ON THE TOWN: Actors packed in to Project in Temple Bar this week to raise a glass to Fishamble Theatre Company. Already flushed with the runaway success of The Buddhist of Castleknock by Jim O'Hanlon, which plays at the Helix from Monday, the company was launching Fishamble/Pigsback First Plays, comprising staged work by six writers - Deirdre Hines, Gavin Kostick, Joseph O'Connor, Mark O'Rowe, Pat Kinevane and Ian Kilroy.
Jim Culleton, the company's artistic director and the book's editor, smiled delightedly, and remembered to mention another award-winning Fishamble production, Voltaire's Candide, which has been adapted by Tom Swift and Fishamble director Jo Mangan, and will play in The Unfringed Festival in Limerick's Belltable Arts Centre in February.
Marion O'Dwyer, who plays Bessie Burgess in the Abbey's current production of O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, came along to read from Mark O'Rowe's play From Both Hips. She played the character of a busybody when it opened in 1997 in the Little Theatre in Tallaght.
Making one of his last public appearances on these shores for some time was the playwright Kilroy, who also writes for this newspaper. He's off to live in Boston in the New Year with his French wife, Isabelle Dussert.
There was some talk also of other upcoming productions including Best Possible World, a play by Tee O'Neill, from Melbourne, which will be staged in Theatre Space @ Henry Place on Thursday, December 12th and Friday, December 13th.
Mojisola Adebayo, a lecturer in TCD's drama department and incoming artistic director of the Dublin Youth Theatre, also took in the party. Her greatest challenge next year, she believes, could be a production for the St Patrick's Festival involving 500 young people.
Guests were then treated to a short reading from each of the plays by many of the actors who had first made the characters their own.
The book, Fishamble/ Pigsback First Plays, is published by New Island.