OnTheTown: Forest ogres stalked the grounds of Trinity College Dublin all week. They emerged from the mist last Monday night at the launch of the first Trinity Arts Festival. They danced brazenly with students.
Laura O'Connell, a third year occupational therapy student at TCD and one of the festival's organisers, sashayed across the floor of the college Atrium with giant ogre Daniel Kennedy, a history of art and classics student. She showed no fear.
"It's all about participation, giving students a platform," said third-year student Bébhinn Cronin, another member of the festival's organising committee. "There's so much rich talent in the college," she added, saying that the creative dimension of the student community was often overlooked.
Bébhinn's grandmother, Rita Cronin and her father, Fergus Cronin, of Kilkenny Arts Festival, were among those who came along later to enjoy the opening.
Mark Ennis, another TCD student with friends Aengus Ó Maoláin, Rory Musgrave and Nigel Smith, who make up the Bulraga Choir, sang in the university's square during the week.
More guests arrived to find out about the festival, including artist Brian Maguire, Project theatre director Willie White and students Veronica Miller from Vickerstown, Co Laois and Maeve Stone from Castleconnell, Co Limerick.
Róisín Gaffney, the festival's launch co-ordinator, wanted to have "a fusion of different arts" at the launch. Her mother, Deirdre Gaffney, came along with her friend, digital artist Colette Farrelly, to enjoy the proceedings, which included electronic jazz and a photographic exhibition by philosophy student Imogen Rabone. "We wanted to make a festival using all the resources that we have on campus," said Pearl O'Sullivan, festival director and student, as she listed arts-based societies that have become involved in this festival: film, theatre, photography, digital and visual arts, traditional and electronic music. Fashion designer Maria Tapper and her friend, Heather Finn, a knitwear designer from Galway, also dropped in to have a look at the line-up of events.
Growing up is hard to do
A new play that asks hard question about our spiritual well being opened in the Peacock Theatre this week.
The Grown-Ups, by Dubliner Nicholas Kelly, "is posing the question, 'have we a spiritual malaise going on now?'" said its director Gerard Stembridge.
The play is "asking questions about our economic success . . . This [ play] is about what has been happening to ordinary people, your average middle-class couple". The writer is interested in "ideas of our addictions now - shopping, property, Prozac", said Stembridge before the lights went low and the play began.
Programming this play together with Paul Mercier's play, Homeland at the Abbey next door aims to show people "how two separate writers are looking at Dublin today", said Fiach Mac Conghail, director of the National Theatre.
Eoin Colley and his wife, Emer Dillon, the parents of actor Dan Colley, who plays Scott in the play, drank a toast before they went in for the performance with their friends Jeanne Heather and pilot Caroline Cronin. Relatives of actor Leigh Arnold, who plays the part of Nicola, were also there, including her two grandmothers, Rita Murray and Phyllis Arnold, and her mother, Mo Arnold.
Also there was John Fairleigh, director of the Stewart Parker Trust, who chatted to playwright Gerald Murphy, winner of the trust's award for his new play, Take Me Away, in 2005. Judge Bryan McMahon, chairman of the Abbey board, jewellery designer Melissa Curry and Dave Pyro, guitarist with Republic of Loose, and his girlfriend, Helen Boylan also came along to the opening.
The Grown-Ups by Nicholas Kelly continues at the Peacock until Saturday, March 11
Shooting stars on target
The familiar faces of stage and screen filled the ballroom of the Burlington Hotel in Dublin last Sunday night to celebrate The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards winners. There were dancers, directors and designers too.
Dancer Muirne Bloomer, in between performing in Knots, the Coiscéim show, which plays in Dún Laoghaire's Pavilion tonight, was enjoying a night off to attend the ceremony.
The show, which is choreographed by Liam Steele, is "about relationships and based on the works of pyschoanalyst, RD Laing", she said. "It's a very hard-hitting piece. It's for adults," she explained, before dashing back to her table before the next winner was announced.
Also enjoying theatre's annual night of celebration was Catherine Buffrey, stage manager of the recently opened Opera Theatre Company production of Mozart's opera, Apollo and Hyacinthus, which is currently touring, playing in Armagh's Market Place Theatre tonight and on to Galway, Limerick and Skibbereen, Co Cork next week.
She chatted to fellow OTC colleagues Kevin Treacy and Sorcha Carroll, as they waited to hear the outcome for OTC, which was nominated in the best opera category for its production of The Coronation of Poppea last year. Wexford Festival Opera's production of Susannah by Carlisle Floyd was presented with the award.
Ruth Negga was away at the Berlin Film Festival "being a shooting star" for Ireland, as Tadhg Murphy explained when he picked up her Best Supporting Actress Award.
Negga also won The Irish Times Theatre Award for her role as Lavinia in the Siren production of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus last year.
Pauline McLynn, who was compere for the night, explained that a number of actors had been "shed" at the Olympia in the I, Keano production. But the producers of the musical, Pat Moylan and Breda Cashe, enjoyed the night in the company of the man who has played Macartacus since it opened, Donegal actor Dessie Gallagher. The cast and crew take the show to Manchester shortly.
Art from the heart
'I paint more quietly now than I did before, and punctuated by the old siesta," said the artist Louis le Brocquy before a new film about his life and work was screened at a small reception for family friends in the National Gallery last Wednesday.
The film, Louis le Brocquy - The Inner Human Reality, is produced and directed by Joe Mulholland for RTÉ television to celebrate the great Irish artist's 90th year.
"My work is such a part of me now that it's simply a matter of carrying on where I left off," said le Brocquy when asked how important his work is to him. He paints every morning but in order to be satisfied with the work, he must be surprised by it, he says in the film.
His wife, painter Anne Madden, sat beside him and the two watched the hour-long documentary with friends and family.
"He's searching for the internal reality of the human individual, so his quest has been focusing since the very start on the human condition and our ultimate reality, which is our state of aloneness," said his son, Pierre le Brocquy, who manages and curates all his father's shows. He cited the figures in A Family, which is in the National Gallery, as examples of this isolation.
Among others at the reception and screening were artist Robert Ballagh, art collector Desmond Downes, artist and writer Eamon Ryan and his wife Mary, Mary Finan, chairwoman of the ESRI and board member of the Gate Theatre, Prof Kevin Cahill from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and his son Seán Cahill and Brian Coyle, chairman of Adams Auctioneers.
"What I'm really proud of and feel happy with is that it's Louis himself who talks about the work," said Mulholland of his film. "What is common to all his work has been a search for getting beyond the surface of the human person and into the inner consciousness . . . He's a hugely intellectual painter."
Louis le Brocquy - The Inner Human Reality will be screened as part of the Arts Lives series on RTÉ 1 next Tuesday at 10.15pm