CORK 2005/Mary Leland: When Moray Bresnihan describes Cork's St Patrick's Day parade as a "caravan of dreams" he means to convey a caravanserai - an image of the Silk Road, of the fabulous Orient envisaged in a colour-coded city-wide community arts project at the core of a three-day carnival.
The scheme asked such diverse organisations as the GAA and Enable Ireland to find ways of expressing their own identity and now about 600 different groups are involved in a rainbow coalition of discovery. While the specially-built barrel-top wagon will be one of the chief symbols, the parade will be led by 10 guide-dogs and their trainers, with the Irish Guide Dogs' Association as Grand Marshal.
As art director for the event, Bresnihan works with over-all festival director Dara McClatchie, and their combined rear has been turned on the city's traditional low-loaders, although the army will bring its United Nations vehicles and colour parties. This transport element will include the armoured car in which Michael Collins met his death. Doubts about the festive nature of this ingredient are quelled by two army bands and rumours of a fly-past, and vanish altogether in the adrenaline-rush of inclusivity flagged by the national costumes of ethnic communities, while scouts and guides will join majorettes, drummers, stilt-walkers, samba bands, the Massachusetts Fire Department and at least two more local groups, St Mary's and the Barrack Street Band - but not, sadly, the Butter Exchange.
A band from the Grand Orange Order had been invited from Belfast under 2005's Lagan to the Lee scheme. "It was never going to be a case of bowler hats and rolled umbrellas," explains Bresnihan, who says that if we're going for inclusivity, we must remember that the Orange Order is part of our culture, too. And although the venomous reaction to this proposition in Cork is daunting, it seems more likely that the invitation was refused because of funding rivalry in Belfast. No such problems will keep the Good News Caravan or the Our Lady of Fatima Prayer Group away, so piety will parade along with pageantry.
Parade-watchers will be sustained by a day-long food and farmers' market on Oliver Plunkett Street and the fun and games continue through the weekend. Street theatre and circus acts, juggling, clowning, mime, puppet-shows, dance, barbershop singers, story-telling, site-specific art works, audio and visual installations, plus culinary inspiration from The Domestic Godless (recommending gannet rissoles and Yemeni goat's tongue salad), are all mustered.
There's a slight touch of the usual suspects with Tom McCarthy, Conal Creedon and Gerry Murphy in the English Market for readings on March 18th and 19th; IMRO is supporting a collaboration between Irish singers and musicians from Newfoundland at Triskel from the 16th to the 19th, while a 30-piece céilí band is the centrepiece at the Bodega on the 19th. A funfair, the GAA Scór competitions and, at the Everyman Palace, the NT Shell Connections festival of youth theatre are also among the dazzling array of events with which Cork is to celebrate St Patrick.
How to Hallelujah
A choral workshop on Handel's Messiah is to be given by Ian Sexton, director of Cantus Choralis at the Ó Riada Hall, Sunday's Well, next Monday. With the opening of the group's website the same evening, it's devised as a singers' introduction to and preparation for the full-scale performance presented by the Cork Symphony Orchestra with Cantus Choralis on Saturday, April 23rd.
Latvia on board
After the great success of Hungary's month in the Enlargement series at the Cork Vision Centre, Latvia's term (introduced by Ambassador Indulis Abelis) features an intriguing photographic exhibition by Andrejs Grants. More photographs, recordings and texts are being bussed around Cork by the Triskel Arts Centre in an outreach partnership with Bus Éireann for surprises on routes.
On a rock and a hard place
What unites artist Dorothy Cross, actress Fiona Shaw and the Abbey Theatre's new director, Fiach Mac Conghail, with a penitentiary in Cork Harbour and the city's social Ultima Thule of Montenotte? The two women (both reared in the salubrious Cork suburb) will put be putting together an entertainment early in August - so far under the working title Monte Notte, which will be directed by Mac Conghail.
The joint proposal will take place on Spike Island in Cork Harbour, a fortified rock serving up to very recently as a prison and earlier as a detention centre for felons (including John Mitchel) who were transported to Australia in the prison hulks waiting in the harbour.
They won't be using the prison itself as their stage, but Cross says they adore the location. Delighted with the support offered by Cork 2005 (now busy formalising land and transport permissions), Dorothy Cross is as enthusiastic about the history of the island as she is about its view of ocean, bays and hilltop forts.
"This is a licence for something to grow and it will be growing right up to the time we bring people over on the ferry from Cobh pier." As for funding, she has no idea of what might be required, because "this is not about money, it's about art."
