Kilkee to host October literary festival

A tempest of creative energy is about to be unleashed in Kilkee in mid-October (14 and 15) with the inaugural Play Wrighters’ Festival of Kilkee. In what’s primed to be a key west coast event on the literary calendar, a clarion call is going out to writers around the county to set fire to their imaginations impelled by the incendiary times we live and record the consequences in pieces of transformative theatre.
Hosted by The Stella Maris Hotel and The Greyhound Bar, play readings and writing workshops will be the main features of the two-day event with political activist/writer John Arden and his wife Margaretta D’Arcy taking centre stage. They will read two extracts from their acclaimed treatise to George Moore. 
Leading the local literary charge is drama activist Jenny Walsh Bassett, who has spread her contact net wide and bagged some big fish, cultivating her friendship with the Galway-based dissident writer Arden and his wife and artistic collaborator the activist/writer/film maker D’Arcy to form a headline act with professor of literature Adrian Brazier of NUI Galway. The guests will seek to establish an up-to-the-minute low-down on where Irish writing stands now.
With the exciting transformation of Kilkee library to include a revamped theatre space set to open its doors next May, the festival committee of Bassett Walsh, Dave Hanley, Rob Hopkins and Brian Halpin see this as an ideal time to bring writers and would-be writers together with a drama-savvy local audience to deliver a top-quality two-day festival.
“As well as the obvious draw of John Arden, who’s presence has a particular resonance for Clare with his play The Ralahine Experiment on the worker’s co-operative at Newmarket-on-Fergus highlighting the county’s formative place in the 19th century socialist movement, there will be a series of pre-rehearsed play readings of new west coast writers, including Ger Macuirt’s muse on awakening female libido in Bathrobe and Slippers and Gas and a muse on domestic disintegration in the wake of the Corrib gas protests by festival co-ordinator Ms Bassett Walsh,” festival PRO Rob Hopkins explained.
Spread over the two days, the writers will be on hand to talk through the creative process and get instant audience reaction. Margaretta D’Arcy and the inspirational Spiddal writer Fiona Clark Echlin will stage playwriting workshops and the festival will sign off with a performance of Echlin’s absurdist drama Death of the Grammarian.
“Given the great tradition of drama all around Clare and with Doonbeg, Amphitheatre and the Craic’d Spoon operating locally, we anticipate a very positive response. With the undoubted draw of John Arden, we’re anticipating a very imaginative and dramatically charged weekend,” said Rob. “There are seismic upheavals tearing through Irish society at the moment. The church and State are at loggerheads, unemployment and social unrest, David Norris and Martin McGuinness in a presidential race with disability activist Mary Davies… unprecedented times. Beyond these shores there is the Arab Spring and a global financial meltdown. What’s Clare got to say for itself? Where’s the Ralahine Commune of these times? At the very least we’re looking to unearth Clare’s answer to John B Keane,” Rob concluded.
The festival will be opened by Clare arts officer Siobhán Mulcahy at 7.30pm on Friday, October 14.