{"id":18069,"date":"2019-11-20T14:19:43","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T13:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/?p=18069"},"modified":"2019-11-20T14:19:44","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T13:19:44","slug":"cahoots-ni-celebrates-18-years-of-childrens-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/2019\/11\/cahoots-ni-celebrates-18-years-of-childrens-theatre\/","title":{"rendered":"Cahoots NI Celebrates 18 Years Of Children’s Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Northern Ireland Children\u2019s Theatre company Cahoots NI is celebrating their 18th birthday this week.\nPictured are staff members (from left) Matthew Bradley, Marianne Crossle, Paul Mc Eneaney and Emma Wilson.\n\nFor more information contact Excalibur Press 07305354209 team@excaliburpress.co.uk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Famed Northern Ireland theatre company Cahoots NI is celebrating coming of age as it marks its 18th birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company specialises in theatre for children and its distinctive style combines magic and illusion, physical theatre and original music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its work is acclaimed in Ireland, the UK, America and has been enjoyed in theatres, schools and all kinds of venues since it launched in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company is currently touring China with its production of Shh! We Have a Plan and has ever-growing audiences at home and across the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their production Penguins is about to run in Birmingham Repertory Theatre and will open at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in December. The company\u2019s theatrical adaption of Marita Conlon-McKenna\u2019s Under The Hawthorn Tree heads to The MAC and tours Ireland in the new year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the founders and Artistic Director Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney says it\u2019s amazing to have come so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve come of age. Isn\u2019t that frightening?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He revealed that the company came about almost by chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Northern Ireland Children\u2019s Theatre company Cahoots NI is celebrating their 18th birthday this week.\nPictured is artistic director Paul Mc Eneaney \n\nFor more information contact Excalibur Press 07305354209 team@excaliburpress.co.uk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt started by complete accident. When I was six or seven, I was obsessed with magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHonestly, my mother and father couldn’t go past a shop that had anything linked to Paul Daniels or David Nixon. I had every magic set under the sun. I just loved it, and later I became one of the youngest members of The Magic Circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with that came a real love of circus, and fun fairs, and anything that, when I analyse it now, was built for joy or for fun or for amazement<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew that was my world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After touring the US as a musician Paul realised theatre was his first love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbsolutely, my first love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, I came back and studied performing arts at BIFHE (Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education, now Belfast Met). \u201cThen I decided I was going to be an actor. That was it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got into The Lyric Theatre at a good time, I did three or four shows back to back. A Midsummers Night\u2019s Dream, The Playboy of the Western World and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter that I became a jobbing actor. I was doing the odd little bit of film and nothing hugely significant, but I was making a living out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen Anna Cutler, who ran the Belfast Children’s Festival at that time, asked me if I\u2019d ever thought of writing anything for young audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI ended up writing a show called Puppet Magic, and I was in it. It got picked up by a few of the visiting international delegates who said, \u2018We’d like that at our festival\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were all happening the following year. So I was asking, how do we do this? How do we make this work? And the only way to make it work financially, was to form a company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Northern Ireland Children\u2019s Theatre company Cahoots NI is celebrating their 18th birthday this week.\nPictured are staff members (from left) Matthew Bradley, Marianne Crossle, Paul Mc Eneaney and Emma Wilson.\n\nFor more information contact Excalibur Press 07305354209 team@excaliburpress.co.uk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis allowed me to access some funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, who would in turn support the international travel for this project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe renamed the show Buster, and it opened at the Edinburgh International Children\u2019s Theatre Festival the following year. And then you do one show and you go, \u2018Oh gosh, we should do another\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, there was no plan. There was absolutely no plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul said theatre for children was not seen as a priority back in the beginning of Cahoots NI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was an inequality in the funding streams back then. I don\u2019t believe children\u2019s work was funded in the same way theatre for adults was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the time, there was an education company, that was doing issue-based work and that was funded, but what we were hoping to do didn’t exist in Northern Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cahoots NI has gone on to challenge and change perceptions, with Paul adamant that children are just as deserving of top-quality theatre as adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also says theatre can play a social role, instilling empathy in children and making them more socially aware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are not changing the world, but we’re going to make the world a slightly better place with what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company is now in big demand all over the world and has toured to Europe, Asia, all over the US and has even had requests to take their shows to Chile in South America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cahoots does not plan to rest on its laurels though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul is already looking forward to future milestones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m looking towards 2021, which is our twentieth year – I feel I’m looking towards some sort of mini Cahoots NI festival, perhaps a celebration of our best work to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are currently working on a new show called The Vanishing Elephant which will play in Belfast before opening on Broadway. Our future is exciting – I\u2019m keen to create greater and longer partnerships with other organisations here and across the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cahoots show definitely looks set to go on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Penguins, a Cahoots NI, Birmingham Repertory Theatre and Prime Theatre co-production will run at The Lyric Theatre from December 18-22. Under The Hawthorn Tree will open at The MAC on January 30 through to February 9 before touring Ireland.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information about Cahoots NI or their shows log onto http:\/\/www.cahootsni.com<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Famed Northern Ireland theatre company Cahoots NI is celebrating coming of age as it marks its 18th birthday. The company specialises in theatre for children and its distinctive style combines magic and illusion, physical theatre and original music. Its work is acclaimed in Ireland, the UK, America and has been enjoyed in theatres, schools and … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18069"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18073,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18069\/revisions\/18073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}