Druid's production of The Playboy of the Western World now online

The celebrated Irish theatre company Druid Theatre and Wildfire Films have made the 2005 award-winning production of The Playboy of the Western World by JM Synge available online for free.

Synge, John Millington, 1896, Trinity College Dublin. www.zeno.org 

In 2005, Druid theatre presented the first ever staging of all John Millington Synge’s entire theatrical canon including The Playboy of the Western World. Directed by Garry Hynes, starring Aaron Monaghan, Marie Mullen and Catherine Walsh, this project was filmed live by Wildfire during production.

Synge’s great comic masterpiece tells the story of Christy Mahon, who stumbles into a public house in County Mayo claiming he has killed his father and so capturing the romantic attention of the daughter of the house, Pegeen Mike. Druid’s The Playboy of the Western World, by JM Synge, directed by Garry Hynes is now available via Vimeo for a limited time.  

Click Here to Access via Vimeo

Irish folk theatre - a paper by David 'Daithí' Kearney

Evolution of Irish folk theatre

 

People interested in theatre, or Celtic folk performing arts, might be interested in this paper by David 'Daithí' Kearney.  He posted this on his Academia.edu page:-

 

http://www.academia.edu/4181666/The_Evolution_of_Irish_Folk_Theatre …

 

David is on the faculty at Dundalk Institute of Technology, Section of Music.  (If you're a researcher, you might consider joining Academia.edu yourself, to provide online access to papers and talks you've written.)

All Celts Together

We've been looking at Ireland's The Gathering website.  If you have Irish ancestry or connections, you can check an interactive map to see where events are taking place.

Why not try it out for yourself?  (Then get out the bodran, fiddle, flute or harp, and head for the Emerald Isle during 2013 ...)

• http://www.thegatheringireland.com/
• Twitter @GatheringIRL

First The Year of Homecoming, and now The Gathering

We had our Scottish Year of Homecoming in 2009, and it was so successful that it's being repeated in 2014 (http://www.homecomingscotland.com/)

But before that, let's help our Celtic cousins celebrate in Ireland, where 2013 marks The Gathering.  Same concept. There's an interesting piece in the Irish Times by Felicity Hayes-McCoy today, reflecting on this event. 

If you enjoy Felicity's writing, I might add that she is the author of The House on an Irish Hillside, and writes about cultural Celtic traditions - I commend the book to anyone interested in this subject.

• The Gathering, Ireland, 2013 
• Homecoming Scotland, 2014