The Cork Midsummer Festival is in full swing, with many multidisciplinary arts events underway. We are delighted to see so many Department of Theatre alumni of past and present programmes creating and presenting work at the festival this year.  

The Settling, one of two productions in the festival from BrokenCrow Theatre Company, was written by Gavin McEntee and directed by Deirdre Dwyer, graduates of the Theatre BA degree. The production ran in UCC’s Granary Theatre until 22nd June with a cast that included Raymond Keane, Katie Honan, and George Hanover. 

Over in Blackpool’s Graffiti Theatre, Found,  BrokenCrow’s other Midsummer Festival production is described as a “joy-filled night of theatre, traditional storytelling, and music”. The production is written by Aideen Wylde and directed by Julie Kelleher, both Alumni of the Department of Theatre’s MA programme. 

Graduate company Oh! Scare Wilde Productions presented The Pigeon Factory, written by Aaron O’Neill and directed by Dee Finn, to packed houses in the Cork Arts Theatre last week. The company formed as part of the BA degree Final Year Performances module in 2017 and has been consistently creating original work since then, taking part in the Scene and Heard festival in Dublin in 2019, 2020 and 2022. 

For the duration of the festival, Theatre Alumna, Eszter Némethi’s exhibition To Be What We Are with Claire Murphy and a group of young Traveller artists is open to the public in St. Peters, North Main Street. This exhibition is described as ‘An installation built to hold a space for play; this workshop-world was co-created with children and their adults as a document of a creative laboratory exploring artistic play.’  

This is You from Loom Theatre Company, opened in the Crypt, St Luke’s on 21st June. Loom is a new company founded by graduates of BA Theatre degrees,  Éadaoin Fox, and Rosa Mäkelä (also an alumna of MA in Creative Writing). Loom has also recently presented The Future is Clean and Round at PQ Studio Stage at the Prague Quadrennial funded by Culture Ireland.