Introduction

Crooked House Theatre Company Ltd was established in Newbridge, County Kildare in 1994 as a non-profit making, professional community theatre collective. The main focus of our work in the following two years was engendering a sense of community pride and encouraging expression of needs amongst marginalized groups in Kildare.

	Darren Donohue as Kreon in Antigone (Andrews Lane Studio, April 2000)

This was attempted largely through devising theatre pieces with diverse groups and performing them at community celebrations, conferences, and special gatherings. Many different groups became involved, ranging from the Irish Wheelchair Association in Clane and Athy to V.T.O.S. and other adult education groups in the region. In addition, several projects were undertaken amongst groups who are very much in the mainstream of our community (amateur drama groups, community councils, Feile Bride, Gerard Manley Hopkins Summer school, Bealtaine Arts Festival, etc). During this time the company staged energetic and well received productions of contemporary and classical drama with anyone who had a love of the medium. Productions from these years include Marina Carr's The Mai, Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Federico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba and Peter Shaffer's Equus. Rehearsals and production work involved as many people from the community as possible, often involving upwards of thirty for a single production.

By 1997 the work had become too varied and the organisation had grown rapidly beyond our management abilities. We still had no funding of any kind, so it was important to focus our energies on developing a small core of trained, professional and paid workers. With the 1997 production of The Merchant of Venice Crooked House decided that all productions would now become the work of the professional actors and crew of the company. This marked a turning point for us. Since then Crooked House has become a private limited theatre company focused on developing new work. It still acts as a host to the community theatre projects it established.