Building an archive: the Project Arts Centre

Contributed by Barry Houlihan

What started as a one-off event refused to cease and end in the traditional sense. The creativity and energy that surrounded Project ’67 would grow and become what is now the Project Arts Centre. For almost half a century, the Project Arts Centre has stood as a loud, true and independent voice in the Irish theatre and visual arts scene. Today, its archive spanning 35 years has been deposited and catalogued at the National Library of Ireland.

The Project Arts Centre was initially created as a temporary and singular artistic event in the form of a three-week festival at the Gate Theatre, known as ‘Project 67’. The festival included plays, readings, jazz, teach-ins on censorship and theatre and art exhibitions. The presence of the Project archive creates a living memory bank and artistic resource possibly umatched in Irish artistic and theatrical history. It contains detailed manuscript records of the theatre, dance, visual art, film and music that made the Project synonymous with new and emerging Irish talent. The archive is a comprehensive account of the initiation and gestation of the Project, and traces its growth, its leaders, its greatest theatrical and artistic events, its many homes and also its conflicts.

A country-wide peek at Culture Night…

By Lisa-Marie Griffith

Tonight is Culture Night 2009 and this year even more cities and towns than ever will take part in the event. Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Galway, Letterkenny, Limerick, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Tralee, Waterford and Wexford so I have taken a quick look at whats going on around the country to make some recommendations on what to see.  Belfast is participating in Culture night for the first year and most of the events will take place in the Cathedral quarter which ‘will be totally transformed for the evening as public areas and streets are turned into performance spaces.

Curio(u)s: A Miscellany of Literary Tidbits

Contributed by Christina Morin

As I was reading through the recent posts here on Pue’s Occurrences, it struck me that a blog is, for all intents and purposes, a twenty-first century equivalent of that peculiarly eighteenth-century literary form: the miscellany. In very general terms, a miscellany is, according to the OED, ‘[a] mixture, medley, or assortment; (a collection of) miscellaneous objects or items’. In literary terms, it’s ‘[a] book, volume, or literary production containing miscellaneous pieces on various subjects’. Working from this definition, my little summaries of eighteenth-century novels and review of contemporary adaptations of eighteenth century plays could be pretty accurately described as a miscellany, too – a Reader’s Digest of eighteenth-century fictional and dramatic greats (abridged). 

While I have mixed feelings about this thought, primarily owing to caution ensuing from an as yet short but somehow all too long teaching career, in this context I prefer to think, along with Samuel Johnson, that ‘[i]t is by studying the little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible’. Here, of course, I am grandly interpreting the literary précis as one of these so-called ‘little things’, and I offer forth my (admittedly highly biased) musings on eighteenth-century literature hoping first and foremost to entertain. I’d be lying, however, if I didn’t admit to being completely elated when a reader responded to my first post to say that he had actually gone out and read Castle Rackrent. (Bless you, Patrick!)

Behan’s Wonderland

By Lisa-Marie Griffith

Last night I went to see Wonderland production’s  The Hostage currently playing at the Pearse Centre, 27 Pearse street. I thoroughly enjoyed their adaptation of Moliere’s The Miser last year at the Joyce Centre on North Great George’s Street. This was particularly enjoyable because it was enacted in eighteenth-century dress in the beautiful georgian rooms in the Joyce Centre and the production took full advantage of this; the backdrop really encouraged the audience to get into the play by sitting them right in the middle of the plot as it unfolded. While I know very little about Brendan Behan, I know he was a notorious drinker, I purchased tickets for The Hostage on the strength of Wonderland’s production of The Miser. I will think twice about walking into this trap again.

Pue’s Recommendations for August

Pue’s Recommendations is a (mostly biased) monthly list of things worth reading, watching, listening to and attending, put together by the editors of Pue’s Occurrences. If there’s anything you think we’ve missed out on, or anything you think isn’t worth the mention, feel free to leave us a comment.

Juliana Adelman August 22-30 is Heritage Week. There are hundreds (thousands?) of free events going on around the country, bound to be something worthwhile near you. Be a tourist in your home town. They’re teaming up with Archive Awareness again this year, but there don’t seem to be any Irish events listed yet. So archivists out there, sign up! Also Robert Macnamara died in July this year (he was born in 1916) so in commemoration I’m re-reading Tim O’Brien’s first Vietnam novel, The Things They Carried.

Lisa-Marie Griffith I have just discovered Dublin City Blog – a fantastic way of finding out what’s going on in the capital. On Wednesday the 16th of August, Meeting House Square in Temple Bar hosts the ‘Culture & the City Debate‘. I have never been but this looks like it could be really interesting and promises to be lively. Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals is playing at the Abbey 28 July – 19 September and while I haven’t seen this yet, the reviews I have seen, and the photographs of the set and costume, promise a fantastic production.

Kevin O’Sullivan This summer why not step off the beaten track around Ireland? In the East, head to the megalithic burial tombs at Loughcrew, Co. Meath or to Old Mellifont Abbey in Co. Louth. In the South, the heritage town of Lismore, Co. Waterford, is a gem, and the link to Walter Raleigh and Richard Boyle continues to Youghal in East Cork. Heading West, next time you’re in Kerry, visit Staigue stone fort, near Sneem. And finally, in the North, have a look at the two cathedrals and St. Patrick’s Trian in Armagh city. To read? Aalen, Whelan and Stout (eds.), Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (1997).