Culture  
/
 
Stage  
 
On the menu: the Company’s production of As You Are Now So Once Were We Germans queue up for the Full Irish

In Germany, they love Irish storytelling in song and word. Now, at last, they are paying attention to our plays

Fearghus Ó Conchúir performing Cure The naked truth about dance
  • Michael Seaver
  • May 14, 2013, 02:00

In Greek mythology, the gods were depicted nude to show their higher status, but these days little inflames indignation like the sight of the naked human body. For some artists, and dancers in particular, it’s an essential, everyday part of their work

A detail of a caricature drawing of the composer Igor Stravinsky playing the music for The Rite of Spring by Jean Cocteau Dublin Dance Festival’s opening night shows the rite way to do it
  • Michael Seaver
  • May 14, 2013, 02:00

Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography became a victim of the success of the music in Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. A century later, choreographers are still trying to get to grips with the dance

Petrushka, choreographed by Tero Saarinen Dancing from Down Under to Dublin
  • Michael Seaver
  • May 10, 2013, 02:00

The Dublin Dance Festival returns next week with a distinctly Australian flavour

Graham Reid: “an Ulsterman would walk 10 miles to be provoked and there’s still a lot of that kind of thing going on here now – as Billy is about to find out.” Whatever became of Kenneth Branagh’s Billy?
  • Jane Coyle
  • May 3, 2013, 07:00

Graham Reid’s Billy plays brought Belfast lives on to British screens in the 1980s. Now he is staging a sequel

Rob Crouch as Oliver Reed in Wild Thing. Oliver Reed: separating the man from the wild man myth

When Rob Crouch and Mike Davis began developing a play about Oliver Reed, they had no idea who would end up pitching in to help the show: Reed’s son Mark

Digging around in the past for a glimpse of the future
  • Patrick Lonergan
  • April 22, 2013, 07:00

Declan Hughes’s ‘Digging for Fire’ is more than 20 years old, but its current revival shows it was – and remains – ahead of its time for Irish drama

Closer to the ground: Jean Butler at home in New York; with Michael Flatley in Riverdance; and in her contemporary dance, Hurry. Photographs: Marcus Yam/The New York Times; Ian Douglas Jean Butler: ‘When I look back at Riverdance, it is at a whole different person’

Jean Butler is content that she can’t move the way she did when she became synonymous with Irish culture, but dance remains the bedrock of her life

Bolshoi ballet dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko performing in Ivan the Terrible at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow last November. He has confessed to organising an attack on Sergei Filin, artistic director at the Bolshoi. Photograph: Anton Tarasov/Reuters The Bolshoi and the fractured state of Russian ballet
  • Michael Seaver
  • April 9, 2013, 06:00

An acid attack at the world’s most famous ballet company has shone a spotlight on an institution in crisis

‘I’m just at a stage in my life when I want to try new things’
  • Michael Seaver
  • April 4, 2013, 06:00

Choreographer Ingrid Nachstern is stepping out of the classroom and on to the stage

A Tiny Play for Ireland: ‘Somewhere’ by Mark Cantan
  • March 29, 2013, 06:00

Last year ‘The Irish Times’ received 1,700 responses to its call for submissions to Fishamble’s Tiny Plays for Ireland. As the second production of the plays comes to a close, we print the opening play by Mark Cantan

Witness: Carmen Proetta. Photograph: Rex Features Witness: Carmen Proetta. Photograph: Rex Features Death on the Rock: 25 years later

The details of the SAS’s killing of three IRA members in Gibraltar in 1988 are still deeply contested, as a new play reminds us

Unfazed: John Hurt says he’s not concerned by the mention of the great Krapps who have preceded him, such as Patrick Magee, Harold Pinter and Michael Gambon. Photograph: Cyril Byrne John Hurt: ‘I don’t really look like Beckett at all. God. I should be so lucky’

The veteran actor returns to Dublin to perform ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’, in a role he has been developing for more than a decade

The idea for Pageant (above) came about when David Bolger and Muirne Bloomer were working on the opening ceremony for the Special Olympics in 2003 CoisCéim captures life's rich 'Pageant '

Company’s latest offering transforms everyday struggles and mutual supports into spectacle

Maeve Binchy. photographs: matt kavanagh, alan betson Two Tiny Plays for Ireland: 'Soul Mates' and 'Slanesman'
  • March 8, 2013, 00:00

To mark the beginning of Tiny Plays for Ireland, here are two plays from the series, by Maeve Binchy and Colum McCann

Director Selina Cartmell Director with real bite and a bracing approach to the classics

Selina Cartmell wanted the audience to feel ‘King Lear’ viscerally rather than as an intellectual exercise

The Lion King in action on stage Behind the scenes with the kings of the musical jungle

The modern musical has always looked to Hollywood for inspiration

Team player: Marie Mullen. photograph: bryan o'brien ‘It’s not about the actor. It’s always about the work’

Marie Mullen, a Druid founder and one of our greatest actors, will be presented with a special tribute award at this weekend’…

Irish Times Culture