Arts & Culture

SINCE September 2021, The Local Creative Youth Partnership (LCYP) based at Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board, has been working with a very dedicated team of young people to develop Kilkee Youth Theatre. This performing arts initiative offers young people in West Clare a taste of performance and production for stage and screen and is presented in partnership with Clare Arts Office, Cultúrlann Sweeney and St Joseph’s Community College. For spring 2022 a new series of taster workshops has been organised. For 9 to 12 year olds the workshops will take place from 11.30am to 1pm in Cultúrlann Sweeney, Kilkee Library on February 26, March 5, 12, 26, April 2 and,9 with the final session in St Joseph’s. The 13 to 17 year old workshop is from 1.30pm to 3pm in Kilkee Community School on February 26, March 5 and 12,, to be extended subject to demand. Facilitators for the youth theatre include Moyasta native Fiona Claffey-Kelly, Ennistymon resident, …

THE Giant’s Playground in the Burren was one place that made a great impression on Justine Mitchell who plays Elaine in the RTE hit show Smother. The show was filmed in North Clare and on a Zoom call with the press last week she said the location had stunned her. “The Giant’s Playground in the Burren, that was incredible. It really did feel like we got there and moments before like two dinosaurs had stopped fighting each other and gone around the corner somewhere. It has this ancient feeling, and it’s really good for you soul, you go like I’m so tiny, I’m so tiny!” She said the opening shot of the second series of Smother helped evoke the feeling the Burren gave her. “We are tiny little specks on this eternal landscape, and that’s so good for your head.” James O’Donoghue who plays her on screen son Calum was also hugely impressed by the North Clare landscape. “We all …

HAVING first decided to postpone its 2022 show, Shannon Musical Society has now decided to cancel it altogether. Its production of Little Shop of Horrors was going to happen in April, but the Society felt that despite the loosening of restrictions, allowing it to go ahead could potentially result in serious problems. Aodán Fox was set to direct the production, and he said it had been a difficult decision. “It was a tough call to have to make to be honest, but there were several concerns. The fact that we could have been in a position financially to put ourselves in major danger if we had all the outlay and we were hit by Omicron, either the week before or the week of the show and have to cancel, that was a major concern. “It could put the Society in grave danger of not being able to continue. After chatting it out with the cast and the committee, it was …

A DYNAMIC weekend of musical activities for young traditional and folk composers and songwriters is on the cards for Glór next month. The event, taking place from March 11 to 13, is part of a national series of Masterclass & Concert Programmes with Dónal Lunny. The legendary musician will be in Ennis with his nine-piece traditional music ensemble, Atlantic Arc. Young musicians between the ages of 14-18 who live in Clare are now invited to make an application for this innovative programme. The event will include a Friday evening and Saturday daytime masterclass. On Sunday, there will be a ‘behind the scenes’ technical experience, followed by the evening concert with Atlantic Arc. The masterclasses are facilitated by Music Generation Clare via SoundWaves, a new annual programme of nationwide masterclasses and concerts for young musicians. “The members of Atlantic Arc are excited to meet upcoming young composers/songwriters in County Clare, we are inspired by the energy of young people and the …

THE Ennis Book Club Festival is back and is all set to take place from March 4 to 6, with the full programme having now been announced. On Friday, March 4, it kicks off with an event based on Look! It’s A Woman Writer! Irish Literary Feminisms by Éilís Ni Dhuibhne. Editor Ní Dhuibhne asked 21 Irish women who were born in and around the 1950s to write about their writing lives and in this volume, they tell it like it really was – and is. Panellists Lia Mills Catherine Dunne and Evelyn Conlon discuss what it means to be a woman writer, hosted by Arlen House publisher Alan Hayes. At 4.30pm in The Temple Gate hotel, local author Joe Queally chats about his book – Echoes from a Civil War. In the book, Queally analyses the 1925 death in Fanore of Guard Thomas Dowling and the 1929 death in Tullycrine of CID detective, Tadhg O’Sullivan, placing them firmly in …

Pupils from Scoil Mhuire Náisiúnta, Cora Finne, are celebrating being named both Junior and Senior county winners for Clare in a prestigious national art competition. Someone Like Me, which is organised by the National Disability Authority, attracted more than 1,800 entries from national schools across the length and breadth of the country. The competition has been designed to be a national celebration of the things that unite children of all abilities and, over its six-year history, more than 8,000 children have taken part, creating a tangible contribution to developing more positive attitudes towards persons with disabilities. During the last school term of 2021 teachers and their pupils right across Ireland worked through special lesson plans which challenged them to respond artistically and creatively to the theme of Someone Like Me, while, at the same time, appreciating and respecting similarities and differences in people. The judges were particularly impressed with the submissions from pupils Elsie Daffy, (2nd Class) and Emma Cleary …

BARRING further public health crises, the Ennis Book Club Festival will have in-person events on the first weekend in March. One of these will be entitled Motherhood, Destiny and Choices: Irish and American debuts asking tough questions, to be held at St Columba’s Church on the afternoon of March 5. Among the speakers will be Galway based Edel Coffey, whose first novel Breaking Point, has just come out. It tells the story of Susannah, a working mother, pulled in different directions each day, working as a doctor, researcher and professor as well as being a wife and mother. One frantic morning, with a disrupted routine and a work emergency, she leaves her young daughter in the car on a hot New York day. When she realises her mistake, it is already too late. Another woman Adelaide is a reporter covering a subsequent negligence trial, and for her the story is a familiar one, stirring up ghosts from her own long-buried …

THE Pagan holiday of Imbolc on February 1 makes an apt date for the release on Amazon and iTunes of Paddy Murphy’s horror drama The Perished. The word ‘Imbolc’ means “in the belly of the Mother”, because the seeds of spring are beginning to stir in the belly of Mother Earth. And the plot of the Killaloe-based film-maker’s feature, which premiered in 2019, revolves around a young woman’s unplanned pregnancy, contemplation of abortion and subsequent isolation in a house haunted by spirits from its terrible past as a mother and baby home. For Paddy and the crew it’s a great relief that the film can now be seen in this neck of the woods, having been denied its home premiere in Limerick’s Odeon Cinema in early 2020. That had been meant to happen on Friday, the 13th of March (he sure knows how to pick appropriate release dates), but a certain pandemic came along and put the kibosh on that. …