What’s it all about?

Thanks to the support of the Arts Council of Ireland, we’re lifting Gerry Murphy, one of Ireland’s most exciting contemporary voices off the silence of the printed page and presenting his work to a global audience in several media of the digital age!

Zapping Murphy’s poetry into life through voice, music, image and sound!

On stage! On CD! As a radio documentary ! On film! On-line!

THE STAGE SHOW !

Back by popular demand! First produced as ‘Poet Laureate Of The People’s Republic of Cork’ by Crazy Dog in partnership with Tinpot Productions, the Stage Show is now an on-going phenomenon produced by Everyman Palace Theatre.

The show revitalised as ‘The People’s Republic of Gerry Murphy’ returned to the Everyman stage as part of the Cork MidSummer Festival.

Find out about booking the stage show by contacting the Everyman Palace Theatre.

THE AUDIO CD !

A musical odyssey like you’ve never heard!

It’s all here - a riotous kaleidoscope of poet Gerry Murphy’s most celebrated political parodies, intimate portraits and lasciviously erotic gropings set to music and performed by Roger Gregg and the award winning Crazy Dog Audio Theatre Company.

This CD includes all the pieces from the smash hit live show - Plus 7 bonus tracks!

‘HILARIOUSLY COMIC’ – THE IRISH TIMES.

Order your copy of this ground-breaking musical odyssey now!

Contact us about ordering a copy!

THE YOU TUBE VIDEOS!

See pieces from the original live show at You Tube!

Filmed in broadcast quality digital video by Courtyard Studio.

IN PRINT!

Get your hands on Gerry Murphy’s latest book: END OF PART ONE: New & Selected Poems from DEDALUS PRESS.

THE RADIO DOCUMENTARY SERIES!

Click to hear the 5 part radio documentary ‘Poet Laureate Of The People’s Republic of Cork’

THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF GERRY MURPHY

WHO’S IN THE SHOW?

LIAM HEFFERNAN began his professional career with Grafitti in 1984 as Ioka's Father in Drink the Mercury(42 have died). Theatre credits include: Christy Mahon in "Playboy of the western world", Silvius in "As you like it" for Second Age. For Amharclann de hIde, plays were "Tine Cnamh", "Dun na mBan tri thine", "Milseog an tSamhraidh" and "Fear an Tae". For Storytellers, "Grapes of Wrath" and "Women in Arms". For Corcadorca, "Losing Steam" and "The Tempest". For Cork Opera House, "Man of La Mancha" and "Fr. Mathew". For Everyman, "Stone Mad" and "The Good Thief". Film and TV: "Clash of the Ash", "Glenroe", "The Boy from Mercury", "SHhh", "The Running Mate". “Strength and Honour”.Radio credits include: Book on One- “Stone Mad”, “Haunted Lighthouse”, “Seany Boy”,“The sweet smell of cigarette smoke”. Directing credits include, “Brilliant Traces” and “Tillsonburg”. He have a roundy head.

Main male speaking voice. Sound Effects. Percussion. Guitar.

EIMEAR O’GRADY is a graduate of the Gaiety School of Acting 2 yr Professional Actor training course and the Royal Irish Academy of Music, she has performed internationally, both within theatrical and musical circles. A professional Cellist, she has recorded and performed with such distinguished Irish acts as; U2, Jack L, Declan O' Rourke, Sharon Shannon, Duke Special, The Republic of Loose and The Frames. On an international front, Eimear has performed throughout Europe and the United States. She is an avid player of classical music, performing regularly with the Alpha Quartet. Eimear made her stage debut in Dec. '06 performing MAGDALEN, a one woman play by Tony Barrow. Stage credits also include TITUS (Siren productions), THE STUFF OF MYTH (Crazy Dog Audio Theatre) and WAR OF THE ROSES (Whiplash Theatre Company). Her TV credits include "The Clinic" RTE/Parallel, "Damage" Subotica/RTE, "The Tudors". Radio credits include "Audio Gothic" and "The Stuff of Myth" Crazy Dog Audio theatre/RTE, "London Landscape" RTE. Stunt Credits include the films "Thirteen", "UNSTRUNG", "The Tudors" and "Raw". She completed an album "Blackbird" with her musical project One Day International, which was released by Independent Records last Autumn to critical acclaim.

Cello. Speaking Voice.

ROGER GREGG is an award winning playwright, composer, audio-producer and actor. Over the past 25 years he has written plays for many theatre companies including; Crazy Dog Theatre, Dublin Youth Theatre, TEAM, The American National Audio Theatre Festival, Graffiti Theatre, and The Gaiety School of Acting. His stage and radio plays have been produced professionally in Ireland, Germany, America and Australia. His Crazy Dog audio productions have won many international radio awards including; 4 American Mark Time Science Fiction Awards, 2 American Ogle Fantasy Awards and 2 AUDIOFILE Golden Earphone Awards. In 2006 in a special feature reviewing his work, BBC Radio 4 hailed him as ‘one of a handful of truly great radio dramatists’. Also a composer and sound designer he has written music for many theatre productions most notably for Barabbas Theatre Co. A voice actor in many commercials and animation series, one of his most noted roles is 'Eddie the Computer' in the Sony Award winning Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy sequels on BBC Radio 4.

Guitars. Saxophone. Keyboards. Sound Effects. Speaking Voice. Stage Adaptation. Music Composition. Audio Producer. Post-Production.

DAVID FARRELL and graduated from the Gaiety School of acting in June 08. He played the part of Peter in ‘The Muse Unbidden’ by Roger Gregg at the Project Theatre in June 08. In Sept 08 he appeared in ‘The Woman Who Left Herself’ which won the Spirit of the Fringe Award at the Dublin Fringe festival. He also appeared in ‘The War of the Roses’ at the Fringe. In Oct 08 he played C in ‘Pool No Water’ by Mark Ravenhill at the Granary Theatre in Cork. He then went on to play Father Mullarky in ‘Once a Catholic’ with Bare Cheek Theatre Company at the Wexford Opera House in Feb 09. David acted as Assistant Director in ‘The Fire Room’ at the Project Theatre in June 09. He has just finished writing his first play called ‘Brilliant’ in which he will appear and which will go into production in the Summer of 09. David is also a trained musician and voiceover artist.

Percussion. Tongue Drums. Human Beat Box. Speaking Voice.

CHARLIE MURPHY is a graduate of the Gaiety School of Acting two year full-time course. Her Theatre roles include; Ellen in Gods Lap by Paul O Brien for Gaiety’s Graduation Play 2008 in the Project Theatre. Sally Bowles in Cabaret in the Theatre Royal, Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew with Shakespeare in the Park. Charlie’s Cork productions include; Juliet in Romeo & Juliet at the Half Moon Theatre. 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane along with Fowl and Conspiracy Theory, devised works created by Bodily Functions at the Granary Theatre. Charlie’s most recent role is ‘A’ in Pool(No Water) as part of The Granary New Directors Festival.

Lead Singing Voice. Speaking Voice. Keyboards, Sound Effects.

MORGAN C. JONES is an actor, musician and writer. He has performed over many years on TV (NightHawks, The Basement, You Cannot Be Serious, This Is Nightlive. ), and with Crazy Dog Audio Theatre, playing multiple characters in that company’s wide catalogue of audio productions. He took on five roles in its live stage production The Stuff Of Myth in 2007. Other credits as a voice actor include Ratso in the animated feature film & TV series The Ugly Duckling & Me; cartoons: The Boy With No Story, Galaktik Football, Lily The Witch, Garth, I Am An Animal. He is one of Ireland’s busiest voice artistes, is one half of the musical comedy duo ‘Carmody & Jones’ and on ‘ The Emergency’ comedies on NewsTalk Radio.

Bass. Speaking Voices. Sound Effects.

SARAH GREENE Originally from Cork, Sarah graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting in June 2006. Since graduating Sarah has appeared in Empress of India at the Town Hall Galway and at the Abbey. Sarah went on to tour in Druid’s production of John B Keane’s The Year of the Hiker and their production of The Playboy of the Western World at the Tokyo International Arts Festival. Other theatre highlights include; Danti Dan, Galloglass Theatre Company, The Death of Harry Leon, Ouroboros Theatre Company and most recently in the award-winning, Little Gem for Guna Nua Theatre Company which will be part of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her television credits include: Bachelor’s Walk – Christmas Special (RTE); presenter of The Den Tots Bandstand (RTE), and most recently in series two of Raw (RTE). In feature films she has appeared in the Tribeca Festival award winning film Eden, and in the lead role of CATHLEEN in the Canadian/Irish feature film Love and Savagery and due for release in 2009. She has also appeared with Crazy Dog Audio Theatre in their radio productions of Seany Boy and The Salmon of Blackpool. Sarah is delighted to be back working in Cork on the Everyman Stage.

Singing Voice. Speaking Voice.

WINIFRED MURPHY studied music at the Cork School of Music and graduated with an honours BMus degree in 2000. She also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Education from UCC. She has played with all the Cork School of Music performing groups: Jazz Big Band, Symphony Orchestra, Fleishmann Choir and the Wind Ensemble. Winifred has also been a member of the Irish Youth Wind Ensemble, Cork Chamber Orchestra and The Cork Pops Orchestra to date. She has performed in the UK, USA, France, Belgium and Holland as a member of the above groups.

An accomplished clarinettist/saxophonist/pianist and vocalist, Winifred has worked in theatre productions with Corcadorca, CADA, Cork Arts Studio, UCC Drama Society, Performers Academy, Opera House Productions and Everyman Palace Productions. Her burning ambition is to appear as the female villain in a panto some day before the wrinkles set in!! Winifred is currently working as a teacher for the Co. Cork School of Music and completing a MA in performance in The Cork School of Music.

Keyboards. Synthesizer. Voice.

CHARLIE RUXTON has worked extensively on stage and screen for many years. He is a founder member of Graffiti Theatre Company where he played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Cassio in Othello & Tommy Ryan in Strong as Horses. Besides appearing in many productions in the Cork Opera House and elsewhere, Charlie also runs Livewire Theatre Company which has produced many plays such as True West, the world premiere of Who Forgives, Godspell and most recently The Dumb Waiter. His film credits include; Clash of the Ash, Into the West, Angela’s Ashes and most recently The Eclipse by Conor McPherson.

Cameo guest voice on ‘Bedtime Story’.

MYLES BREEN is from Limerick. After graduating from U.C.C. he joined Graffitti Theatre Co. With them he appeared in Frog and Toad, Control, Othello, Fishy Tales and The Happy Prince. His roles with Island Theatre Co. include Danny Mann in The Colleen Bawn, Manus in Translations, Claudius in Hamlet, and various roles in Pigtown and Under Milk Wood. With Daghdha Dance Co. he appeared in Quest, On Time with Pigs, and 10,000 Steps. Film and T.V. credits include; Clash of the Ash, The Swamp, Camera Cafe, Why the Irish Dance that Way, Fair City, and Northanger Abbey.

Cameo guest voice on ‘Letter From Jerusalem’

NIAMH LINEHAN began her career in Cork with Meridian and went on to work with Druid, Field Day, Rough Magic, The Gate and The Abbey. She spent eight years in the UK working with The National Theatre and Royal Shakespearean Company together with major reparatory theatres including Chichester, Birmingham, Salisbury Edinburgh Lyceum. She has also worked in drama for RTE and the BBC. She recently returned to live in Cork to give birth to her second child.

Cameo guest voice on ‘Liberation Sequence One’.

DARYL MOORHOUSE is a seasoned media professional with over 20 years experience in the field. Having worked for 7 years at the production frontline for two Ireland’s biggest independent radio stations, he established his own radio production company in 2003 – Tinpot Productions. http://www.tinpot.net/ Tinpot Productions has established itself as a cutting edge boutique production house. In 2005, the company was nominated in the Best In Business Awards. The company was also a finalist in the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Digital Media Awards. Daryl is a highly respected copywriter who has written and produced thousands of radio commercials, as well as many commended radio serials and documentaries.

Executive & Line Producer of original 2008 show and Radio Documentaries.

MARK MCGRATH for the past 18 years has supervised many of RTE Radio's live broadcast and live multi-track recordings of Ireland's main music festivals including: the Oxegen Festival, Cork Jazz Festival and the Wexford Opera Festival. As a sound engineer and producer, he has the won the Prix Italia Award for Best Music Documentary and the Prix Marulic for Best Documentary. Mark has been the engineer for many Crazy Dog productions including; The Stuff Of Myth, The Salmon Of Blackpool, Audio Gothic, Infidel, The Last Harbinger and Big Big Space.

Sound Engineer of Live Location Recording. .

GERRY MURPHY was born in Cork in 1952. His poetry collections include A Small Fat Boy Walking Backwards (1985, 1992) and four previous collections from Dedalus, Rio de la Plata and All That (1993), The Empty Quarter (1995), Extracts from the Lost Log-Book of Christopher Columbus (1999) and Torso of an Ex-Girlfriend (2002). End of Part One: New & Selected Poems features generous selections from all of those books together with some 30 new poems in a section entitled ‘The Psychopathology of Everyday Life’.

A political poet who also writes daring love poems, or a love poet whose portraits and parodies constitute a necessary clearing of space—whether in a small city or on a larger, global stage—either way Gerry Murphy is a particular case in Irish poetry, at once provocative and hugely entertaining, serious even in his most apparently throw-away gesture. “What makes Murphy unique among his contemporaries,” according to John Montague in a brief foreword to this selected volume, “is his curious integrity, the way he has created an aesthetic out of nearly nothing, ex nihilo. But there is much skill behind his lightness of touch...” Gerry is Poet Laureate (pro tem) of The Peoples Republic of Cork since his fellow poet Theo Dorgan proclaimed it in 1990 and will hand over his seal of office if and when Theo returns to Cork.

"This is a poet who understands rhythm and voice as he understands the complexity of human emotion."
—The Irish Times

"Murphy's voice is salacious, funny, pithy, angry-making, often verging on the side-of-the-mouth and, dare one add, tender... This is a worthwhile book, energetic and wise."
—Poetry Ireland Review

A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR & COMPOSER.

Gerry Murphy has been intruding into my stage and radio plays in one way or another for well over 20 years now. It began in 1987 in my production ‘The Life & Death of Ernest Hemingway’ with Gerry appearing as the suicidal novelist. A year later, he kindly permitted me a free hand to adapt his first two books of poetry for the stage. Poetry set to music and performed on the stage by actors?! Anarchical heresy to the poetry-should-stay-on-the-page-pigeon-hole-purists, but thankfully Gerry and I are nothing if not heretical anarchists.

The result was ‘Rio De La Plata and all that...’ – a show which, despite the heresy of co-operating disciplines, filled the Triskel for the length of its run. In 2000 Gerry appeared as himself in my radio series ‘Tread Softly Bill Lizard’. And again in 2004 he portrayed himself along with poets Roger McGough, Theo Dorgan, Patrick Chapman and Senator David Norris in ‘The Silver Tongued Devil’, my mockumentary spoof on the Irish poetry scene.

And now, twenty years after the first stage show, we present ‘The People’s Republic of Gerry Murphy’ – a new work which encompasses poems from Gerry’s considerable oeuvre. The team of talents specially assembled for this production seek to pull The Poet Laureate of the People’s Republic of Cork - one of Ireland’s most exciting, vital and entertaining contemporary poets off the silent printed page and zap his poems vibrantly into life through voice, music and sound.

ROGER GREGG, CRAZY DOG AUDIO THEATRE COMPANY.

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER.

As the digital revolution continues to transform book publishing, almost beyond recognition, it is a lucky publisher indeed who encounters an outfit like Crazy Dog Audio Theatre: energetic, innovative and yet attuned to the nuances of language. Poetry has long made good use of print technology, but print is not its only home nor should it be its final resting place. Shakespeare knew this more than three centuries ago; Homer and others millennia before him. As Gerry Murphy steels his nerve to face his own poems brought to life around him (Hallowe'en, how are you?), Dedalus looks forward to consoling other poets in the future as Crazy Dog begins the long march through the libraries, determined to set their captive creations free.

PAT BORAN, DEDALUS PRESS.

A NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER.

Being more accustomed to the confines of a radio studio than the environs of a theatre, this project represents somewhat of a departure from the norm of my everyday grind. However, I believe in the era of convergence, the raw material of radio is easily adaptable to other media and this represents a perfect example.

Interspersing performance, Gerry Murphy's striking poetry and specially composed music for the benefit of a live theatre assembly not to mention a subsequent radio, internet and DVD audience is nothing if not ambitious – requiring some skill, lots of organization and more than a little vision. For my part, it’s a pleasure to be able to illuminate at least some of this vision, knowing full well that it’s ultimately being realised by one of the best directors and casts in the business.

DARYL MOORHOUSE. TINPOT PRODUCTIONS. http://www.tinpot.net/

A NOTE FROM THE POET.

It was with unmitigated delight that I heard Roger Gregg was crafting a new musical adaptation of my poems. It is now 20 years since his stage adaptation of my early work 'Rio De La Plata and all that...', was produced in the Triskel Arts Centre. I sincerely hope this new production gives as much pleasure as 'Rio De La Plata and all that...' did in 1988. GERRY MURPHY.

Find out more at:

This CD and radio production funded in part by grants from

The Poet Laureate of the People’s Republic Of Cork:

Hear on-line the 5 part radio documentary commissioned by the B.C.I. ‘Sound & Vision’ broadcasting scheme and produced and presented by Roger Gregg of Crazy Dog Audio Theatre in partnership with Tinpot Productions. http://www.tinpot.net/

Produced for broadcast on U.C.C. Campus Radio. Cork. Ireland

Find out more about them at: http://www.ucc.ie/ccr/

Programme One:

‘In Fairness Gerry, ‘The’ Is Not A Sentence.’

Interview with playwright and author Conal Creedon.

Running time: 19’ 56”

Programme Two:

‘A Small Fat Boy Walking Backwards’

Interview with Mick Hannigan, Director of the Cork Film Festival. http://www.corkfilmfest.org/ccff/index.php

Running time: 19’ 43”

Programme Three:

‘The People’s Republic of Melville Terrace’

Interview with sculptor Hugh Lorigan.

Running time: 19’ 54”

Programme Four:

‘The Poets Banned From Connolly Hall’

Interview with poet Pat Cotter, Director of the Munster Literature Centre. http://www.munsterlit.ie/

Running time: 19’ 51”

Programme Five:

‘The Fabulous Murphy Brothers’

Interview with Tony Sheehan, Director of the Triskel Arts Centre. http://www.triskelart.com/

Running time: 19’ 56”

For more information contact us here at info@crazydogaudiotheatre.com