James Joyce Centre, Dublin - Bloomsday 2012
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)THE JAMES JOYCE CENTRE’S BLOOMSDAY FESTIVAL 10–16 JUNE 2012Sunday, 10 June, 10am-2pm
JAMES JOYCE BICYCLE TOUR
Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. Get on yer bike and explore Chapelizod and environs! Beginning with the Phoenix Park, which celebrates its 350th anniversary this year, we’ll examine Joyce’s use of one of Europe’s largest urban parks in his fiction, from Dubliners to Finnegans Wake.
Next we’ll move on to leafy Chapelizod village, home of the Earwickers and Mr. James Duffy, taking in sights such as Mullingar House, the Bridge Inn and the House by the Churchyard.
Returning to the city via the winding Liffey, we’ll finish at 15 Ushers Island, the setting of Joyce’s masterpiece ‘The Dead’, for some tea and cake.
Bikes and helmets will be supplied, ticket includes entrance to 15 Ushers Island and refreshments. Please note: this tour begins at Isaac’s Hostel and finishes at Ushers Island.
Isaac's Hostel, 2-5 Frenchmans Lane.
Tickets: €35. Booking strongly recommended: Contact the James Joyce Centre or click here for online booking.
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Sunday, 10 June, 7–9pm
The JOYCE BOOK: A Tribute to Joyce by Composers of the 1930s
In 1933, composer, musician and modernist publisher Herbert Hughes gathered together thirteen extraordinary contemporary composers to set to music thirteen poems (‘pomes penyeach’) by James Joyce. In aide of the author, Hughes published these musical settings as ‘The Joyce Book’ in a limited edition.
The compositions, each a fine example of the different styles of the age, are little known and have been performed only a handful of times. Join us at the RHA’s Ryan Gallery for this rare performance featuring compositions for piano and voice by Edward Moeran, Arnold Bax, Darius Milhaud, Herbert Hughes, John Ireland, Arthur Bliss, Philipp Jarnach, George Antheil, Sigardo Carducci, Arthur Honegger, and Bernard Van Dieren.
Musicologist Stuart Kinsella will offer brief introductions to the pieces, performed by Morgan Crowley, Deirdre Masterson, and Sandra Oman, with David Wray on piano. The performance will include the world premiere of an original composition by Morgan Crowley, specially commissioned for Bloomsday 2012. Seasonal apéritifs will be served.
Royal Hibernian Academy, 15 Ely Place.
Tickets: €30. Booking Required: Contact the James Joyce Centre or click here for online booking.
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Monday, 11 – Friday, 15 June, 1.05 – 1.55 pm
JOYCE SONG: Irish songs from the works of James Joyce
Lunchtime recitals by Fran O’Rourke with Ireland’s leading classical guitarist John Feeley accompanying on Joyce’s recently restored guitar in the great man’s Alma Mater. A free guided tour of Newman House will be available each day after the recital.
Newman House, 86 Saint Stephen's Green.
Tickets: €10. Booking Required: Contact The James Joyce Centre, Sweny’s Pharmacy +353 (0)86 050 7995, Dublin Writers Museum +353 (0)1 872 2077, Secret Book and Record Store +353 (0)1 6797272, UCD Campus Bookshop +353 (0)1 2691384.
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Monday, 11 – Thursday, 14 June, 8 pm
MOLLY BLOOM
Eilin O’Dea reprises her acclaimed performance of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy which closes out Joyce’s seminal novel Ulysses.
Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, Grafton St.
Tickets: €12/€15. Contact: Bewley’s Cafe Theatre +353 (0)87 6343437
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Tuesday, 12 June, 6.30pm
May I Trespass On Your Valuable Space? Exhibition Launch
Produced during her tenure at the James Joyce Foundation in Zurich, artist Norah Maki presents a collection of broadsides that integrate images and text from Joyce’s Ulysses and includes a video presentation by the artist. The exhibition will run from 11-30 June.
Darc Space, 26 North Great Georges St.
Free. Booking Required: Contact Darc Space +353 (0)1 8788535 or info@darcspace.ie
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Tuesday, 12 June at 7 pm
Ulysses’ CHORAL CONNECTIONS
The Ulysses Chamber Choir performs Brahms's Zigeunerlieder, exploring Leopold Bloom's Hungarian roots. Join us in one of Bloom’s old haunts, for this and other choral music especially resonant with Joyce's Ulysses and its wandering hero. The Ulysses Chamber Choir is a four part choir established in 1992, conducted by Fergal Caulfield and accompanied by Tristan Russcher. Visit www.Ulysseschoir.com for more information on their history.
The Freemason Lodge, Molesworth St.
Tickets €15. Booking strongly recommended: Contact the James Joyce Centre or click here for online booking.
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Tuesday, 12 – Saturday, 16 June, 8 pm
NOEL O'GRADY PRESENTS 'THE VOICE OF JOYCE; AN EXILE SINGS'
Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. Celebrate 25 years of The Dead in the very house, 15 Ushers Island, which inspired Joyce’s masterful short story, and where John Huston lovingly recreated it in film in 1987.
Noel O’Grady (www.noelogrady.com) paints the music, life, loves, works and times of tenor James Joyce, in song and story. He believes that singing should move from the throat to the diaphragm to the heart, and home to the soul - where it belongs. By kind permission of Mr Brendan Kilty SC. In association with the James Joyce Centre.
15 Ushers Island, Dublin 8.
Tickets: €15. Booking Required: Contact the James Joyce Centre.
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Wednesday, 13 June, 10am-4pm
JAMES JOYCE BUS TOUR
Jump aboard our bus and take a sojourn into Joyce country. Delving into south Dublin’s suburbs, we’ll explore Joyce’s early formative years alongside the locations that became so central to his fiction.
Stops will include Dublin’s old Jewish quarter known as ‘Little Jerusalem’, Rathgar and Rathmines, the Martello Tower, Mr. Deasy’s School at Dalkey, and Sandymount Strand.
The ticket covers the cost of admittance to the Irish Jewish Museum (where a talk will be delivered on the history of the Irish Jewish community) and the Martello Tower; the tour will stop for lunch in the picturesque village of Glasthule.
Note: this tour will begin and finish at the James Joyce Centre.
James Joyce Centre, 35 N. Great George’s St.
Tickets €30. Booking strongly recommended: Contact the James Joyce Centre or click here for online booking.
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Wednesday, 13 June, 6.30pm
Finn Again: Translating Joyce into Finnish from 1946-2012
Professors Janna Kantola and Hannu Riikonen of the University of Helsinki, Finland will discuss the challenges and joys of translating Joyce into one of the world’s most unique languages. A must for those interested in translation! Followed by a wine reception generously sponsored by the Embassy of Finland.
James Joyce Centre, 35 N. Great George’s St.
Free. Booking Required: Contact the James Joyce Centre.
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Thursday, 14 June, 3pm
Bloomsday Tea at The Westin with Gerry Dukes.
Banbury cakes and saffron buns – enjoy high tea at the Weston as Dubliner and Joycean Gerry Dukes explores the history of the tea-time treats and traditional fare in Ulysses.
The Atrium at The Westin Dublin, Westmoreland St.
Tickets: €24. Booking essential. Contact The Westin +353 (0)1 6451402.
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Thursday, 14 June, 6.30pm
JOYCEWAYS; THE JAMES JOYCE IPHONE APP LAUNCH
Professor Joseph Nugent and his team at Boston College, in association with the James Joyce Centre, launch the first comprehensive James Joyce iPhone app. For Joyceans, JoyceWays is a beautiful reminder of the passion, creativity and wit you discovered the first time you read James Joyce.
For the novice it is an exciting and adventurous introduction into one of the greatest novels ever written, or at the very least, a break from Angry Birds. It is time to bring Ulysses out of the shadows and into your hands!
James Joyce Centre, 35 N. Great George’s St.
Free. Booking Required: Contact the James Joyce Centre.
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Thursday, 14 June, 8pm
Ulysses - Fate & Destiny
Renowned French artist and author Jean Paul Leon discusses his acclaimed work ‘Ulysses – Fate & Destiny’ at the Irish Jewish Museum. This collection, conceived and created in Dublin, recreates the odyssey undertaken by Bloom in 21st Century Dublin.
Irish Jewish Museum, 3 Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin 8.
Booking strongly recommended. Contact: the Irish Jewish Museum: +353 (0)1 453 1797/087 9776367
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Friday, 15 – Monday, 18 June
ROB BERRY'S ULYSSES “SEEN” AT THE BAILEY
Rob Berry, artist and creator of Ulysses “Seen”, a graphic novel adaptation of Ulysses, displays his work in the intimate surrounds of The Bailey Bar. And make sure to drop in to The Bailey on Bloomsday itself as they host readings and more!
The Bailey Bar and Cafe, 1-4 Duke St.
Free. Contact: The Bailey Pub +353 (0)1 6704939
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Friday, 15 June, 8pm
IS NOW ALL SEENHEARD THEN FORGOTTEN?
The award-winning composer and performer Seán Mac Erlaine presents a new setting of Finnegans Wake for vocals, woodwinds, electronics and live film. Joyce’s final masterpiece provides the jumping off point for this adventurous mix of improvised music and film.
Performed by vocalist Dorothy Murphy, Barcelonian film maker Héctor Castells, and clarinettist Seán Mac Erlaine, this piece is an abstract homage to one of the English language’s great works of abstraction.
Using improvisation, repetition, collage and a personalised, devised language, Is now all seenheard then forgotten? reflects Finnegans Wake without any overt attempt to translate the text. These three innovative artists work with the poetic elements of the book, creating a sound-and-image atmosphere, which is both beautiful and otherworldly.
Smock Alley, Banquet Hall, Essex St West, Temple Bar.
Tickets: €25. Booking Required: Contact the James Joyce Centre or click here for online booking.
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Saturday, 16 June, 9am & 11am
Bloomsday Breakfast at The Gresham
Join us for a traditional full-Irish Bloomsday Breakfast in The Gresham Ballroom, complete with all the Ulyssean fare you’ve come to expect! And remember: your ticket covers entry to the James Joyce Centre so please drop over to us afterwards – there will be lots going on!
The Gresham Ballroom, O’Connell St.
Tickets: €25. Booking Required: Contact the James Joyce Centre or click here for online booking.
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Saturday, 16 June, 10am–6pm
Bloomsday at The James Joyce Centre
Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Come up to the Joyce Centre, rap at the door of No. 7 Eccles Street and explore Joyce’s world on exhibition. Or grab some Bloomsday grub, eavesdrop on Molly’s musings, have your picture taken with a Joycealike or head off on one of our special tours of Joyce’s Dublin!
And while you’re at it, throw on a bowler and take part in our Ulysses costume contest.
Acclaimed Dublin photographer David Monahan will be on hand to take personalised Bloomsday portraits: for a fiver, have your portrait taken and delivered via email; winners of the contest will receive a large-format photographic print documenting their time-travel to 1904 Dublin!
Entry: €5 adults/€4 concession.
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Saturday, 16 June, 12-3pm
O Rocks!
Keep your eyes peeled for street-side theatrics this Bloomsday afternoon. From the Joyce Centre to St Stephen’s Green you’re likely to catch Dedalus philosophising, Bloom waxing poetic, Gerty daydreaming, and Sirens luring loiterers. The Citizen will be on his soapbox, the Evangelist will save your soul, and Molly may try mollifying you!
Come camera- and mobile-ready: you can post your experience to our Bloomsday blog.
Free. No bookings.
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Saturday, 16 June, 1pm
JOYCE AND ART: A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Led by Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, author of Joyce in Art, some of the artists displaying their work during Bloomsday discuss the relevance of Joyce to the visual arts. Including Peter Pearson, Motoko Fujita, Rob Berry and Professor Marilyn Reizbaum.
Darc Space, 26 North Great George’s St.
Free. Booking Required: Contact Darc Space +353 (0)1 8788535 or info@darcspace.ie
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Saturday, 16 June, 3-6pm
Readings and Songs in The Green
Join us at The Bandstand in St Stephen's Green as Master of Ceremonies Peter Sheridan hosts a gala afternoon of readings and songs from Ulysses. Joyceans of all ages and backgrounds are most welcome! Come and read your favourite few words from the book of the day. We’ll be treated to music of the era and songs from the big blue book of Eccles.
The Bandstand, St Stephen's Green.
Free and open to the public, limited seating available, no bookings.
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Saturday, 16 June, 7pm-late
SWENY'S DOES BLOOMSNIGHT
After a hard day’s dander, join the rambunctious Sweny’s gang for an evening of recitations, song and general merriment at the Mont Clare Hotel.
The Mont Clare Hotel, 1-4 Merrion Street Lower.
Tickets: €5. Booking Required. Contact: Sweny’s Pharmacy swenyspharmacy@gmail.com
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WALKING TOURS
12 – 16 June starting at the James Joyce Centre
Join us for one (or all!) of 4 tours of Joyce’s Dublin. Be sure to book ahead: the Bloomsday Walk is €8 per person; all others are €10 per person (€8 concessions).
Call 01 8788 547 or book online.
In the Footsteps of Leopold Bloom – Tuesday 12/2pm; Wednesday 13/2pm; Thursday 14/11am; Friday 15/11am
This tour explores the background to Joyce’s Ulysses and to Bloom’s thoughts as he crosses the city in search of something to eat in the ‘Lestrygonians’ episode.
A humorous contrast of well-fed and under-fed citizens is mixed with a commentary on city buildings, and the presence of police constables reminds us of the realities of Dublin as a colonial city. In these footsteps, food becomes the central issue of social, cultural and political life in Dublin in 1904.
The tour starts from the James Joyce Centre and finishes at the National Museum.
Joyce Circular – Tuesday 12/11am; Wednesday 13/11am; Friday 15/2pm
On our andante dander around the Hibernian metropolis, we take in North Earl Street and the ‘Prick with the Stick’; the house where Oliver ‘Buck Mulligan’ Gogarty was born; the setting of the Dubliners story ‘The Boarding House’; the house in which Sean O’Casey was born; the site of 7 Eccles Street, home of Leopold & Molly Bloom; and Belvedere College, which Joyce attended in the 1890s.
The tour starts from and returns to the James Joyce Centre.
Dubliners – Thursday 14/2pm
Join our guide on a ramble through the city of Joyce’s first and most accessible work, Dubliners. Completed in 1907, Dubliners skilfully treats both turn-of-the-century Dublin and Joyce’s surroundings in continental Europe where the stories were written.
The tour examines Joyce’s life in Dublin and the Dublin he created in his stories, as well as looking at how the city has commemorated its famous son. Joyce’s Dublin was a city of politics and intrigue, of religious devotion and disaffection, as well as a city in which the pressures and ties of family and society were never far off.
The tour starts from the James Joyce Centre and finishes near Trinity College.
Bloomsday Walk – Friday 15/12pm/3pm; Saturday 16/10am - 5pm, departing every 30 mins.
This special Bloomsday walk features some of the most important Northside locations from Joyce's Ulysses. Our hour-long wander will take in Belvedere College, Eccles Street, Leopold and Molly Bloom’s residence, and variety of key locations along Parnell Square and O'Connell Street.
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Special Events taking place Before, During and/or After Bloomsday…
Rough Magic Theatre Company presents
TRAVESTIES by Tom Stoppard
Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
7 - 23 June, 8pm (Saturday Matinees 3pm)
Tickets from €18.
Zurich 1917: exiles take refuge from the Great War in neutral Switzerland. James Joyce is writing Ulysses and Lenin in planning a revolution. Stoppard creates a brilliant fantasia around the real-life incident of James Joyce deciding to stage Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
Rough Magic will also present “Joyce in June: Dún Laoghaire Bloomsweek” – a celebration of works of and inspired by James Joyce through readings, performances and talks.
From Monday 11 – Friday 15 June, daily at 1:15 and 6:15, Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire. Tickets: €5.
Box office: +353 (0)1 231 2929
www.roughmagic.ie
www.paviliontheatre.ie
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Joyce in Temple Bar, 11 - 23 June 2012
To celebrate the expiration of copyright on Joyce’s major works, the New Theatre in Temple Bar – with support from the Arts Council, Temple Bar Cultural Trust, Dublin City Council, UNESCO and entertainment.ie – have organised a host of exciting events including revivals of stage, film and musical Joycean adaptations. For further information and to make bookings please visit www.thenewtheatre.com or +353 (0)1 670 3361.
Events include:
Joyced! Written by Donal O’Kelly and performed by Katie O’Kelly, Joyced! is a tour de force through Joycean Dublin and the real life characters that shaped Joyce’s life and informed Ulysses. “Genius inspired by genius”, RTE Guide
Ulysses The 1967 big screen adaptation, starring Milo O’Shea, will be screened outdoors in Meeting House Square in a late night event on Bloomsday.
The Tower Written by Joe Joyce and starring Tom Hickey and Bosco Hogan, this play explores the friendship and bitter falling out between James Joyce and Oliver St. John Gogarty. “An offering of quite extraordinary quality...”, The Sunday Independent
Songs of Joyce Performed by Sinead Murphy & Darina Gallagher, this show features a selection of the music hall standards, folk songs, sea shanties and operatic numbers that are an essential element of Joyce’s work.
Raising ‘The Dead’ Join Alice Coughlan’s Wonderland Avenue Productions’ team for 60-minute audio tour of No 15 Usher’s Island – the setting for Joyce’s short story ‘The Dead’.
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Echoes of Joyce’s Dublin: Paintings by Peter Pearson
4th April – 24 June 2012
Renowned artist, historian and conservationist Peter Pearson’s paintings depict the Hibernian Metrolpolis in all its complexity. This is a Dublin as Joyce might have had it – with an “odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal” hanging over it. Not to be missed!
James Joyce Centre, 35 N. Great George’s St.
Free, can be viewed Mon – Fri 10-5, Sun 12-5.
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Wonderland Productions’ Dubliners
In 1914 the epiphany that awoke the world’s imagination to the battered yet tumultuous city of Dublin, her streets, and her people, was a modest book of short stories that would become a defining Irish classic, James Joyce’s Dubliners. Wonderland Productions’ Dubliners is a self-guided audio-walking tour that invites you to tour the streets and historic buildings in which Joyce set his classic stories, whilst you listen to his stories in situ, as they are told and performed for you on headphones by a large ensemble cast led by the celebrated Joycean actor Barry McGovern.
Both half day (approx. 4-5 hours, €12/10) and full day (approx. 9-10 hours, €19-17) audio-walks can be booked in person at the James Joyce Centre from 10am Mon – Fri, 12pm Sunday. The House of the Dead (15 Ushers Island) is open from 12.00-16.00 on weekend days and Wednesdays, unless otherwise arranged in advance with Wonderland. It will also be open daily from 12-19.00 over the Bloomsday Festival Week 10-17 June.
James Joyce Centre, 35 N. Great George’s St.
Tickets: €12-19. Book in person at the James Joyce Centre.
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The Shadow of James Joyce by Motoko Fujita
24 May – 17 June 2012
Marking its 350th Anniversary this year, the Phoenix Park presents “The Shadow of James Joyce”, Motoko Fujita’s haunting collection of photographs of the Phoenix Park and Chapelizod Village.
The Phoenix Park Visitor Centre.
Free, can be viewed Mon – Sun 10-6. Contact: + 353 (0)1 677 0095
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