Elmarie was personally delighted to be able to meet up with Naomi Daly in the auditorium of the Everyman as it gets ready to reopen after it's longest shutdown it the theatre's history...and just being in the theatre was in itself a source of excitement!

The Everyman Announces Programme of Live Events

The Everyman, MacCurtain Street, Cork

www.everymancork.com

The Everyman is delighted to announce a programme of live performance with a mix of rehearsed readings, comedy, and music. The re-opening heralds a new digital direction for the theatre with Play It By Ear, a programme of shows at The Everyman, which are also available live through audio broadcast to be experienced from wherever audiences are.

Naomi Daly, Acting Programming Manager at the theatre says, “we are celebrating the voice as we focus on bringing Cork’s wealth of local talent back to the stage along with some of our established favourites. It feels great to be turning the lights back on and throwing open the doors after our longest period of closure in over 30 years. We’re really excited about this programme and I hope our audiences will agree that we’ve ‘knocked it out of the Pairc!’”

Play it by Ear could be a synonym for ‘to improvise’, ‘rise to the occasion’ or ‘to think on one’s feet’. The Everyman has adapted to the new experience of performance by creating an exciting and innovative programme that highlights the exceptional theatrical talent in Cork.

As part of Play It By Ear, The Everyman presents a series of rehearsed readings, opening on October 15th with Marion, by Katie Holly who was this year’s ambassador for Cork County Culture Night. Katie says “I am so pleased and proud to be involved in the reopening of The Everyman's programme; a gorgeous, atmospheric venue that encourages and inspires the people within its walls to make great, entertaining, thought-provoking theatre. I'm also delighted to be working with Laura O'Mahony, Tadhg Hickey and Eadaoin O'Donoghue on a reworking of my first professional play 'Marion', which was first produced in 2016 for Cork Midsummer Festival.”

The Everyman continues to fly the flag for local theatre makers presenting The Whiteheaded Boy – a comedy in three acts, by Lennox Robinson and directed by Ger Fitzgibbon. Full of twists and turns, ups and downs, and families fighting each other, the play is as relevant today as when it was first performed in 1916. Not only does it reveal the dynamics of a family, but it is also a pointed analysis of Irish culture.

Later in the month, Ger FitzGibbon returns with his play The Four Faced Liar, when the voices of the four faces of Shandon Steeple come alive with a commentary on the city’s inhabitants below. The final rehearsed reading is the darkly chilling play The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson, directed by John McCarthy. 

For music lovers there are two spectacular live music shows to look forward to as part of Play It By Ear. Majella Cullagh, one of Ireland’s foremost sopranos, returns to The Everyman with songs from the golden age of musical theatre from the genius collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein, accompanied on piano by John O’Brien. Feeling Good with Karen Underwood and John O’Brien brings us a night of heart-warming, and roof-raising jazz, soul, and blues with interpretations of the songs of Billie Holliday, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington, Whitney...

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Conor Tallon met up with William Hammond in a socially distant 'Backyard' interview..to discuss how this year's festival has been reimagined... Behind closed doors ..well..mostly! There are some live gigs going!

The 41st Cork Folk Festival runs from 30 September - 4 October with key anchor events taking place behind closed doors. As part of a re-imagined festival, over 20 concerts, launches, walks and workshops are planned, including free live streaming of two concerts from the Cork Opera House featuring top folk musicians. One of Ireland's most exciting traditional music groups, The Bonny Men and Cork’s own distinguished songwriter, John Spillane performing with Dingle songstress Pauline Scanlon, are among the artists invited to take part in the one-off virtual concerts — held without audiences — on 2 and 3 October. Produced by Aniar TV, these concerts will be streamed live on TG4’s social platforms and broadcast on TG4 television at a later date. Further details are available at corkfolkfestival.com.  

Festival Organiser, William Hammond said: “In our four decades of running the festival, there has never been a year quite like this. Similar to so many cultural events across the country, we needed a solution — that kept both audiences and musicians safe but still celebrated the beauty of folk music. The programme for our 41st edition of the Festival, which we are calling Festival Behind Closed Doors, is about bringing people together — virtually and in small numbers — to celebrate the extraordinary work of musicians who have provided solace and joy in recent months.” 

Along with the live streaming from the Cork Opera House stage — which will also include performances from The Lee Valley String Band; Karen Casey with Niamh Dunne and Sean Óg Graham; Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Nia Byrne and Manus Lunny; and Strung with Maria Ryan, Lucia Mac Partlin, Maria O’Connor and Aonghus McCarthy — across the two nights, smaller concerts will also take place. The line-up includes a mix of up-and-coming talent and more seasoned stalwarts. 

The Cork Folk Festival, funded by Cork City Council, will see singer/songwriter Leah Sohotra and multi-instrumentalist Martin Leahy perform at the Kino on 1 October. There will two concerts — 6.30pm and 8.30pm — on 2 October — from family trio Greenshine with Martin Leahy at the Triskel Arts Centre. Singer songwriter Anna Mieke will also perform at the Kino that day. 

A fundraiser — Performing A Night for Ron — takes place on 4 October for Fermoy musician Ron Kavana, who is currently receiving dialysis. Singer Katie Theasby joins Dave Saunders and Alan Wallace at the Kino, with limited tickets available.

This event is one of four intimate concerts taking place in the Kino on 4 October, with a fiddle concert featuring Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Nia Byrne, Seamus Sands and Garry...

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Elmarie Mawe had the opportunity to have a heart to heart with the legend that is Phil Coulter who will be LIVE STREAMING a new show called ‘UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH PHIL COULTER’, featuring special guests George Hutton and Geraldine Branagan. 

This concert is going to be really special, one for the history books. 

Where and When:  VENUE THEATRE, RATOATH on Thursday, 1ST, Friday, 2ND AND Saturday, 3RD OCTOBER 2020 AND the LIVE STREAM Concert will take place on the third night, Saturday, 3rd October 2020.  

Phil Coulter has been a towering presence on the world music stage for over 50 years and remains an iconic figure in Irish Music.  

What an amazing feeling it was to see IRELAND LADIES HOCKEY Team line out to Rugby National Anthem ‘Ireland’s Call’ written by none other than the legend that is PHIL COULTER. And then of course they qualified for The Olympics.  

Phil Coulter, one of Ireland’s best-loved and most iconic musicians last year released his heartfelt biography ‘Bruised, Never Broken’.  

Phil Coulter’s biography is the story of the author’s remarkable rise from modest beginnings on the streets of post-war Derry to the summit of the global charts as a composer to a host of the era’s biggest stars such as Luke Kelly, Cliff Richard, Sandie Shaw and Elvis Presley….

Phil Coulter’s place among the great song-writers of the modern age was cemented in history the day Elvis Presley recorded “My Boy”, a top 20 hit in the US and across the world.    He is the only Irish artist to have a song recorded by Elvis Presley.  His song ‘Puppet On a String’ won the Eurovision and his song ‘Congratulations’ placed 2nd in the Eurovision. His song ‘The Town I loved So Well’ is one of the most played tracks on Irish radio and his ‘Ireland’s call’ our rugby anthem, is played at all our international rugby games.  

Very few in the music business can boast of having chart entries in every decade since the sixties. Even fewer can match the range of Phil’s output – from Eurovision winners to folk classics, from tender ballads to sporting anthems. 

He has achieved world-wide recognition as a hit songwriter, notching up chart entries with a diverse list of artists from ELVIS PRESLEY to Cliff Richard, LUKE KELLY, Cilla Black to Waylon Jennings, from Bobby Vinton to The Bay City Rollers. His production credits include Van Morrison, Sinead O’Connor, Elvis Costello, Lisa Stansfield, Marianne Faithful and Richard Harris while in Ireland his successes have ranged from the Dubliners to Planxty, from Paddy Reilly to the Furey Brothers.

He has performed with everyone from James Galway and the London Symphony Orchestra to Nanci Griffith and The Blue Moon Orchestra, not to mention Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein and Quincy Jones!

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A TORSO HAS BEEN DISCOVERED IN THE CRAWFORD ART GALLERY...!

This is a case for Art Detective Sam Spud...aided and abetted by his trusty side kicks Arts House presenter Conor Tallon and curator Michael Waldron!

We’re going right back to the beginning with this WORK OF THE WEEK!

“This trunk is supposed to be part of a statue that represented Hercules become immortal,” announces the first exhibition catalogue for our Canova Casts in 1819. It goes on to state that “No antique sculpture existing, is executed in higher style.”

The ‘trunk’ in question is The Belvedere Torso, a sculptural fragment of a muscular male nude seated on an animal hide. As our 1819 catalogue notes, it is thought to depict the Greek mythological hero Hercules (Heracles) or possibly the warrior Ajax.

Our plaster cast is believed to have been made c.1816 under the direction of Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822). Inscribed by the artist, ‘Apollonius, son of Nestor, Athenian’, the ancient marble sculpture from which this object is cast is itself believed to be a Roman copy of an earlier Greek statue from the 2nd century BCE.

In the sixteenth century, Michelangelo (1475-1564) reputedly declined Pope Julius II’s request to restore the torso on the grounds of its imperfect beauty. The Torso evidently captured the famed Renaissance artist’s imagination as its form can be traced to a number of figures in his Sistine Chapel frescoes.

Fun fact: The Belvedere Torso – as with the Apollo Belvedere – takes its name from the Vatican complex in which it was installed during the sixteenth century: Cortile del Belvedere (or Belvedere Courtyard).

The Belvedere Torso (c.1816) is featured in RECASTING CANOVA in our ground floor Sculpture Galleries. Free entry and open daily.

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This week Conor Tallon is all at sea...caught in the eye of a storm...with The Crawford's Assistant Curator Michael Waldron offering advice on how to find a safe harbour!

Hughie O’Donoghue, Medusa, 2005-06, oil and mixed media on canvas, 250 x 184 cm. Presented, 2011. © the artist.

This eye-catching WORK OF THE WEEK draws on (art) history to tell a serious tale…

Medusa (2005-06) is a large canvas by contemporary artist Hughie O’Donoghue. Its luminous abstract qualities and deep orange-to-yellow ochre tones are characteristic of his work, which seeks to achieve “an equivalent for something felt; something that embodies rather than illustrates meanings.”

The title of this work refers to a monumental painting, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19) by Théodore Géricault, which is in the collection of Musée du Louvre. This earlier work was a response to a specific event: the infamous wrecking of the French naval frigate Méduse off the coast of Mauritania in July 1816. In Medusa, however, O’Donoghue uses it as a universal symbol for maritime disasters and the tragedy of ordinary people caught up in historical events. In this way, it also holds poignant resonance with works by Daniel Castro Garcia currently featured in IN TRANSIT.

To this end, in Medusa can be perceived the dark, ghostly silhouette of a wrecked vessel, the MV Plassy, which ran aground at Inis Oírr on 8 March 1960. It is probably from this that the rusty tones of the painting are derived. Emerging out of this rich colour at the centre of the painting is a Géricault-style face – perhaps an echo of a life?

“The image of the sea appears as a metaphor,” the artist notes about the relationship between his work and the ongoing crisis of global sustainability, “ever moving and changing its form, relentless and illusive but also timeless and constant.”

Hughie O’Donoghue (b.1953) is currently exhibiting Night Cargo(5-25 September) as part of Galway International Arts Festival 2020. Medusa (2005-06) is featured in lucid abnormalities (until March 2021) in our Gibson Galleries on Floor 1. Free entry and open daily.

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This WORK OF THE WEEK might be a little offside!

Sometimes even the most memorable images can take the shortest time to make. A case in point is Portrait of Roy Keane (2002) by Murdo MacLeod, which was shot in a Manchester hotel foyer soon after its subject had infamously departed the Irish soccer team in Saipan.

“Having only a few minutes to take the photographs,” MacLeod remembers, “I produced my rotting head of a dead raven from my pocket and held it to my eye, saying ‘Could you do this?’” Taking the raven’s head, Keane asked, ‘do you mean like this?’ and a few shots later the artist had his portrait for a cover feature in Observer Sport Monthly.

Raised on the northern coast of the Isle of Lewis, Murdo MacLeod (b.1963) studied at Napier College (now Edinburgh Napier University) and has been a professional press photographer since 1985. In his work, he often makes use of dramatic lighting, unusual poses, and unexpected props. This lends his photographs a sometimes bizarre or even surreal quality, as with his Portrait of Roy Keane (2002), that even verges “on the ridiculous.” MacLeod – who has also photographed the likes of Bobby Charlton, Bill Clinton, Ricky Gervais, Jeremy Paxman, J.K. Rowling, Michael Schumacher, and Tilda Swinton – is a previous recipient of UK Press Photographer of the Year.

You can find Portrait of Roy Keane (2002) by Murdo MacLeod just off our main landing on Floor 1. Free entry and open daily.

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