A season for defying gravity

On The Town  by Catherine Foley and Barry Roche

On The Town by Catherine Foleyand Barry Roche

It's one thing to talk the talk and another to walk the walk, but Cork Midsummer Festival director William Galinksy did both in style when he joined in the zany spirit of things and launched this year's festival programme while walking down a wall.

Inspired by Fidget Feet, who performed an aerial display for some 250 guests at the Bodega on Cornmarket Street, Galinsky put a safety harness around his waist and proceeded to welcome everyone while defying gravity.

"At the heart of the festival is the idea of the arts as being fun and a celebration of life, an excuse to make merry and celebrate what it means to be alive here and now in this beautiful city," said Galinsky, adding that the Cork event was "typically unique and idiosyncratic".

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Apart from Fidget Feet's show, Wired and Free, which will play in the R&H Hall building, Galinsky also gave honourable mention to the European premiere of Bath of Baghdad, a play about the responses of two Iraqi brothers to the American occupation of their country.

The Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Michael Ahern, and the chairman of the festival committee, Jim Corr, both remained on terra firma as they praised all those involved over the past decade in establishing the festival as a major event on the summer arts scene.

Among the many familiar faces at the launch were Cork Opera House executive director Gerry Barnes, Patrick Cotter of the Munster Literature Centre, and Mary Hegarty, who is starring in Opera 2005's production of The Merry Widow in the Everyman Palace Theatre.

Also enjoying himself and looking forward to the festival is Cork actor and singer Máirtín de Cógáin, who will be performing Thailand: What's Love Got to Do With It?, which, he quipped, is "unsuitable for children, prudes and pseudo-liberals".

Justin Donnellan, a member of the Cork Chamber Choir, which will be performing in the Spiegeltent, was at the launch with his sisters-in-law, Clare and Greta Daly, and revealed that he was particularly looking forward to seeing songstress Julie Feeney at the festival.

Valerie Hely and film-maker Sean Breathnach, of Egomotion Productions, who live in St Luke's, were both hugely impressed with the line-up for the two-week festival and were eagerly anticipating the series of shows in the Spiegeltent.

"I'm really looking forward to seeing Camille O'Sullivan," said Hely. "I saw her last year and it was one of the best performances I've ever seen, while I'm also looking forward to seeing Snatch Comedy - they used to perform here in the Bodega and are really good."

• Cork Midsummer Festival runs from June 19 to 30. Further details: www.corkfestival.com or 021-4274077. BR

A chance to mingle with the gowns

Eager art-lovers queued outside the door, waiting for the 177th RHA Annual Exhibition to open in Dublin this week. An estimated 1,750 guests came to view works by some of the newest and also some of the most established artists in the country, who compete for awards from a prize fund of €65,000. The show is also a chance to meet the artists themselves and RHA members mingled with the crowd in their maroon gowns, directing, chatting and answering questions.

James Hanley RHA, the academy's secretary, returned briefly to the city from his three-month residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais for the opening. Martin Gale RHA, who lives in Ballymore Eustace in Co Kildare, chatted to the academy's Prof John Turpin HRHA, who wore the honorary member's gown of blue.

Among those spotted in the crowd were composer Seoirse Bodley, actor Michael McElhatton, Renault Ireland chairman and writer Bill Cullen, and singer Mary Stokes with her husband, artist Brian Palm, whose work, including a shadow-box sculpture, Safe Harbour, was on view. Like many others, friends Frances Gillespie, Mary Conlan and artist Gay Brabazon, from the Curragh, Co Kildare, travelled specially to view some of the show's 527 works.

The exhibition is an all-Ireland event, with 336 artists from both sides of the Border taking part. Howth-based Barbara Warren RHA, whose painting, The Surgeon, won this year's De Veres Award of €1,500 for a work of distinction in any medium, was there with her husband, fellow artist William Carron ARHA. They chatted to another artist, George Potter RHA.

Maeve McCarthy RHA, was there with her husband, writer Kevin Kiely. The two are heading off to the US shortly, as Kiely has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to spend a year at Boise State University, Idaho.

"I'm pleased that there is a lot more sculpture than we normally have," said RHA president Stephen McKenna PRHA, adding that there were 2,700 entries to the open submission show this year. "We are in fact the largest space in central Dublin which shows contemporary art."

• The 177th Annual Exhibition runs at the RHA, Ely Place, Dublin 2, until Sat, June 30. CF

Masked man in Blanchardstown

A new play by Donal O'Kelly, based on real events that took place in Naul, Co Dublin in 1798, had its world premiere in Dublin's Draíocht Theatre this week. As the blue sky dimmed slowly over Blanchardstown, the audience was taken back in time to a place of pike drills, redcoats, circus aerialists and a mummers' troupe who came to tell us about Vive La, a masked man.

The play is based on a true story about a soldier who was sent to spy on the locals and uncover United Irishmen and who "was beaten to death", explained Seán Mac Philibín, local historian and director of the Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre in Naul.

"They chased him into the village and down a long way on to land now owned by Christy Nulty," he said, introducing Nulty, who came to see the play also. "The body has never been found."

Singer and musician Pete Cummins, formerly of the Fleadh Cowboys, was among those who gathered to applaud the new work. His new album, which is due out shortly, is called The Brilliant Architect. He was there with his wife, Laura Cummins, artist Evanna O'Boyle and actor Eamonn Hunt, who will be seen in Performance Corporation's Quicksandin the Mullet Peninsula, Co Mayo, in July.

With more news of upcoming productions, Liam Halligan, of Storytellers Theatre, said his company will present Mushrooms, a new play by Paul Meade, opening on Wednesday, June 6th, in Tallaght's Civic Theatre, and then going on a national tour.

Christopher Fitz-Simon, former artistic director of the Abbey, who was with his wife, TV producer Anne Makower, said he will have Eleven Houses, his memoir of growing up in rural Ireland during the Emergency, published by Penguin in September. Others at the opening included Bisi Adigun, of Arambe Productions, and Semper Fi's Karl Shiels and Paul Walker.

Afterwards, friends gathered to congratulate the cast and its director, Raymond Keane.

Vive La, by Donal O'Kelly, plays at Draíocht, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15, tonight. It will be on a nationwide tour throughout June. CF

No luck for the misprint collector

Senator David Norris, who this week launched Comma, a free magazine produced by Dublin Institute of Technology's journalism MA students, cautioned them about the dangers of tabloid newspapers.

"I am proud to be a member of the NUJ [National Union of Journalists]," he said, but newly arrived tabloid newspapers "are really trying to drive the standards down".

As a warm breeze blew along the terrace of a Dublin city-centre hotel, Norris praised the students for their magazine, mentioning its design and high production values in particular. Comma contains articles ranging from a report on a visit to Mountjoy Prison to an interview with the Ceann Comhairle, Rory O'Hanlon.

Norris warned that writing can be difficult because "you want to get it perfect. That's the killer". His advice was to "slap it down and revise it. Discipline is the deadline".

He told the students not to worry about misprints or typos, if there were any.

"Misprints are fantastic," he said, to the amusement of all. "I adore misprints. I used to love collecting those things."

Gillian Fitzpatrick, the magazine's editor, said producing Comma had been "a real team effort. It's very professional, very profound, very significant."

Edel McDonnell, the magazine's business manager, organised the advertising and was pleased with the response from the four national newspapers, which took out ads costing €1,000 a page.

"They've done some stories on familiar topics, but they've done them in new ways," said Harry Browne, the students' course co-ordinator. "Viktor Posudnevsky's article on bogus language students shows how much we need to develop immigrants as journalists who can really get inside this sort of difficult story."

Among the guests who came along to congratulate the team on the magazine was Ruth Deasy, of the European Commission Representation in Ireland; James Ward, who is doing a masters degree in medieval literature at TCD; and, also at Trinity, Conor Reid, who is doing a masters in popular literature.

• Comma is available free of charge in third-level colleges and institutions around Dublin. CF