Happy New Year, a very significant one in the Joyce world, as it joins Melbourne's very privileged status as celebrators and promoters of Joyce who have been free of the onerous restrictions of copyright pertaining (thanks, ironically, to Disney) in Europe and the United States. It has been bliss to be interpreting Joyce legally, without having to look over our shoulders, and to be bringing him to an ever widening group of readers in Melbourne.
Prompted by one of our new committee members, Colm McNaughton, we held a forum with some of our long-term patrons last year to find out what it was that kept them coming back to Bloomsday, what they found energising in Joyce's fiction. Many findings surprised the organisers, not least of them that there was a continuing hunger not just for Joyce theatricals, but also for courses. We have taken that advice, and have organised the first course for 19 Feb. It is all but booked out, so we may be seeking another time to repeat this six-hour intensive course for beginners. We've talked for years about doing it, but wondered about how and whether we were deluded in our proselytism, but it seems not. We'd love your feedback about the curriculum. We're tentatively thinking also of a follow-up advanced course.
A few other items of interest for Melbourne Joyceans, and perhaps those who can easily get to Melbourne. We have also now secured and paid for the rights for J. B. Keane's Big Maggie and will perform it twice on 27 and 29 April. Our director is Renee Huish, and Deirdre Gillespie, well-known to Irish and Bloomsday audiences around the country (Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and for the last 15 years, Melbourne) will have the title role, supported by a big cast of mainly Irish voices. The play is energising Renee for what it tells about the dire state of women legally in the Republic on the verge of a feminist movement which would sweep the world in the late '60s but take a little longer to bite in Ireland. It's darker than many of Keane's other writings, but a superb study of family dynamics, and property hunger.
Our Molly script is being finalised as I write. The scriptors had a terrific workshop with the director, Brenda Addie, not long before Christmas, and Molly unfolds for us in intriguing ways. We're committed to getting her out of bed, and exploring the various ways in which she is emancipating herself, probably even more effectively than Stephen. Giving Molly breath is to begin to understand why this chapter is so beloved of readers, but we're also keen not to romanticise her. We've long been critics of the 'floral Molly' so often deployed by the radio programmers on Bloomsday. We can embrace her sadism, her cruelty, her inner bitch, and enjoy her contradictoriness, her skitterings around the Dublin-Gibraltar axis, and much more of this rich, prismatic character. Watch this space. The actors will soon be in workshop mode.
Another huge feather in Bloomsday's already extravagant millinery is achieving tax deductible status as an arts organisation. We've had to go down this track because of escalating costs (insurance, theatres, publicity, and of course, the need to pay our generous creative personnel for their time and effort) and because the city fathers are this year giving their scarce dollars to other worthy causes (we've been lucky in 2009 and 2011 at Melbourne City Council, but not this year). The real stretch is to afford a comfortable and safe theatre which allows our director to be as creative as possible. We don't need grand, just basic, so that the ageing organisers don't need to move lights and seats. At this stage, we cannot commit to a theatre. We don't need much money to remain viable, because of our history over 20 years of self-help, but for us it is a matter of doing the best we can artistically, and social justice. If you can help, please do. Details on the website. Having become de factor Arts Managers, we dips our lids to those who commit themselves to making their life's work theatre. They are truly cultural heroes.
Yours in Joyce....have a Joyce-filled 2012
