Asylum Residency Year in Review - 2024

Earlier this year, during our Watergate residency Asylum played host to our sister company Slung Low, the Leeds-based titans of participatory theatre. We talked lots: about re-imagining space, re-defining community engagement, revolutionising our creative process. They helped us to develop preliminary ideas and plant some seeds for our biggest and most exciting ever show! (coming your way in 2026.... watch this space).

For culture night we teamed up with Kilkenny's own 'bright young things' Cult Collective and long term 'Asylum in-mate' Jeff Gormley to create 'Sparks' - an open invitation to Kilkenny theatre makers and performers to develop new projects and test them on a live audience.

The project also allowed us to reimagine the Watergate space, with performances happening in the Gallery, the balcony, the green room, the auditorium floor and even one under the stage.

We've also started working with the Watergate to further develop playWildParty - Jeff's experiment in 'radically inclusive' theatre making, where the audience themselves are ultimately offered a script and invited to perform. Still in development stage, the script will continue to evolve in the new year, in collaboration with the Watergate Players with weekly open workshops on Mondays from 7 to 9pm.