Kilkenny Arts Festival

“Virginia Woolf wanted to be buried to it” Marina Carr, prolific and award-winning Irish playwright My favourite work is the Cavatina from String Quar(...)

When Catherine Martin was appointed Minister for Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht seven weeks ago, scepticism was expressed in s(...)

Amelia Stein’s The Bloods, at the new Butler Gallery in Kilkenny, shows the men and women of the Defence Forces in all their guises Unless you’r(...)

Like everyone, most of my culture over the past few months has been online. And a great deal of what I have seen, while occasionally wonderful, has se(...)

There should have been applause. There should have been cheers. There should have been hugs and kisses and jokes and a few convivial jars after. Inste(...)

If you agree with Plato that a good start is half the battle, you’d be worried for Galway 2020. Quoted in different ways since 400BC, the Greek philos(...)

It was a dramatic year for theatre, bookended by two moments of crisis. The first played out in the full glare of public attention. The other, which i(...)

When concertina player Niall Vallely premiered his provocative new Sounds Like Freedom project at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in August, the night was (...)

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING The Quad at St Kiernan’s College, Kilkenny ★★★★☆ A lot goes on in Much Ado about Nothing. In the mingled memories of Shakespe(...)

Current favourite book I’m reading The Essentials of Theory U by this guy from MIT, Otto Scharmer. It’s about ways of communicating and solving probl(...)