Having interviewed Tom Collins recently about An Bronntanas and previously about Kings, I know what a hardworking, conscientious film director he is so I am delighted that the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland (SDGI) has presented the Foras na Gaeilge Award to the Derry wan and all-round good egg in recognition of his Outstanding Contribution in the Irish language in Film and TV.
The award was presented at Filmbase in Dublin today (24 June) with SDGI Director Birch Hamilton, saying Tom Collins had “now become one of the finest directing talents in Ireland.”
Love/Hate writer Stuart Carolan presented the award to Tom.
Hailed for his Irish language films Kings (2007) and the award winning Hush-a-Bye-Baby (1992), most recently Collins has had enormous success with the award-winning Irish noir crime drama An Bronntanas, which was adapted for a five part thriller series for TG4 that has now been picked up by French distributor Lagardère Entertainment.
Directed by Collins and starring Dara Devaney (Na Cloigne), Owen McDonnell (Single Handed) and John Finn (Cold Case), An Bronntanas tells the story of the crew of a local independent lifeboat in Connemara who find over a million euro worth of drugs on an abandoned fishing boat.
Speaking about the award, Tom said, “It is great to be honoured by The Screen Directors Guild of Ireland. Thanks to Stuart Carolan for presenting the award as, without doubt he, through Love/Hate, has changed the face of Irish TV drama.”
Despite his mould-beaking work in Irish, Tom has had his struggles with the language.
“While my own Irish skills are not as good as they should be, I enjoyed directing Aimhairghin, Kings, and An Bronntanas – although the real work has been accomplished by those who tried to teach me Irish over the years, from irate Christian Brothers to patient commissioning editors, fellow film-makers and some confused actors.
“For me it’s all about the work, which is about creating a reflection of a modern Irish cultural identity, that can travel beyond borders, history and these shores,” he said.
This is the English version of the last Irish language blog, Cuairt ar Leuven.
St Anthony’s College, Leuven and home of the Leuven Insitiute for Ireland in Europe
Monday night (23 March 2015) saw a great programme go out on BBC2 NI in which I learned an awful lot about the important role played by a Belgian town in the history of the Irish language.
It was the second programme in the series, An ColáisteÉireannach/The Irish College and this episode dealt with the college in Leuven or Louvain or Lobháin, 25 kilometres outside Brussels. Presented by Dr Art Hughes, the programme described:
how the College was founded in 1607 to facilitate the Gaels and not for the Old English who had allegedly been preferentially treated up to then (that’s a story in itself;
how Leuven was a centre for the revival of Irish in the 16th an 17th centuries;
How Leuven was part in the Counter-Reformation in Europe;
that Leuven was “the first Irish language research institute”;
that it was there that the Grand Project was begun to define and promote Irish identity;
that the Irish were to the forefront in using the latest technology available at that time;
Giolla Brighde Ó hEodhasa wrote the first Cathechism in Irish in 1611;
that the old Irish font many of us know was based on the handwriting of Giolla Brighde Ó hEodhasa who did great work at Leuven;
that Aodh Mac Aingil, from Saul in County Down, wrote an influential book, Sacraimint na hAithridhe
that the famous history book Annála Ríoghachta Éireann or the Annals of the Four Masters was started in Leuven, where its main author, Michael Ó Cléirigh, was studying.
And there is much more in this fascinating programme.
The reason why I have written this blog (and the Irish version) is to let you know that there are tours available to Leuven/Louvain if you are interested in the Irish language, Irish history, religion, travel, languages or any number of subjects.
If you involved in language promotion, you might be interested in learning about the success of the small German-speaking population of Belgium.
We all know of the linguistic divide between Walloons and Flemings in Belgium but German speakers have won many rights for their language too. Are the lessons for the Irish?
400 years after the foundation of the Irish College in Leuven, the Irish language is still relevant in the heart of Europe – but is the presence of the language that Ó Maol Chonaire and Mac Aingil and Ó Cléirigh fostered in Leuven under threat from decisions made by a government in Dublin?
But on top of all these worthy matters, Leuven is a beautiful town, only 15 miles east of Brussels – which of course is well worth a visit – and has a wealth of wonderful buildings, museums and galleries, fine restaurants and it isn’t without reason that Belgium is famous for its beers. Stella Artois is one of Leuven’s more popular products!
I’ve been asked by the Leuven Insititute for Ireland in Europe to find out if people might be interested in visiting and staying at the Irish College in Leuven. Perhaps you might want to bring a group or organization this summer when costs are lowest.
If you are interested, then please contact me at robert@robertmcmillen.ie or robert@comhramedia.com
You can watch An Coláiste Éireannach on Leuven on the BBC iPLayer for the next five days (UK only).
Tá clár ag dul amach ar BBC2 anocht (Dé Luain, 23 Márta) ar a 10in agus sílim gur fiú go mór amharc air.
Is é an dara clár sa tsraith An Coláiste Éireannach agus san eagrán seo, cuireann an Dr Art Hughes síos ar an Choláiste i Leuven nó Louvain nó Lobháin sa Bheilg.
Is clár thar a bheith suimiúil é a chuireann síos ar:
mar a bunaíodh an Coláiste in 1607 do na Gaeil amháin (agus ní do na SeanSasanaigh nó The Old English mar a tugadh orthu);
mar a bhí Leuven mar lárionad athbheochan na Gaeilge sa 16ú agus 17ú céad;
mar a bhí Leuven mar chuid den Fhrith-Reifeirméisean agus cogadh cultúrtha na linne sin;
gurbh é Leuven “an chead institiúid taighde Ghaeilge” riamh;
gur thionscain siad “An Tionscadal Mór” le cur síos ar fhéiniúlacht Éireannach agus an féiniúlacht sin a chur chun cinn;
bhí na Gaeil chun cinn i gcúrsaí teicneolaíochta na linne;
Scríobh Giolla Brighde Ó hEodhasa an chead saothar Gaeilge
An SeanCholáiste in Leuven
Caitliceach, (1611);
An cló Gaelach a bhfuil aithne againn air inniu, bunaíodh é ar pheannaireacht Giolla Brighde Ó hEodhasa.
D’fhoilsigh Aodh Mac AIngil as Contae an Dúin ó dhúchas saothar creidimh chomh maith
An leabhar clúiteach staire, Annála Ríoghachta Éireann nó Annála na gCeithre Máistrí, tosaíodh i Leuven é, áit a raibh Michael Ó Cléirigh ag staidéar.
Stair na hÉireann scríofa ag Gael – rud is annamh!
Tá cuid mhór rudaí suimiúla eile sa chlár seo.
An fáth go bhfuil mé á scríobh seo ná gur féidir turasanna treoraithe a fhail go Leuven má tá suim agat sa stair, sa Ghaeilge, sa chreideamh, sa taisteal, sa léinn, i dteangacha agus ar an iliomad cúiseanna eile.
Má tá baint agat le cúrsaí teanga, bheadh sé suimiúil foghlaim faoin phobal beag Gearmáinise sa Bheilg.
Tá a fhios againn go bhfuil an tír scoilte idir lucht labhartha na Fraincise agus lucht labhartha na hOllainnise ach tá ag éirí go breá le lucht labhartha na Gearmáinise cearta a bhaint amach do theanga s’acu. Ceachtanna do na Gaeil?
400 bliain i ndiaidh bhunú an Choláiste Éireannaí , tá na Gaeil fós i lár shaol na hEorpa – ach an bhfuil an Ghaeilge a chaomhnaigh na fir chróga, chliste sin sa chianaimsir faoi bhagairt ag cinní Rialtas na hÉireann?
Anuas air na gnéithe tromchúiseacha seo, is cathair álainn í Leuven. Níl sé ach 15 míle thoir-thuaidh den Bhruiséil – áit ar féidir cuairt a thabhairt uirthi – agus tá sé lán foirgneamh galánta, iarsmalanna agus dánlanna, bialanna breátha agus ní gan fáth go bhfuil clú agus cáil ar an Bheilg as feabhas a bheorach. Déantar Stella Artois in Leuven!
Má tá suim agat nó ag do ghrúpa/eagraíocht cuairt a thabhairt ar Choláiste na nGael i Leuven, mar ghrúpa nó mar dhaoine aonair, nó má tá tuilleadh eolais de dhíth ort, déan teagmháil liom ag robert@robertmcmillen.ie nó robert@comhramedia.com
Louise Parker, Melissa Dean, Narthanael Campbell and Robert Bertrand in Arrivals2
Have you ever spent any time in a house that was lived in by a diverse group of immigrants? Have you ever wondered what life is like for the Roma, the Africans, the eastern European who are living in what used to be one of the most homogeneous places in Europe?
I saw Arrivals last year and it was an eye-opener as to the lives of Belfast’s Chinese and Indian communities, No wonder then that I headed off to the Crescent Arts Centre for Arrivals2, another set of five short plays by hugely respected playwrights, focusing on the inner and outward lives of different ethnic minorities.
They say the only good sequel was Godfather II but Arrivals2 was even better than its predecessor.
Daragh Carville’s opener, The Presence, set the tone with a group of immigrants being haunted by an unknown presence in their home, telling them to get out. Scary and chilling but not without humour, it told of the fear that some newcomers feel even in their own homes.
Jim Meredith’s Secrets was about a black brother and sister, the offspring of a British soldier. The daughter was conceived in Belfast while the brother was born in England to a different mother. The relationship between the siblings was as complex as you could imagine.
Nathanael Campbell and Robert Bertrand in Arrivals2
Maggie Cronin’s play was the funniest of the five, with a quartet of medical students looking for a house in the Union Jack-festooned area around the City Hospital.
One of the black students is an Orangeman, a member of “the biggest lodge in Accra” and this adds a little frisson to the nascent romance between himself and his Catholic girlfriend.
The tension between a black lesbian angel and her beer-swilling lover is at the heart of Deirdre Cartmill’s The Lost Soul’s Party while the evening finished with Fionnuala Kennedy’s Hatchet, a tour de force by actor Nathaniel Campbell about growing up as a black kid around the Hatchet Field on the Black Mountain.
Another triumph for up-and-coming Terra Nova theatre company, Arrivals2 works brilliantly, showing us the human face of our new neighbours at the same time speaking to our own prejudices and it really should be seen by everyone. It’s now on tour and details can be found at terranovaproductions.net/arrivals2.
Last year, I heard an album that left me hyperentilating. Almost. It was From Tallagh to Halle by a band called Aldoc, named after the head honcho and guiding spirit, Alan Doherty from the People’s Republic of Tallaght in County Dublin. So taken by the band was I that I spend a whole day driving around in the pouring rain with no chance of a B&B and a two day camel ride to get something to eat to hear the band play in Campbell’s in Headford, County Galway. It was worth it.
Later, I called Alan at his adopted home town of Halle in Germany and this is most of our conversation:
Aldoc
Did you picture yourself doing this when you were a young boy growing up in Tallaght?
Well, I always did want to be on tour, it was a dream of mine but I never thought it’d be a big thing, that I’d be doing as much as I’m doing now.
I’ve been playing since seven when I went to see my dad playing, me getting up on stage, playing a tune with my dad’s band, dreaming of being on the stage for the rest of my life, it’s always been a dream, but it’s a come true thing.
Obviously you’re dad was an influence. Who else would have influenced you when you were growing up?
I grew up listening to the likes of the Fureys, not so much the Wolfe Tones, but I grew up doing support for the Wolfe Tones and the Fureys and the likes for about two years. Myself and my dad used to go around and do support for them, and this particular pub called The Wexford Inn which was next to Whelan’s.
Then I started listening to the likes of Mary Black and a lot of singers, so I grew up playing along to singers, and it wasn’t until I was introduced to maybe Davy Spillane, that’s when I started to kind of learn some tunes and stuff like that. In fact, the Davy Spillane band was the kind of first kind of big instrumental band I heard, And then, I remember starting a band in college, with some of the local musicians, lads, and I called it the Baby Spillane Band. I eventually told Davy that and he wasn’t too impressed!
That didn’t hold you back, of course. How did you meet with the boys in Gráda, how did Gráda come about?
Myself and Gerry, the guitar player from Aldoc who’s half-Irish, half-Kiwi, he came over to Ireland and there was this kind of course going on, the Ballyfermot Trad Course, and we kind of started off there. We had great facilities for rehearsals and stuff, so we just kind of used that every day. We did one gig in Dublin, and it was just a success from then. So yeah, that was in 2001, the start of Gráda.
And you and Gerry would be on the same musical wavelength, so to speak? You know the music, you want to play, you know what you like…
Yeah, we definitely are because we just like creating new music and writing, rather than like picking old tunes and doing old stuff. We like to compose, you know.
Gerry comes from a kind of bluegrassy-songwriter kind of sound and I’m kind of really into the Indian and African kind of music and stuff like that, so I suppose we put the two ideas together for Aldoc.
I was talking to Liam Ó Maonlaí about modal music (http://bit.ly/1p7hIQ8) and he was saying that music is the same all over the world, so what do you personally get from Indian and African music?
Well, I think from African music I get, I just love the sound of the language, I guess. It’s kind of like the sound and kind of like the scales and stuff like that, the modal scales, but in Indian music it’s the kind of, the chanting and the speed of the scales more so than the melody, but just the technique in the Indian stuff, and especially they use this thing called Konnakkol (see http://bit.ly/1vaYYUW), whereas African music has a lot of soul, yeah, still has that kind of, element of kind of gospel or something, I don’t know, it’s kind of more of a vocal thing for me, the African thing that I like.
From Tallaght to Halle is the the perfect coming together of all those influences as realised by a superb group of musicians. Despite the weird and wonderful influences, it’s still very Irish. I mean you could take all those background sounds away and what’s left is quintessentially Irish. So how did this cornucopia of ideas which had been in your head come together into a wonderfully coherent whole?
I suppose when I moved from Tallaght in 2010 I think, I guess I was kind of lonely in that I had nobody to play with I suppose, and it was kind of, just myself and my wife, which was fine but coming from playing seven nights a week I had to take on a new life and I started teaching.
But every time I took up the flute I’ve always put 110% so it’s more of a voice for me, rather than just being technical on a flute. I’d use a lot of slides and a lot of emotion in the playing and stuff like that but the music came together from me just sitting in my bedroom just playing along to different things, you know? I’d make up a sample on a table or something or a guitar and just jam along to it.
I didn’t want to make an album where it was just sets of Irish tunes and all this kind of backing and effects and stuff. I wanted to just write one tune and just make it a uniq ue piece of music, you know?
I think the fact that it sounds Irish is it’s a wooden flute, it has the tone of that and also I’m kind of writing in that modal thing again, you know, I’m writing in the same structure of A, B, Irish style, you know? But the melodies are different from Irish melody if you know what I mean.
Did you say ‘right guys, I’ve got, here’s my idea for some tunes. Do you want to join in?’, or how did the rest of the band come together?
The album was recorded basically in between two cities, it was in Cologne in Germany and Wellington, New Zealand, and it was myself and Gerry and I asked Gerry to produce it, because I was so stuck in the songs over that three year period, so it was great to have someone I could trust.
I’d say, you know ‘I want sax and I want trumpet or whatever’ and he went and found all the musicians over there. That’s another reason we recorded in New Zealand, because the musicians that we wanted on the album for that kind of dub, kind of reggae, slow kind of, not electronic, but kind of just generally guys that play every style of music, that’s the kind of musicians that we wanted and he went out and found them there in New Zealand. All the musicians I just met in the studio, you know, myself and Gerry, we met them for the first time in the studio and for two weeks we just jammed and kind of put it all together, but that was it.
There is a lot of chanting going on on the album and that was important to you, that chant sort of thing that goes through the album?
Yeah, I think it is. I think I started doing that with Gráda, just messing around during one gig and then I suppose it’s just having the courage then to forget about not having, not knowing the language and just doing chants and just making sounds, you know? For me, I feel I don’t have to have a language, I can just make sounds like, like Bobby McFerrin, he just makes sounds and whatever, you know, so, music is sounds, that’s all there is, you know?
On elephant movement, the opening is in a strange language.
It’s in Swahili, yeah.
And you wrote the poem and it was then trangláilte?
Yeah, it’s a funny poem, it’s just about missing Ireland, and it’s about missing the food, like the curries and pints and the craic and you know, just something that… I was in France on tour and I met this guy in a bar who works there and he spoke English, French and Swahili, and he said he liked my runners, my shoes, and I said ‘I’ll give them to you if you translate a poem for me’, so we just had a few pints and I started writing, ‘awh I miss the fish and chips back home in Ireland’, you know, ‘and I miss the pints of Guinness and the craic, I miss the local bar and all the people and fresh bread’, and just like, all about food, just strange things. So he translated it into French and into Swahili and I thought, leaving it in Swahili would be better because less people would know what the hell we’re talking about!
Yeah, but it sounds great!
So, I just got off him the recording in the basement of the bar on my mobile phone and that’s what it is. It’s just a silly poem about food in Ireland.
And what does the future hold for Aldoc? I was just thinking that as well, how great you were in Campbell’s last year but at the same time you could just imagine you playing in a big open-air festival and the sun shining and that great music, you know?
Yeah, that’s the kind of we like but you know, we loved the gig in Campbell’s in Headford so even a small, intimate gig like that is great, once the crowd are into it, you know. But everybody has been very positive. Aldoc are playing in the The Duncairn Centre for Culture and Arts tomorrow (Saturday) night, January 31. Be there.
I really enjoyed the first programme in Neil Brand’s BBC4 series, Sound of Song especially the beginning about the early history of recorded sound.
Early recordings were made on tinfoil which sent me back to the childhood game of playing a comb covered in tinfoil and how it tickled the lips!
From tinfoil, the great innovator of recorded sound, Thomas Edison, moved from voice recording for the office to a much more lucrative business, recording music. From around 1889, this was now done on wax cylinders and music and songs, for the first time, were being heard outside of live performance.
The programme, the first of three, showed an early recording session where the singer sang, How’d You Like to Spoon with me, a song from a 1906 musical called The Earl and the Girl using a horn as a microphone.
The sound travelling through the horn creates vibrations which, via a diaphragm, activates a recording stylus which in turn engraves the vibrations onto a wax cylinder.
I wanted to find out what it was about wax that made it a good material for recording and via a google I stumbled across a site called tinfoil.com which has some of those really early recordings on them.
There is an 1898 version of The Blue Danube played by the Edison Grand Concert Band (www.tinfoil.com/cm-1411.htm) and My Creole Sue, sung by the Edison Quartette and recorded in 1899 (www.tinfoil.com/cm-1410.htm)
It’s fascinating looking back to these early experiments and watching how the changing technology led to 78s, 45s, LPs, CDs, and now digital recordings and downloads and, as Neil Brand suggests, how recording changed the nature of music, from something that was created to mark important events in our lives, to something that was consumed.
The second programme in Neil Brand’s BBC4 series The Story of Song can be seen next Friday at 9pm and if you’re interested, here is Angela Lansbury singing the above-mentioned How’d You Like to Spoon With Me.
Cuireadh sibh lá ar leataobh sa dialann don chéad chruinniú d’Aontas na Scríbhneoirí Gaeilge.
Beidh an teacht le chéile ar siúl in Áras na Scríbhneoirí, Cearnóg Pharnell, Dé Sathairn 17 Eanáir 2015, idir 10.30rn-3.30in le plean oibre a leagan amach, coiste stiúrtha a thoghadh agus bonn ceart a chur faoin eagraíocht, rátaí ballraíochta san áireamh.
Beidh cuireadh á thabhairt ag an rúnaí sealadach, Cathal Póirtéir, ar roinnt daoine cainteanna gairide a thabhairt ar maidin ar ghnéithe éagsúla den timpeallacht oibre atá ag scríbhneoirí Gaeilge a chuirfidh le plé i ngrúpai oibre ina dhiaidh sin.
Bheadh súil agam go mbeadh moltaí ag teacht ó na grúpaí sin roimh dheireadh an lae a chuirfeadh ar ár gcumas spriocanna agus straitéis a leagan amach a chuirfeadh feabhas ar fhorbairt na scríbhneoireachta Gaeilge agus ar stádas na scríbhneoirí trí chéile.
Má tá moltaí ar leith agaibh faoi chainteoirí agus ábhar a ba chóir a bheith san áireamh, cuir chuig Cathal iad go luath le bhur dtoil agus seolfaidh sé clár an lae amach nuair atá sin réidh.
Idir an dá linn, cuireann sé fáilte roimh smaointe cruthaitheacha agus moltaí dearfacha.
“Déanaigí bhur machnamh. Tomaigí i bhur samhlaíocht agus cuirigí comhairleacha i gceann a chéile,” ar sé.
Scaip an scéal faoin theacht le chéile ar scríbhneoirí nach bhfuil ar an liosta go fóill agus iarr orthu rphost a chur chugam nó bealach éigin le heolas a scaipeadh orthu.
The thing I love most about watching Tim Edey playing either the guitar or the melodeon, is that he seems to be enjoying it so much and when you see someone do that, you are drawn in even more to the joy of the music being played.
It’s obviously more than a job to Tim who was born in Broadstairs in Kent, to an Irish mother and an English father.
“Yea, I have an Irish backround and music was always in the house,” he recalls as we chat on the phone.
“My dad is a great guitar player, so I think the love of it comes from my parents because music was always made to be fun, never made to be a chore.”
Tim then alludes to the “difficult times” he has had in his life and how music helped him in the dark times.
“To be honest, we’ve all had difficult times in life and in my difficult times music, particularly Sharon Shannon – I’d say her music to me has been quite like the Bible, that’s the wrong word, but it’s sort of a brilliant antidepressant.
“I played with her for a good while and I think one thing I learnt from her was how important it is for the listener and those listening or playing around you to share it, to make it accessible.”
What TIm says reminds me of the great box player Tony McMahon who talks about the healing power of traditional music. Maybe it’s a paricularly Irish thing as in the title of Nancy Scheper-Hughes;s book, Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics’…
“It’s so true!” laughs Tim.
“If you listen to slow airs, it can tear the emotions out of you. When you listen to Seamus Begley singing and suddenly you get the other angle, which is incredibly uplifting, joyous… Irish music is incredible, traditional music, it is a healer, for sure.”
It’s one thing playing lots of music but how did Tim end up doing it for a living.
“It’s a funny thing, growing up in the south of England, I was unfortunate where I was from in Kent, there wasn’t a huge Irish population, mind you there was in north Kent so unfortunately I didn’t get into that whole Celtic thing.
“What made me realize that I wanted to be a professinal musician was that I had a totally terrible time at school. I got bullied at school and I was lucky to have such caring parents who always supported me and my music. They tried to get me to do a bit of education but I don’t think my mind was able for it, I just wanted to play music.
“I think it was certainly seeing the Chieftains when I was about 12 – I just saw Paddy Moloney and just thought ‘oh my God, this is incredible’. I always remember that, sitting in this concert hall and then later seeing people like Sharon and Steve Cooney and Begley – I remember seeing Seamus when I was about 16 and he said to me, ‘you must do your education’ and of course I probably should have listened. I did try, I tried college, the lure of the road was too much!”
Not only is Tm Edey a fine player of traditional Irish music, he plays a lot of other genres, including gypsy music which he listened to as a boy. Where does his heart lie?
“Oh, I think Irish music will always be my favorite, it will always be what I grew up listening to,” he says.
“At the moment we (TIm, his wife Isobel and baby Eva) live in Scotland, I miss Ireland terribly and we go back as often as we can and we have considered trying to move back. I love Scottish music, don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic and I love it to bits. But for some reason, I don’t know what it is – I was born in England but have a strong Irish heritage and it doesn’t matter if it’s Belfast, Dublin or Dingle, I just go into a session and I feel like it’s home. Scotland is great, but I don’t have that emotional connection with the culture, I guess.” he says.
And on your deathbed, Tim, you have to play your last tune. Would you play guitar or melodeon?
“I think it would have to be the guitar,” he answers.
“To talk about emotional connections with an instrument… I absolutely love the melodeon and I love listening to it and playing it, but I’ve always struggled trying to transmit emotion through the melodeon. I hope I’ve managed to achieve it at some point, I really have to work at it. But when I pick the guitar up, there’s something about it – Brendan Power, the harmonica player said it’s about ‘ending the note’ – you said about Blues there, and if you listen to Sonny Terry or whoever, the way they bend the notes, I’ve learned a lot from Cooney and ones of the things I’ve learned from playing with Steve is that when he plays the slow air on guitar, it is almost like a connection with the instrument I think. I think it’s easier with guitar than the box. Now I don’t know if every box player would agree with me (laughs).
“I love the box and I listen an awful lot and play it and if I was to choose the two guys to play that would bring me to tears with the box, I think that would be Tony McMahon and Seamus Begley. I’m not saying, of course, that other box players don’t do that, but it’s not an easy thing to do with the box,” he says.
You’d meet very few people who would disagree with that!
The Tim Edey Collective is in playing at An Droichead in Belfast this Friday, 21st November and in Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin in Derry on Saturday 22nd. Joining Tim will be guitarist Ben Trott and a great singer from Scotland, Isobel Crowe who sings Scottish and Irish songs.
It comes as little surprise to hear that Brassneck Theatre Company’s Holy, Holy Bus has won the Belfast Telegraph’s Audience Award at this Belfast Festival at Queens. Having seen it at the Waterfront Hall I can understand why.
The Holy, Holy Bus, written by Pearse Elliott, is about four generations of women from west Belfast, all with their own reasons for wanting to go on the annual pilgrimage from Clonard Monastery.
They head south to visit the holy sites of Ireland. It’s a journey for all of them initially, fundamentally it’s about self-discovery, then it’s about faith, hope and some divine intervention for each of their characters, director Tony Devlin tells me at the Roddy McCorley’s club in west Belfast.
“We have three Catholics and a Protestant,” he explains. “The Protestant is on the bus because her mate at the taxi depot she works in hugs the altar rails and told her it would change her life. At this point of her life she can certainly do with some changes and she threatens that if Prods aren’t allowed on this bus, she’s going to storm off to the Nolan Show and tell them that there’s not too much holy, holy about the Holy Holy Bus!”
The whole journey is about some sort of spiritual salvation, but it’s not about statues moving. It is a journey of self-discovery and the changes that all four of these characters need in their lives right now. They’ve had very traumatic histories, be it through relationships or what’s happened to them in their pasts, and that unravels as the play goes on and we get a more honest idea of why these people are on the pilgrimage.
“The thing about this is that it’s a common bond that these four women find in each other. It’s like the Spice Girls, it’s that moment where boyband after boyband after boyband and all of a sudden the Spice Girls came on the scene and girl power because a new euphemism for female ownership and place in the world – taking control of their own destinies, and that’s what these four women do. They are each others’ salvation rather than having some divine intervention,” explains Tony.
As well as a script that deftly balances tension with humour, the four actors are theatre royalty.
“Stella McCusker, who has performed everywhere form the Abbey to the Lyric to the original Shakespeare’s Globe in 1654,” says Tony laughing.
“She’s playing the “more mature lady” and brings a power and a depth to the piece that makes my job as a director much easier when you have somebody of that experience. You can’t pay for that and it lifts the entire show.
“Then we have Caroline Curran who is probably best known at the minute as Maggie Muff in 50 Shades of Red, White & Blue, a show that has sold out all over the country and further afield and she has her own following at the moment. She plays a similar character in The Holy, Holy Bus to Maggie Muff. Caroline is the Prod on the bus who stirs it up a wee bit and mixes the pot up.
“Then we have the brilliant Claire Connor, who plays Perpetua, the organiser of the Holy Hold Bus, a castle Catholic, born in Leeson Street with delusions of grandeur and she plays it wonderfully, and there’s a lot of humour between her and Caroline’s character, Rita, the Prod, because they are the two polar ends of the religious divide in the north. She’s the stuck-up Catholic, that real kind of conservative Catholic and Rita is the über-prod from the Heel ‘n Ankle.
“Obviously the friction, where a lot of humour comes from in the first half of the play it between those two, but as the play goes on we find that they have a lot more in common than they do apart.
“We also have Róisín Gallagher who plays Lily’s daughter, Sally and I would say she’s the antagonist. Well, in fact there’s no protagonist in this play, it is an ensemble piece, all four women, but it’s her and her mother going on this journey for one last big adventure, I’ll not say anything more about that, but one last big adventure.”
The Holy, Holy Bus is based “very loosely” on writer Pearse Elliott’s s granny and her experience of going on these pilgrimages of Ireland and the tales that she regaled him with.
“I’m sure a lot of women, or anyone who have been on those pilgrimages will see something honest and true to how it is,” says Tony Devlin.
“When they’re sitting around a shrine, our first holy site on this tour is a statue of Our Lady, who has inside a washing machine in a field because Our Lady appeared in some woman’s washing machine in County Meath in 1983, allegedly. So we have the four actors gathered around a washing machine staring into it, waiting on her moving – so that kinds of gives you a sense of it!
“There’s a beautiful moment in this play where the Protestant girl is trying to understand what the immaculate conception is, and equally the Catholics are really struggling to explain the meaning of the Immaculate Conception!
Tony is quick to point out that the play doesn’t mock any religion.
“I don’t think there’s much mileage in mocking it, I think there’s a lot of mileage in questioning it – isn’t that what life’s about? Questioning and figuring out what the bigger picture is, and that’s what this play is about. So all walks of life will love the Holy Holy Bus, including the Catholic Church…”
Below are the tour dates for the Holy, Holy Bus but Brassneck have announced that the “very final” stop will be at their “spiritual home” in The Roddy McCorley Social Club, December 1-6 @8pm – so you’re spoilt for choice for your Christmas nites out! Tickets from (028) 9030 0480. Beep beep!
It must have been around 35 years ago that the usual bar staff of an Irish language club in west Belfast were all off in Donegal.
Being someone who often helped out in the bar, I was asked to look after affairs for the night.
Cumann Chluain Ard was a place visiting Irish language bands and singers would come to for some liquid refreshment after a gig in Belfast, knowing they would get a great welcome.
The night I was looking after the late-night bar, who should come in but members of Clannad who had been playing the Ulster Hall (I think) that night. This was going to be something special as the first of the songs started.
However, just as things were warming up, who should arrive but the RUC, asking if we had a licence to be serving alcohol late at night. As far as I knew, the answer was “Níl” and so the regular clientele and visitors packed away their songs and marched off in single file into the cold night air.
It was the best late night session that never was.
I thought of that evening last night as Clannad played the Waterfont Hall in Belfast because what struck me was that the quintet who have been together since Cúchulainn was a wee lad, still remain a family group.
I suppose there’s a big clue in the name of the band, Clannad, clann as Dobhair, the family from (Gaoth) Dobhair.
Máire aka Moya and her two brothers Ciarán and Pól with their uncles, Pádraig and Noel, were all playing acoustic instruments (although amplified of course) and you could cast your mind back even to well before that night in Cluain Ard and you’d still see the Clannad of today practising on their instruments and coming up with novel arrangements for old songs.
If you strip away the Celtic mysticism and New Age frippery, you could be in Teach Leo, drinking Cidona or pints of Bass and smoking Gallaher’s Blues.
And that is their strength, I believe. The songs in Irish remain what they are but they are given a creative gloss that doesn’t take away from the beauty of the originals.
Last night, following a great but short set from the Henry Sisters, the family from Dobhair played quite a few songs from the new album, Nádúr, their first studio album in over 15 years which includes a new song in Irish called Rhapsody na gCrann. They also did a gorgeous version of Down by the Sally Gardens before going into a greatest hits section.
What also struck me was the enduring quality of Moya’s voice. I used to think Harry’s Game couldn’t be sung live but Moya constantly proves me wrong, her voice having lost nothing of its ethereal beauty in songs like In a Lifetime and the singalong Two Sisters.
The band can rock too as they showed in show finisher Dúlaman.