Month: September 2023

Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering

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Time to return to Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee! The magic of the Autumn Gathering is to bring people together from all corners of the world – to listen and learn, laugh and share, with academics and artists, locals, historians and literary figures; to meet descendants of Lady Gregory and Yeats, renew friendships and make new friends – all enjoying and celebrating the prominent role of Lady Gregory in shaping the theatrical, poetic and cultural life which thrives today.

Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering

Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee

Friday 29 September to Sunday 1 October

autumngathering.com

The play, Nobel Words by Peggy Monahan, will be performed on Friday 29 September 2023 in the presence of Catriona Yeats, our guest of honour.  The Wild Swan Theatre Company will mark the anniversary of her grandfather’s Nobel Prize for Literature in the Gort Town Hall Theatre at 8pm, together with members of Lady Gregory’s family.

Ben Kennedy, Great-Grandson of Lady Gregory, will formally open the Gathering in Coole Park on Saturday at 10.00.  Angela Bourke, Member of the Royal Irish Academy andfull professor emerita at the UCD School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Irish Folklore, will Chair the Gathering.  Antonio Bibbò, Lecturer in English and Translation at the University of Trento (Italy),will present Pilgrimages in the West: Lady Gregory and the Irish Revival in Italy.  Melissa Sihra, Associate Professor of Drama and Theatre at Trinity College Dublin, will moderate Lady Gregory, Teresa Deevy; Visions and Influences – Contemporary Perspectives, with speakers Nora Grimes, Viviane Monteiro and Katla Arsaelsdottir, from the Drama Department, Trinity College Dublin. ‘But where is the brush that could show anything / Of all that pride and that humility?’ -James Pethica, Professor of Irish Studies, Drama and Modernism at Williams College in Massachusetts, speaks on Yeats’s Coole Park poems.

In Thoor Ballylee on Sunday at 10.00, Catriona Yeats will present the prizes for the inaugural Yeats Thoor Ballylee Poetry Competition.  Adrian Paterson, Lecturer in English, School of English and the Creative Arts University of Galway, will speak on Meditations in Time of Civil War.  Dr. Cecily O’Neill, writer and dramaturg and the author of several books on drama education, will present A Gentle Friendship. This performance will explore the long friendship between Lady Gregory and George Bernard Shaw.  They shared a love of theatre and an endless delight in laughter. Performances by Nora Grimes and Katla Ársælsdóttir, from the Drama Department, Trinity College Dublin, and Catherine Sheridan, Drama Facilitator.

Participants can continue to enjoy the Open Forum discussion, Candlelit Dinner plus entertainment and the famous Barm Brack! 

For further information and booking, please go to eventbrite.

You can also contact Marion Cox, 1 Kiltiernan East, Kilcolgan, Co. Galway H91 YH1F. email: monaleen@msn.com  and www.autumngathering.com. Tel: 086-8053917

Culture Night at Thoor Ballylee

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In our continuing celebrations for the centenary of WB Yeats Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, this week is maybe the best of the year for visiting Thoor Ballylee!

Support Culture Night and its nationwide events on Friday 22nd September by visiting Thoor Ballylee, Yeats’ Tower, from 5-7 pm. For one night only there is free admission to the tower and cottage and all our exhibitions.

And this time you explore the Galway home of Poet Laureate W.B. Yeats, you can enjoy wonderful music from Eileen Fleming and Frank Wall, as well as the customary cup of tea and cake.

A reminder too that this week Nobel Words, a one-act play written by Peggy Monahan, is premiered at Thoor Ballylee on Thursday 21 September at 8pm, with support from Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, Galway County Council and Creative Ireland.

Tickets are €10 and can be reserved by ringing 087 6360895.

Nobel Words travels to other venues including the Town Hall Theatre, Gort on 29th and 30th September, 8pm, and The Yeats Building, Sligo, on 7th October at 1pm. All tickets for these performances are available through the number above – or at the doors, but only if numbers permit.

Nobel Words: performance at Thoor

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Celebrating the Centenary of W.B. Yeats Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature

Nobel Words, a one-act play written by Yeats Thoor Ballylee Board Member Peggy Monahan, will be premiered at Thoor Ballylee on Thursday, 21st September at 8pm.

Performed by the Wild Swan Theatre Company, the play focuses on that momentous week in Yeats’s life when he learned of his Nobel Prize award. As Yeats’s gives a lecture on the founding of the Abbey Theatre, he invokes the memories of those who helped him along the way, in particular Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge.

Tickets are €10 and can be reserved by ringing 087 6360895.

Nobel Words travels to other venues including the Town Hall Theatre, Gort on 29th and 30th September, 8pm, and The Yeats Building, Sligo, on 7th October at 1pm. All tickets available through the number above – or at the doors but only if numbers permit.

Funding and support for the performance have been provided by the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, Galway County Council and Creative Ireland.