Pue’s recommendations for March

Juliana Adelman Having not been at the theatre in an embarrassingly long time, I took my parents to see the excellent Druid production of The Cripple of Innishmaan while they were visiting.  Unfortunately it’s now gone from Ireland until June, when it will be playing the Galway Town Hall Theatre and then a special performance on Inis Meain. I wish I had a babysitter this week because I really want to see Jekyll and Hyde the musical at the Grand Canal Theatre.  The theatre itself is amazing and who can resist seeing someone sing Robert Louis Stevenson?  In the realm of fiction and history, you could hardly do better than to mark the JFK anniversary by reading Don DeLillo’s Libra, a fictional account of the assassination and aftermath.  Finally, a colleague recently introduced me to website Gapminder and I am in love.  The site has amalgamated thousands of statistics, many starting in the 19th C and presents them in an amazingly creative way.  My favourite is the age at marriage chart, be sure to click ‘play’.

Lisa Marie Griffith I came across the Anti-Room blog recently and have added it to my list of most read blogs. It’s a miscellany of posts on various topics from films to fruit but the editors and contributors are all women so gender issues really bind the posts most closely. I came across a really intriguing post by Aoife Barry on a photographer called Vivian Maier. Her amazing photographs documenting Chicago’s streets, c. 1950- c.1990s, were discovered by accident when purchased as film roles at an auction. John Maloof, the purcahser, has developed the roles, posted them and is attempting to uncover who she was. You can catch the full story and her wonderful pictures at Vivian Maier–her discovered work. Speaking of 1950s America… If I haven’t been to see Howl, the film that plots the narrative of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, by the time this post has been published I will be seeing it soon- 4 stars in the Ticket and it is screening exclusively at the IFI .

Christina Morin This month I’ll be heading down to Cork for Paddy’s Day weekend, unfortunately just missing the 22nd Cork French Film Festival, which runs from 6th-13th March. While living in Cork, I really enjoyed this festival and its fantastic mix of Francophone documentaries, shorts, feature-length films, and film-related events. You don’t need to speak French to enjoy the festival, so definitely have a look in if you find yourself in Cork this week. Another great event this month is the Linen Hall Library’s C.S. Lewis exhibition, which runs from 2-25 March 2011. To coincide with the exhibition, there are several free lectures planned, exploring, among other things, the influence of Lewis’ Belfast birthplace in his writings, and the genesis of his famous Chronicles of Narnia (1950-6). Both exhibitions and lectures are free and a great way to spend an hour learning about one of Belfast’s own!

Kevin O’Sullivan It’s been an extremely busy month (when isn’t it, says you), so I’ve been mainly confined to some brilliant reading on my iPod, stored using the invaluable Instapaper app (I can’t recommend this highly enough for all your offline reading needs). First up is Ariel Bleicher’s fascinating insight into the efforts of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris to ‘archive’ the internet, from Spectrum magazine. Sample frightening quote: ‘I’m convinced the Web as we know it will be gone in a few years’ time. What we’re doing in this library is trying to capture a trace of it.’ Blogs, of course, will form a big part of reading the past, so in that vein, and for the Irish cultural historians among you, my fab find for this month’s is The Fanning Sessions Archive – an attempt to gather together sound recordings from more than two decades of Dave Fanning show broadcasts on 2FM. On a more pressing note, after the publication of the new coalition’s programme for government, it’s worth having a look at Finnish advisor Pasi Sahlberg’s op-ed in last week’s Irish Times – a ‘how to’ in emerging from recession with a much improved education system. Finally, if you want to keep up-to-date with developments in that sector in Ireland and beyond, you could do much worse than the excellent aggregator Ninth Level Ireland – a goldmine of links and articles on education on the web.