Cahoots NI was formed in 2001 by Paul Bosco McEneaney and Zoe Seaton. The Company is based in Northern Ireland and tours original shows for children, its declared aim to “capitalise upon the age-old popularity of magic and illusion as an essential ingredient in the art of entertaining.”
Maddy Bridgman speaks with Paul.
What are you doing today?
I’m just heading off to rehearsals for the workshop programme of our new project, “The Snail and the Whale”, and then I’ll be having a meeting with the key personnel from the main production. We have two different casts – one which works with schools, one which will do the theatre performance. The schools workshops are not very hands-on, it’s more to do with introducing the children to the themes of the show and so on. But the youngsters do devise an interpretation of the whale sounds and this is incorporated with the music of the composer, Ursula Burns, and recorded on a CD for each school to keep. So there’s a lot of production involved! But it lengthens the process for the schools and gives children a sense of ownership when they are watching the show.
Is today a typical day?
There is no such thing in this job, which is what is so fantastic about it! I’m involved in production, scripting, technical issues and office work. We have a core of three people in Cahoots NI, but expand to as many as sixteen or seventeen people on a production.
And how did it come to this – do you have a theatrical background?
I was always keen on drama, but also obsessed by magic and illusion as a kid – David Nixon was a favourite on TV! It was the whole spectacle, I loved circuses as well. I went to performing arts college in Belfast where you got to learn every part of the business, and was then lucky enough to keep working as an actor for several years. Then a festival called “Young at Art” asked me to write something and I came up with a show called “Puppet Magic”. It was a huge success; it was invited to the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival and that whole process concentrated my mind, made me think, “hang on, I’m onto something here – I’m enjoying it, I’m good at it…..”
Was there any major influence?
I saw something in Belfast many years ago called “The Snow Show” – Slava the clown was in it. It was the first time I’d seen a circus/theatre amalgam and that was definitely an inspiration. Then of course there’s Cirque du Soleil [Slava’s Snow Show grew from this] – I remember being just so excited to see this fusion of narrative and illusion.
So where has the venture taken you?
Cahoots NI was formed from that first children’s show, and we were very lucky to get Arts Council funding – it’s still our core funder. We merge two art forms – magic and theatre, and to some extent eliminate the language barrier. The production style is in some ways very very new, with a clown-like element – and that reaches out to people everywhere. We have travelled to Japan, South Korea, the USA, Germany.
Has the theatre scene changed much or are you working in the same context?
There has certainly been a huge growth in children’s theatre – there are more companies and many more festivals. But I see a lack of dedicated performance spaces for children and young people, outside London and Dublin. There’s certainly an appetite for it – we usually have a total audience of seven, eight thousand or more for our productions, over a relatively short run [ and from a population of less than two million].
What’s new for Cahoots – and what’s next?
We have initiated something called Bedside Theatre, which takes place in children’s hospital wards – it grew from a flea circus! I had been looking for a contrast to the spectacular shows in big spaces and we devised this, with the help of an inventor/magician called Walt Noon in America, who makes flea circuses. But if we’d known how difficult it would be to get accepted in hospitals with a cast of fleas, we’d never have begun…. Now, though, I’m very proud of it – it’s a real feel-good project. And from there we instigated a Bumble Bee Orchestra; not using real bees – it’s five musicians with an hour-long show that goes into children’s respite centres.
And where next?
Well, there are still a few countries we haven’t been to….I’d like to expand internationally. And maybe one day we’ll have our own space. We need to champion arts for young people. It’s a cliché, but this is our future audience we’re talking about. If we don’t inspire children today, what hope for tomorrow? There’s more for them now, but sometimes I feel we’ve lost a generation of arts supporters. We don’t want to lose another. Though that won’t happen as long as Cahoots NI is about……
