The Irish artists’ collective Anu Productions is in residence at the Watermill Center throughout most of February, creating their new work, Working on Fingal Rónáin. The piece takes as its point of departure Ireland’s canonical, 10th century text, Fingal Rónáin, about a kinslaying of the King Ronan. In residency, the artists are determining connections between the work and other tales from around the world, including, the Phaedra myth. Their goal is to host the first staging of Fingal Rónáin, which has never been performed in Ireland. Rather than simply adapting the text for contemporary language, Anu will boldly re-imagine it, creating a new work straddling the world of theater and visual art. 

Anu Productions is a multi-disciplinary collective through which artists from varying fields both investigate their individual practice and collaborate together. Since the organization’s inception in early 2009, it has presented number of public readings of new plays as well as three full-scale productions. Corners, by Declan Feenan, sold out the Project Arts Centre. The award-winning Basin, a site-specific, multi-media installation piece for the Dublin Fringe Festival, was developed in association with the Abbey Theatre. Down the Valley was presented for the Innovation Dublin Festival, which showcases work of cross-disciplines and highlights artistic excellence. Anu’s current site-responsive commission for the Belltable Unfringed Festival (January 2010) was reviewed by Irish Theatre Magazine as a “collective vision of designer and director where installation, dance and music blur into a composite blend of revealing human endeavour and emotion.”