Dead Medium

Think back, what were your least favourite parts of school? Maybe math, maybe physics, maybe you just hated gym. Now imagine a school where you didn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to. A school with no exams, no homework, no classes, not even any teachers. What if I were to tell you that not only does that school exist, it’s right here in Dublin, in a regular semi-d near the cold unfinished boom era monstrosity of the Sandyford industrial estate. This documentary explores a year in the life of Ireland’s most unconventional school, ‘Wicklow Sudbury’. This radical form of schooling has been running in the United States for almost fifty years, but can it work here? We follow the first few months of the fledgling school. Listeners will meet students, staff and parents, and explore what they found lacking in conventional education. In the process we’ll see just what Irish education can learn from The Free School.

Wicklow Sudbury School is an experiment in alternative education, attempting to apply the principles of ‘free schooling’ and ‘unschooling’ in the Irish context. The first ever term has recently begun, and right now the school consists of eighteen students of all ages, learning together.

Free or democratic schools are organised around the principle that students should take a lead in deciding their own educational path. These schools take a radical approach to encouraging free thinking and agency in their students. Free schools offer an alternative to mainstream education. They share an emphasis on child-centered learning: Seeing the learner as an active participant who choses his or her own course of study.

For many Wicklow Sudbury students the mainstream educational system has been a failure. They or their parents haven’t found the education they’re looking for in standardised classes and subject based classes. Instead they’ve chosen a school with no classes, no subject, no homework and no teachers. We follow their first few months in the school and learn how radical education works in Ireland in practice.

Broadcaster: Newstalk 106 – 108fm

To subscribe to this series and lots more from Roger Gregg, check out the brand new Crazy Dog Audio Podcast

The Bee Loud Glade Cabaret is a series of twelve bite-size programmes bringing some of the best of the contemporary Irish spoken word scene to radio. Each episode will showcase one beautifully produced spoken word performance, and one ‘backstage’ interview, featuring emerging & established Irish poets. The series represents an exciting new approach to poetry on radio in Ireland, mixing studio performance, music and soundscapes, to recreate the excitement of the live poetry scene. It will bring poetry as a living spoken form to a new audience, and promote the work of a new generation of emerging and contemporary Irish artists. The Bee Loud Glade will take the word off the page and reimagine it using original music and soundscapes. Created for RTE Lyric FM. Funded by the Broadcast Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence Fee.

https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/art-of-television-compressed.mp3

Download: The Art of Television

The A.R.T of Television is a historical comedy about censorship, set in the early years of Irish TV broadcasting. A time when government and church fought young broadcasters struggling to innovate on the nation’s fledgling television channel. American writer Claude Chabert lands a job on the early Irish soap opera ’Home Farm’. Claude finds himself trapped between the political pressures and rigid censorship of late 1960’s Ireland. Attempting to kill the show, he resorts to improbable storylines rooted in Irish mythology, creating an unexpected hit. Now Claude must balance the demands of crafty civil servants, a meddling church and an unruly cast.

Claude Chabert is a Madison Avenue hack, knocking out scripts for TV advertisements and drinking on the job. Fleeing the manipulative, artistically bereft world of advertising, Claude comes to Ireland to write the great American novel.

Alas, jobs are not ten a penny in 1960’s Ireland, and Claude is forced to take a position as show runner on flagship An Radió Teilifís (A.R.T) Irish soap opera Home Farm. The programme’s previous producer – the gamine firebrand Maureen Masterson, has recently been demoted due to her insistence on broadcasting socially relevant plots that anger the establishment.

Confronted by the withering censorship requirements of Irish television, not to mention the pressure to appease advertisers, Claude is even more frustrated than he was in the US. He decides to kill the show, by making its plots ever more ludicrous. Claude deliberately introduces events and characters from Irish mythology into his scripts – in a deliberate effort to plummet the ratings. The resulting show is an unexpected critical and commercial success. The more over the top he makes the story, the more successful Home Farm becomes. Critics view the new approach as a clever postmodern commentary, while audiences can’t wait to see what happens next.

Credits:

Special thanks to Lynn Simpson & Derek Byrne at Phoenix FM.

Written and Directed by Gareth Stack

Additional Material by Seamus Stackpoole.

Roger Gregg as Claude Chabert

Pamela Flanagan = Maureen Masterson / Lug

Sebastian Connellan as Carvel Kiddler

Thommas Kane Byrne as Fr Terry O’Mahony, Fiacra, Irate Reader

Seamus Stackpoole as Brendan O’Riordan / Miley O’Cumman

Gareth Stack = Felix (in Sales), A.R.T News Anchor

Tara Cush as Shiela O’Riordan / Maraoid O’Common, Selkie Niall Bruton = Alan O’Riordan / Ciaran O’Dowd

Aislinn Byrne = Saoirse Chabert, Bridget Minerva, Irate Reader

Roisin Rankin as Laura O’Mahony, Banshee, BBC Presenter

Music by Roger Gregg

Sound recording and sound design by Brendan Rehill.

Download: The Muse Unbidden

The Muse Unbidden is an exciting one off drama from Roger Gregg, one of Ireland’s most influential radio dramatists. The play, a success on stage at the Collaborations festival in Smock Alley theatre in 2012, follows a group of would-be poets enrolled in a performance poetry workshop led by a charismatic and unconventional teacher. Using music and dream diaries, the participants are cajoled into finding and surrendering to their personal muses. As the workshop progresses they travel a rollicking odyssey of confession and self-revelation, giving voice to their obsessions, desires, wit, pain, and memories. For some their uninhibited self-expression leads to joyous catharsis, for others to grief and loss. The play satirises the world of performance poetry, blending music and poetry to create an original and entertaining programme. This satire on modern poetry and self-discovery, written and directed by Roger Gregg features original musical score performed and recorded by a cast of multi-talented actor-musicians.

The show revolves around the artistic journeys of five students and one teacher: each embodying an archetypical poetry workshop attendee. Mags is confused about her marriage, Liz suffers from anger problems, Hillary believes herself to be next in line for Heaney’s throne, Cathy is experiencing depression, Theo thinks he can change the world. Their identities are in flux during the ten weeks we are shown of their course; as they grow and change and develop through their creations. Peter, the teacher, is passionate to the point of being overzealous. His fear and under-qualification to deal with people’s emotional trauma is something all teachers can relate to.

The students each struggle with finding and taming their muse: in most cases, the muse takes the form of their desires and demons – leading them to something they need in their lives which is much greater than a piece of poetry. The Muse Unbidden addresses poetry as therapy. Poetry allows people to work through their conflicts and emotional issues.

Anyone who has attended a poetry workshop or facilitates one, or even maybe only picks up a pen from time to time will find something to relate to. Even listeners who’ve never written before will be lured in with the promise of what might become if they dare reach out to their muse. The Muse Unbidden explodes with energy, and fearlessly touches sore areas of Irish culture’s attitude to canonical poetry in ways that might sting but will leave listeners thinking.

CREDITS: ‘The Muse Unbidden’ was executive produced by Gareth Stack, writing / direction by Roger Gregg, recording by Colette Kinsella. The cast were Morgan Jones, Tiernan Kearns, Angel Hannigan, Sinead Fox, Katie McCann, Karen Ardiff and Roger Gregg. Music by Roger Gregg.

Funded by the Broadcast Authority of Ireland with the television license fee.

Download: ART Trailer

Dead Medium Productions Presents ‘The A.R.T of Television’!

It’s winter 1968, the long hangover after the Summer of Love. A.R.T is Ireland’s finest, and indeed only television station. But the nations flagship soap ‘Home Farm’ is failing as viewers frog march towards the satanic protestant seduction of the BBC. American ad man Claude Chabert is hired to turn the show around. With help from TV chaplain father Terry O’Mahony and feminist firebrand Maureen Masterson can Claude raise the ratings? Or will he fall prey to the machinations of sinister Controller of television Carvel Kiddler? Find out in The A.R.T of Television, a totally made up and completely fictional, not true at all, not even a little bit historical comedy about censorship, stupidity and Irish television. Coming to Phoenix FM and Soundcloud soon!

Dead Medium Productions history

Dead Medium Productions, founded in 2009, is an independent producer of drama and documentary. We have released numerous radio and podcast series. We have produced programmes for Newstalk, RTE Lyric FM, Radiomade, Dublin City FM, and Near FM. Our previous series include ‘Choices’ a surreal comedy about mental health, ‘Any Other Dublin’ a satirical look at the death of the Celtic Tiger, dark cold war drama ‘The Wall in the Mind’, and ‘Mad Scientists of Music’, an award winning documentary about experimental Irish music.

Writer / Director

Gareth Stack is a writer who develops work for radio, theatre and screen. Gareth Stack is a writer, director and pioneering Irish podcaster. In 2005, while senior producer at Trinity FM, he co-created the first Irish internet TV show ‘Technolotics’. Since then he has developed numerous radio documentaries, dramas and podcasts for channels like Newstalk, RTE Lyric FM as well as local and regional radio. Including the award winning series ‘Mad Scientists of Music’, which explored the Irish experimental audio scene. He has worked as arts correspondent for programmes like Culture File & the Dave Fanning show, developed programmes for digital channels like Radiomade, and served as communications officer for the Association of Independent Radio Producers Ireland (AIRPI). Gareth currently teaches courses in Podcasting & ‘Storytelling Through Sound’. Recently he has begun creating work for stage. His last play ‘Mic Drop’, received great reviews at the Scene & Heard festival.

Starring legendary radio actor / producer Roger Gregg!

Roger Gregg is an award winning playwright, composer, audio-producer and actor. Over the past 25 years he has written for Crazy Dog Theatre, Dublin Youth Theatre, TEAM, The American National Audio Theatre Festival, Graffiti Theatre, The Razor Edge, Oberon Theatre and The Gaiety School of Acting. His plays have also been produced by New York University, the University of Missouri, the Theaterpedagogisches Zentrum in Nuremberg, Germany. His Crazy Dog productions have won many international awards including; 3 American Mark Time Science Fiction Awards, 2 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’.

Cast

Roger Gregg as Claude Chabert.

With sound design / recording by Hearsay award winning producer Brendan Rehill (An Klondike, the Wedding Tree).

Thanks, hope you tune in!