Damien Mulley

That Night Follows Day was in the Everyman way back in November and I’m finally getting around to writing a piece about it.

It’s been around for years now but seems quite modern at the same time. A bunch of 16 kids, talking about how we adults see them, judge them, look after them, ignore them and so on. Spoken by kids, content is for adults. An hour’s play that’s just factual statement after statement:

You feed us. You wash us. You dress us. You sing to us. You watch us when we are sleeping. You explain to us the different causes of illness and the different causes of war. You whisper when you think we can’t hear.

Written by Tim Etchells. This play is actually intimidating for those in the audience. Being called out for bullshit, the way we treat young people, the way we interact with ourselves. Silences and stares making you uneasy in your seat. It’s excellent. Funny moments and serious and dark tinges.

The audience when we were there were mostly the parents of the kids and were laughing and clapping at many parts of the play. Kids saying fucking and motherfucking seemed to have gotten a shocked and hilarious reaction from the crowd. Naturally a whopping standing ovation at the end. And warranted.

A very talented bunch of kids. Some amazing performances from some in particular. Worth seeing when it comes back into your town.

Trailblaze came to Cork for the Cork Midsummer Festival and it took place in the Triskel. A great line-up of speakers in a beautiful location.

Everyday Epiphanies and Altered States was the theme for their first time in Cork.
Speakers were Steve Collins, Dylan Tighe, Carmel Winters, Niamh Gunn, Sheena Matheiken, Brother Richard, Robbie Hamilton, Stevie G

I liked a good few talks and ones that shone through was one from Brother Richard for the UCC Chaplaincy and a talk from Carmel Winters really resonated. It was a story about her Aunt Eily who was in a convent til her 70s. A great short talk about seeking truth and truths and the idea two different ideas can be right and wrong at the same time. I would listen to her all day, great intellect and language skills.

There’s one more post about a Midsummer event and then I’m done about it for a while I’m sure. Overall I really liked the eclectic mix of events I got to see. A lot of imagination, youth and energy was experienced by me. I hope that the energy, I sucked in like a vampire will help me with things I do for work and pleasure in the next few months. Batteries certainly were recharged in the past 10 days because of these events. It’d be great to see more people at the events of course. Maybe there should be a big brother, big sister type programme to bring people that have never been before.

Court. Running for a few days in the Cork Midsummer festival was Court. The setting was the Court House in Cork City. A beautiful building I was never in before. A choir used the space, which being a place of large rooms and pillars can be interesting. The pitch for the event is thus:

For In The Name Of The People, we encounter the Cork Chamber Choir in the imposing entrance hall of the court house, who move through the space and sing an a capella rendition of a Renaissance liturgy as well as texts from judgements laid down in this building.

The choir first sang down to us in the foyer area and then walked down.

Part of their work was name-checking Irish cases and reading from judgments that occurred within the walls of this Court. The choir also walked around, in and around the crowd themselves. The sound was fantastic and I loved the concept. In a way it takes the energy from the ghost from lives that have been changed in this building and brought them out through accessible singing.

Nice to see the Court opened up too. All in all, I liked it. Might have been a tad too “comedic” at the start but the visceral Court experiences later on made it a strong enough piece. Delighted I legged it from Dublin and got to see it.

Poor iPhone sound: