Search Results for 'Abbey Theatre'

DRUID BEGAN rehearsals this week on a new Tom Murphy play, Brigit, and on his 1985 classic Bailegangaire, both of which will be staged in the Town Hall Theatre in September.

The Galway County Council, Failte Ireland, and a committee set up to safeguard the future of Thoor Ballylee near Gort have been continuing their efforts to find a way to reopen the ancient tower, once the retreat of WB Yeats.

The efforts by a group of local people to have the famous Yeats' Tower (Thoor Ballylee), near Gort, south Galway, reopened is to be welcomed and supported.

JAMES JOYCE the playwright and the writers who influenced WB Yeats will be the subject of two public lectures from Prof Brian Arkins.

All great books begin with an arresting sentence. I remember as a boy being captivated by JM Synge’s opening sentence in what I consider his greatest work The Aran Islands, first published in 1907, two years before his death. It has not been out of print since:

WB YEATS’ The Song of Wandering Aengus has been published as a picturebook for children, illustrated by Italian artist Marina Marcolin.

How many famous people lifted that heavy brass knocker on the door of Lady Augusta Gregory’s home at Coole, Co Galway, and gave it a resounding rat- a -tat -tat? It resounded again last weekend with all the authority of a grumpy judge’s gavel. The writer and broadcaster John Quinn, chairman of the 19th Autumn Gathering, used it to great effect to keep speakers to their time, and to summon people to the next event.

In the closing weeks of the summer of 1913, there was intense activity at Coole Park, the heart of the Celtic Literary Revival. The considerable energies of both Lady Gregory and WB Yeats were fully committed to supporting Gregory’s nephew Hugh Lane, and his quest to establish a municipal gallery of modern art in Dublin.

In September 2004 Seamus Heaney opened the Autumn Gathering in Gort, and he read the above poem (which I will conclude in a moment), and told the audience that he was happy to be once again in south Galway. “ To drive across Ireland, east to west, towards Padraic Fallon’s native Galway, is to experience a double sensation of refreshment and déja-vu. The refreshment comes from the big lift of the sky beyond the River Shannon, the déja-vu from entering a landscape which has been familiar for a century as an image of the dream Ireland invented by the Irish Literary Revival.’