27th Lady Gregory-Yeats Gathering – online!

The Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering are delighted to invite you to the 27th edition of the Autumn Gathering.

7pm (Irish Time) Saturday 25 September 2021 (online)

This year’s gathering features a wealth of exciting speakers packed into a short programme. Plus it is available to all-comers anywhere in the world, as it is being celebrated online (see link below).

Lady Gregory 1893, pastel by Lisa Stillman

7pm (Irish Time) Saturday 25 September 2021 (online via Zoom)

Melissa Sihra, Head of Drama and Associate Professor School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin, will Chair the Gathering.

Actor Úna Clancy will discuss her role as Lady Gregory and the creation of the recent Irish Repertory Theater production in New York, Lady G: Plays and Whisperings of Lady Gregorywith clips from the performance.

James Pethica (Professor of Theatre and English, Williams College), will preview his edition of Lady Gregory’s Shorter Writings 1882-1900, to be published later this year.

Barry Houlihan, Archivist at NUI Galway, will preview the 90th Anniversary of Lady Gregory in 2022 as well as remembering Gregory through the decades, from exhibitions to performance.

Christopher Frayling, Cultural Historian, will discuss John Ford and Lady Gregory. 

Time for Q&A, sip tea with a slice of brack in the comfort of your own living-room, and celebrate the magic of Coole Park! Ronnie and Marion and all the crew at the Autumn Gathering do hope you can join them.

The whole evening is now available online to view! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU90DuzD1uA

For more see the website of the Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering, or please contact Marion Cox on monaleen@msn.com

Lady Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering

THE LADY GREGORY–YEATS AUTUMN GATHERING

Friday 27- Sunday 29 September 2019

Join the Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering and discover more about our rich literary heritage in Galway, especially at Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee.

This year the Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering features a playwriting workshop with Marina Carr and Melissa Sihra and includes exclusive talks from guest speakers, drama, film from the archives, and plenty of chat and socialising.

Playwright Marina Carr in rehearsal

To mark the 25th anniversary of the annual Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering at Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee, playwright Marina Carr and academic Melissa Sihra, conduct a playwriting workshop at Thoor Ballylee. Join one of Ireland’s greatest living dramatists for this unique opportunity. This workshop will take place in The Studio at Thoor Ballylee on Friday 27 September from 2pm to 5pm. To join this exclusive event email monaleen@msn.com – playwrights are invited to submit a one-page monologue in advance and places are limited.

Further highlights include:

Book launch: Marina Carr: Pastures of the Unknown, by Melissa Sihra
Cutting of the Gort Barm Brack by Lady Gregory’s great, great grandson, Robin Murray Brown
Women, Anxiety and Resistance in Fairy Legends Collected by Lady Gregory with Lucy McDiarmid
Patronage and Friendship: Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats with Nicholas Grene
The Making of a Drama: Lady Gregory 1908-1910 with Anthony Roche
Other Women Pioneers at the Abbey with Lelia Doolan
Augusta in America: Lady Gregory finds a new audience, new voice and fresh sphere of influence in the New World with Cecily O’Neill
Lady G: screening of Carolyn Swift’s one-woman Abbey Theatre performance, with Barry Houlihan

and

‘Lady Gregory’s Ingredients’ short drama play which takes place at Thoor Ballylee, Yeats’s castle home.

Plus entertainment and candlelit dinner amidst the woodland of Coole Park!

Please see www.autumngathering.com for more details.

Autumn Season at Thoor

Music, culture, and storytelling comes to Thoor Ballylee for our summer and autumn season (with one unexpected closure for Sunday 25th August only to announce). Join us and donate, come to our events, or just visit anytime until the middle of October!

8pm Saturday 24th August The Art of Song Heritage week at Thoor Ballylee comes to a climax featuring the singing and playing of Helen Hancock and Mark Keane.

(NB Sunday 25th August Thoor Ballylee CLOSED as surrounding roads shut down for Galway Rally Race).

8pm Friday 30th August The Burren Bandits at Thoor Ballylee play guitar for the Gort River Walk.

Friday 27th – Sunday 29th September Lady Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering comes to Galway, with events at Thoor Ballylee on the morning Sunday 29th September.

Saturday 5th October our Storytelling Workshop returns to Thoor Ballylee (details to follow).

Saturday 19th October Máirtín O Connor and friends close the season. Come along and join us for our traditional festive closure!

Further details on selected events below:

After Folk & Farm with Christy Cuniffe, The Story of Butter with Anna O’Donnell, Heritage week at Thoor Ballylee comes to a climax 8pm on Saturday 24th August featuring music, The Art of Song with Helen Hancock and Mark Keane.

The Art of Song

with Helen Hancock & Mark Keane

8pm Saturday 24 August

Thoor Ballylee, Co. Galway

€10/€5 admission

As part of Heritage week Oranmore soprano Helen Hancock presents a beautiful evening programme of singing and music, The Art of Song, at Yeats’s Tower, Thoor Ballylee. The concert also features pianist and accompanist Mark Keane. Helen, in her 5th year of vocal studies with international tenor Owen Gilhooly has just returned from Abingdon Summer School for Solo Singers in the UK and is very enthusiastic about the recital. “I love singing with Mark Keane and Thoor Ballylee is a gorgeous intimate performance space […]. I always enjoy explaining the background to the songs and arias which brings them to life for the audience”. The programme is a varied one with lots of takes on life and love – which W.B. Yeats memorably called “the supreme theme of art and song”. It features music from all classical genres – baroque, opera, art song, lieder and musical theatre. Admission is €10  for adults and €5 for children and tickets are available in advance, or on the door on the night. Refreshments are available at the interval.

 

8pm Friday 30th August The Burren Bandits at Thoor Ballylee sing and play guitar for the Gort River Walk.


 

27th-29th September Lady Gregory and Yeats Autumn Gathering comes to Gort with speakers including Marina Carr, Nicholas Grene, and Lucy McDiarmuid. Sunday 29th September at Thoor Ballylee from 10.30 with Lelia Doolan and Cecily O’Neill talking about women playwrights. More details at the Gathering’s new website!


Saturday 5th October our Storytelling Workshop returns to Thoor Ballylee (details to follow).

Saturday 19th October Máirtín O Connor and friends close the season. Come along and join us for our traditional festive closure!

Join us and donate, come to our events, or just visit anytime until the middle of October!


For more information about these events or any others at Thoor Ballylee contact 091 631436 yeatsthoorballyleesociety@gmail.com

 

Lady Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering

Lady Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering

This weekend sees the Lady Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering, taking place in south Galway at the Lady Gregory Hotel Gort, Coole Park, and Thoor Ballylee from Friday 30th September to Sunday October 2nd 2016.

In this anniversary year,  speakers from near and far will be thinking about 1916 and its local connections, and the imaginative landscape of writers like Gregory, Yeats, and Joyce. As well as memories and revivals it also features theatre: with a tour of the NUI Galway theatre archives on Friday, and on Sunday a play performed at Thoor Ballylee by The Curlew Theatre Company called History!: Reading the Easter Rising.

Below follows a summary programme. Further details and how to register can be found at the Autumn Gathering Website.

W.B.Yeats Rose: Scarlet Floribunda. A new variety of Irish rose bred for the 150th anniversary of W.B. Yeats. Botanical Artist: Holly Sommerville

W.B.Yeats Rose: Scarlet Floribunda. A new variety of Irish rose bred for the 150th anniversary of W.B. Yeats. Botanical Artist: Holly Sommerville

Lady Gregory Yeats Autumn Gathering

Yeats and Lady Gregory’s prominent role in theatrical, poetic, and cultural life in the period is often acknowledged but their particular connections with and responses to 1916 deserve examination. This 22nd Gathering explores the collaborations, creations, and disagreements present in 1916, exploring how the aesthetic conceptions of drama and poetry not only affected the Rising but shaped a response to it.

Within Coole Park’s historic walled garden, sits the famous ‘autograph tree’ where world-renowned authors such as Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, John Millington Synge and George Moore, carved their initials, marking Coole Park as the centre of the Irish Literary Revival in the 20th century. Taking place in Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee, Yeats’ 15th century castle-home, the Autumn Gathering will highlight the impact of 1916 to both the literary giants of the time and local people of Gort and South Galway.

Friday 30 September 2016

 

13.00

 

 

 

 

19.00

 

 

 

 

 

19.30

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tour of the Abbey Theatre Archive NUIG

Depart Gort at 13.00 to arrive at National University of Ireland Galway at 14.00

Tour includes display of items from the Abbey Theatre.

 

Registration for Twenty-Second

Lady Gregory/Yeats Autumn Gathering.

Reception & Formal Opening:

Welcome by Director, Ronnie O’Gorman.

Formal opening by Greg White, great grandson of Francis FitzAdelm Persse, brother of Lady Gregory, and cutting of the Gort Barm Brack.

Dedication of Gort Library’s Coole Collection to the memory of Sheila O’Donnellan, co-founder of the Autumn Gathering

Opening Address by Ray Burke, Chief News Editor at RTE and Author of ‘Joyce County’

featuring a new book which explores James Joyce’s ties with Galway

 

Entertainment by Sonic Strings youth orchestra from Coole Music

 

 

Coach leaves from The Lady Gregory Hotel, Gort

 

 

 

 

The Lady Gregory Hotel, Gort

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday 01 October 2016

  

 

09.30

 

 

10.00

 

 

11.15

11.45

 

 

 

13.00

 

14.15

 

 

 

15.30

 

16.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

19.30

Coach departs Lady Gregory Hotel for Coole Park.

Lecture Sessions chaired by Colin Smythe renowned publisher & literary agent

W.B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory and 1916

Dr Adrian Paterson, Director of Graduate Research-English, School of Humanities
National University of Ireland, Galway

 

Tea/Coffee Break

 The first time I saw a whole salmon cooked’:    Encounters with the wealthy in Gort and the GPO

Lucy McDiarmid, Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Professor of English at Montclair State University, N.J.

 

Lunch 

 

Easter Week through Abbey Eyes

Cecily O’Neill, Author and International Authority on Drama Education and Theatre.

Forum: Discussion with the Speakers

 

View the Coole Collection dedicated to the memory of Sheila O’Donnellan at Gort Library, Old Church of Ireland, Queen St., Gort.

or

Stroll through the woods

(accompanied by NPWS Tour Guide)

or

View the exhibition and documentary about Lady Gregory and Coole

 

 

Candlelit Dinner & Entertainment.

 

 

 

Coole Park

Visitor Centre

 

 

 

 Coole Park

Visitor Centre

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coach leaves from The Lady Gregory Hotel at 19.15

 

 

Sunday 2 October 2016

 

 

10.00

10.30

 

11.30

 

12.00

 

 

14.00

 

 

 

Coach departs Lady Gregory Hotel for Thoor Ballylee.

 

How have we remembered 1916?”

Catriona Crowe, National Archivist of Ireland.

Tea/Coffee.

 

History!: Reading the Easter Rising – Play  

Performed by The Curlew Theatre Company.

 

View the Coole Collection dedicated to the memory of Sheila O’Donnellan at Gort Library, Old Church of Ireland, Queen St., Gort

(open until 17.00 – afternoon tea)

 

Farewell to our Friends!

 

Thoor Ballylee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Organising Committee:                                         Booking Info:

Ronnie O’Gorman (Director)                                 Marion Cox

Marion Cox (Organiser)                                         1 Kiltiernan East

Eileen O’Connor (Hon. Member)                          Kilcolgan

Lois Tobin (Founding Member)                            Co. Galway

Tel: 086-8053917                                              e-mail: monaleen@msn.com

Website: www.autumngathering.com

Lady Augusta Gregory, 27 September 1916

Lady Augusta Gregory, 27 September 1916