined by Ashleigh Dorrell, Teri Fitzgerald and Laurence Falconer, the latter would be instrumental in the next production, another original piece that looked at the romance of two romantics, Nora and Lennon, a love of music bringing them together, while their own attitudes, beliefs, and actions, helping to fracture their romance, told through a non-linear timeline, moving back and forth through moments, snapshots of their short, jagged, relationship. 

A Picture of Us: A (Sort of) Musical opened up in the newly renovated Theatre Upstairs to favourable reviews, co-written by Gilmore with Laurence Falconer, both performing this two handed musical. It all stemmed from the earlier Gaslights, where Gilmore's contribution contained an original song, "and I asked Laurence to write the music for the song. Everyone was like 'that's a really good song, are you going to do more of that?'" A mention, again by Karl Shiels, that a musical in Theatre Upstairs would be something he'd really like to see, and not afraid of a challenge, the company jumped at the idea. 

"It was actually quite a stressful time, we bit of a little bit more than we could chew," Gilmore said. "That's kind of being said for us, we kind of jump in as a company all the time and then learning how to work our way through that. It's been lovely being able to do that," Mooney Duggan added, jumping in herself. Gilmore felt that "the weekend before we went up we just had everyone who was involved, Clodagh, Ashleigh, Laura, Karl, Katie, they all had some hand in staging it. Because we were like drowning in it at that stage. Me and Laurence were like 'we can't see it anymore, we don't know where it is, we don't know what it's about." The work paid off with Michael Moffat of the Irish Mail describing it as having "considerable charm and humour". 

The only instruments were a guitar and some percussion, played by both actors, having a gig feel about it, but being unamplified so creating an intimate feel as well. From a short two week run, where the trees couldn't be seen from the woods, a recurring story on the creation of musicals big and small, this original musical would gain momentum and take this Dublin based company to a wider audience. Dublin Theatre Festival's Willie White, curating the Theatre Tent at Electric Picnic, invited them to play after a late cancellation, and true to their own form The Cup Theatre jumped at the chance. The technical side needed some reworking, but on the whole, the work remained the same. 

Electric Picnic showed that the company can adapt to the situation, using mics when previously there were none, adapting to a daylight performance well, but the next incarnation of A Picture of Us would show the ability to adapt further while working with people outside the group and in a different medium. For Drama on One for RTE Radio Gilmore notes that it "was really collaborative. They're experts in radio, they know what works for it and what's not." The musical was broadcast in November running a little over thirty minutes, but keeping the essential core of the story.

For some, this would have been enough, but for Cup Theatre Company there was one more play up their sleeves, Stella Full of Storms, written by Gilmore and performed by Mooney Duggan, once again gracing Theatre Upstairs and rounding off a prolific, maybe taxing year. "Because the nature of the company, because there's about five of us we do all get to take different roles. I was producing Picture and then was in Stella, and Ashleigh was co-producing Picture and then did the set design for Stella. It's not as tiring as you think because you get different roles for each show. It is really exciting," Mooney Duggan enthuses.

While Gilmore wrote Stella, it was never seen as vehicle for herself, this time letting her focus on the writing, even though it was the first work written by her that she would not have some hand in performing. "When you start writing something, if you're writing it for yourself it's very obvious that you're writing it for yourself, and if you're writing it for someone else it's very obvious you're writing it for someone else, and it never really comes back and crosses over ever again. Once I make that decision it's made. It was weird when it went up because I was in a play in Cork, so I wasn't here for opening and that was so strange, to be helpless and you're so nervous but there's nothing you can actually do." Gilmore was touring in Little Gem  at the time.  

"It was lovely to be back on stage with the Cup, it really was," Mooney Duggan added about acting in Stella, "because I had produced The Wickedness and Picture. And especially this piece which meant so much to me. I loved it." 

Like Gilmore, Mooney Duggan found time for work outside the company, playing Ellie in Friendly Fire while touring with Romeo and Juliet, as well as taking part in short films. Recently both worked together again, on a project outside The Cup Theatre, Petals. This time Gilmore was on stage, and Mooney Duggan was assistant director to Karl Shiels, with plans to do more directing in the New Year.  

Despite a successful and busy year, The Cup Theatre are looking to the future with two shows submitted to Collaborations, while Stella is looking forward to a run in the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. They are hoping to bring Picture of Us on tour for 2015 as well, while Gilmore will be in Cornerstones in February and touring again with Little Gem.

In a year and a half, The Cup Theatre Company has produced four shows, one, A Picture of Us, that is planning on going further afield. It has been a whirlwind journey where they have gone from being a project after college to a fully fledged company gaining national exposure. Repeating her earlier phrase, Mooney Duggan sums it up: "It's really exciting," the excitement in her voice says it all. "It all kind of happened. It's just happening. You don't notice it until you're in a show and then you can see that its starting to build up. You have a company you can stand over and be really proud of." 

And for Christmas? "Nothing," is Gilmore's direct reply. "Two weeks of sleeping," Mooney Duggan adds. After that, expect to see more from this company that isn't afraid of challenges, taking risks, experimenting, but above all, creating work they are proud of.