Jane Coyle

Contributor

Jane Coyle is a contributor to The Irish Times specialising in culture.

Acrobatics, empathy and handfuls of sticky tape at Belfast Children’s Festival

Amid an ‘extremely challenging arts funding climate’ in the North, the inclusive, international event aims to bring hope and joy to young audiences

Lyric Theatre at 75: ‘It was as improbable then as it is now. It took real vision’

The Belfast cultural institution began life in 1951, when the indomitable Mary O’Malley formed Lyric Players Theatre

Adrian Dunbar on staging TS Eliot’s The Waste Land: ‘It’s the first major poem of the jazz age’

An intriguing combination of the Irish actor, the American poet and the composer Nick Roth is the headline event of EFG London Jazz Festival 2025

Patrick O’Kane on Denouement: ‘It’s a play about renewal in the face of an apocalypse’

Belfast International Arts Festival 2025: John Morton’s play deals with a struggling marriage faced with the ultimate existential disaster

Follies review: Northern Ireland Opera’s Sondheim show delivers dazzling spectacle and musical virtuosity

At the Grand Opera House in Belfast, Lesley Garrett and Jacqueline Dankworth star in Cameron Menzies’ adept production

Children’s theatre company Cahoots: ‘We’ve been playing 3,500-seat venues – and filling them. It was a whole new experience’

Cahoots artistic director and cofounder Paul McEneaney on the Belfast company's 'game-changing' run in the United States

Waiting for Godot review: Olwyn FouĂ©rĂ©, breaking ground as the first woman to star in Beckett’s play, gives a sublime performance

The extraordinary acting of Fouéré and her fellow principals is all the more remarkable for being unpolished, undirected and unrehearsed

Calling extremely early birds: Beckett tickets go on sale 11 years before performances

In Krapp’s Last Tape, Richard Dormer and Samuel West will use recordings they made 30 years earlier, in line with Beckett’s vision

The Velveteen Rabbit, reimagined: ‘I had to think what would persuade me to go to a children’s play and enjoy it’

Jan Carson and Duke Special are bringing Margery Williams’s classic book to the stage for Belfast Children’s Festival

Suspect Device: The poignant story of Irish trans bus driver Wilma Creith

Theatre: Staged in a vintage Ulsterbus, RaphaĂ«l Amahl Khouri’s high-concept play chronicles Creith’s difficult transition as she found her true self

Blues guitarist Dom Martin: ‘There was a lot of judgment about the drink and the drugs, from people who didn’t know my dad’

The Antrim man’s playing has prompted comparisons with Rory Gallagher

Michael Patrick on Richard III: ‘It’s the first time on the island of Ireland a disabled actor has played this role’

‘We ask what happens when you have a life-threatening disease and only a few years to live,’ says the actor, who was diagnosed with MND last year

‘The church no longer has the same grip on moral values and lives but is still very much in our bodies and our mindsets’

Belfast International Arts Festival 2024: Patrick J O’Reilly on the power of Yerma, Lorca’s haunting rural tragedy, which he has relocated to Cooley for Tinderbox’s new production

Shift: ‘Exploring the issue of climate displacement has been a real eye-opener’

A spectacular performance piece by 70 young dancers and musicians from across Ireland is set to confront audiences with the existential threats hovering over our planet

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

The Ulysses European Odyssey stretches across 18 European cities that have produced artistic responses to the novel

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE...

Common Ground

How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands