Yes to Molly Bloomsday weekend: Four days of women-led spectacle in Derry and Donegal

On Bloomsday this month, think not of Leopold Bloom, whose wanderings around Dublin on June 16th, 1904, form the core of Ulysses, but of his wife, Molly. Her earthy soliloquy, spoken as she lies in bed beside her sleeping husband, is the climax of the final chapter of the James Joyce novel.

It is now also at the heart of The Molly Films, a cinematic suite that will premiere at Yes, a new festival of female creativity taking place in Derry and Donegal over Bloomsday – or, as the event’s organisers have rechristened it, Molly Bloomsday – weekend.

Yes is the culmination of Ulysses European Odyssey, a vast cultural project, stretching across 18 European cities – one for each of the chapters, or episodes, of Ulysses – that have produced artistic responses in public spaces to themes in the novel.

Joyce loosely structured his book around Homer’s Odyssey, in which the Greek hero Odysseus recounts his 10-year journey home to the island of Ithaca, in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Since beginning in Athens, in September 2022, the Ulysses European Odyssey has travelled through three of the cities in which Joyce wrote the novel – Trieste, Zurich and Paris – as well as Vilnius, Budapest, Marseille, Berlin, Lugo, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Cluj, Zurich, Leeuwarden, Eleusis, Oulu and Lisbon.

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For the Yes festival, more than 30 women artists, musicians and performers from across Europe will gather in Derry and Donegal for four days of music, dance, public art, conversation and spectacle.

“The festival marks a homecoming for the European Odyssey, as well as for Seán and myself,” says Liam Browne, referring to Seán Doran, his fellow director of Arts Over Borders, the project’s key organiser. “Molly’s long and winding stream of consciousness begins and ends with the word Yes. It inspired us to pull Joyce’s story to Derry, where ‘yes’ is used locally as a greeting.”

In The Molly Films, five distinguished Irish and British actors – Harriet Walter, Fiona Shaw, Adjoa Andoh, Siobhán McSweeney and Eve Hewson – each delivers one of the eight long, unpunctuated “sentences” that form Molly’s soliloquy. It’s a considerable challenge even for such experienced performers.

“What I love about this project is that it took these words out of a male book and placed them in the mouths of five very different women,” says McSweeney, who since her appearance in Derry Girls has formed a strong attachment to the women’s movement in the city. “It liberated it and, hopefully, has made something interesting out of something everyone claims to know but very few have actually read.

“The monologue speaks to the internal landscapes in all of us: the irritations, the memories of younger trysts, the meandering thoughts that happen in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep, the reliving of romantic memories, the sensuality we feel when we’re between sleep and being awake. It’s a hinterland that is familiar to us all, regardless of gender.”

Few actors come more experienced than Walter and Shaw, who 40 years ago were playing lead roles alongside each other for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1992 Shaw delivered an extraordinary performance in Derry in the title role of the RSC’s production of Electra. Staged as part of Doran’s Impact ’92 festival, it took place during a particularly violent period in the city.

“That week in Derry was one of the most important moments of my life,” Shaw says. “People’s humanity about the trouble surrounding them was so palpable that I’ve never got over it. It connected art to politics in the most visceral way. John Lynch, who played Orestes, and I were in tears when we flew out next day. We felt we’d plugged into something with a charge much bigger than ourselves.”

Shaw had read Jan Morris’s book about Trieste, the city where Joyce began work on Ulysses. “After that I read Richard Ellmann’s biography of Joyce. Then it happened that Seán asked me to read a “sentence” from Molly Bloom’s soliloquy for him. I said yes, of course. I thought it would take about 15 minutes. I hadn’t realised how long it is – and incomprehensible!

“It was a hard thing to do, and I really had to master it, to get to know the character. It’s not enough to let the language carry the meaning, because it doesn’t. We had a lovely young director called Sophie Muzychenko, and together we parsed it, unpicked it, made up punctuation and filmed it in a single day. It was a tough shoot, an intense piece of work.”

Ulysses European Odyssey’s first stop on the homeward stretch is Dublin, where the project’s two big legacies will enter their final stages: the Ulysses European Odyssey Book, commissioned from writers in each of the 18 cities – in Dublin it’s Anne Enright, in Derry Kerri ní Dochartaigh – and a symposium, What Will You Answer? 309 Questions from Europe. The latter is a response to Episode XVII of Ulysses, which is narrated through 309 questions and answers, in the style of a catechism or Socratic dialogue. Questions have been submitted by communities in the 18 cities.

In Derry, the Yes festival’s profile echoes the pivotal role played by women in the economic, social, cultural and political life of the city, as shirt factory and mill workers, trade unionists, civil-rights campaigners, artists and homemakers.

It will host its own mini-talks festival, entitled No Ordinary Women, curated by the novelist and columnist Martina Devlin. The former president Mary Robinson, the journalists Orla Guerin, Marion McKeone and Miriam O’Callaghan, and two woman political leaders are among those who will discuss themes of women and leadership, women and climate justice, women and resistance, and women and media.

My job as press ombudsman is to balance the freedoms of the press with the responsibilities of the press

—  Susan McKay

Susan McKay, the journalist and writer who in 2022 became Ireland’s first woman press ombudsman, will chair a discussion about women and power. The panellists are the barristers Shami Chakrabarti, who is also a British Labour Party peer, and Caoilfhionn Gallagher, Ireland’s special rapporteur on child protection, who is also a commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.

“Both have very strong human-rights legal backgrounds,” says McKay. “Shami has just brought out a book looking at international treaties and legislation, and bodies which provide the architecture of international human-rights legislation. Caoilfhionn has been involved in many campaigns for individuals who have been denied their rights, including people who have been sentenced to death. It’s going to be a fascinating conversation between them.”

As a journalist, McKay has frequently focused on social issues, highlighting the plight of marginalised, vulnerable members of society: prisoners, Travellers and homeless people, as well as victims and survivors of the conflict in the North. She has written a set of guidelines for journalists working in that area, advising on how to understand and deal with trauma and its effect on individuals.

“My job as press ombudsman – and, apart from being the first woman in the post, I am also the first Derry girl – is to balance the freedoms of the press with the responsibilities of the press,” she says. “It’s important that we have a free press, and it’s equally important to protect the human rights of those who might be the subject of stories.

“It’s refreshing to have a conference entirely made up of women. Regarding its title, as a feminist I’d have to say that, over the years, women’s rights have had to be focused on the question of how to say No. I say this as a founder of the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre and, for several years, chief executive of the National Women’s Council of Ireland.”

She argues that the influence of Derry women in many areas of life has not been adequately recognised.

“The festival will draw out the significance of women as a force within the city. A lot of the big names, the writers and thinkers associated with Derry, have been male. We think of Heaney, Seamus Deane, Brian Friel and the Field Day people, who were pretty much a male group.

I think the island of Ireland is flourishing. I’m feeling hopeful, about the North and South, and the way in which we are freeing ourselves from the shackles of previous generations

—  Fiona Shaw

“Derry is full of powerful matriarchs. A few years ago I did a piece for Sunday Miscellany [on RTÉ Radio 1] about Pat Hume and the incredibly important role she played in John Hume’s work. I described her as an unsung heroine who didn’t want to be sung. But such contributions need to be acknowledged, whether or not the people concerned want the limelight.”

The festival’s music programme will feature the world premiere of Sirenscircus, a sonic experience inspired by Joyce’s Sirens episode through the frame of John Cage’s Musicirccus, performed in Ebrington Square by a 200-strong ensemble.. The city walls will be the stage for eight parading bands from both traditions. In the closing concert, Imelda May will showcase her debut poetry collection, A Lick and a Promise, and perform an acoustic set of some of her favourite songs.

Given her memory of dark days in the city’s past, Fiona Shaw says she is delighted now to be part of a festival in Derry called Yes.

“It’s just great. I think the island of Ireland is flourishing. I’m feeling hopeful, about the North and South, and the way in which we are freeing ourselves from the shackles of previous generations. There are many things to live for, and history must not catch us by the ankles”.

The Yes festival takes place in Derry and Co Donegal from Thursday, June 13th, to Sunday, June 16th