Bloomsday in Melbourne, in the year it runs its twentieth theatrical celebration of Bloomsday, is involved in two very exciting international ventures. We have always enjoyed cordial relationships with Dublin and Toronto and Bloomsday in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia, and greetings are always exchanged on Bloomsday for this important secular feast-day, but this year ratchets up the intensity quite markedly.
New York Bloomsday this year notches up 32 years of Bloomsday on Broadway at Symphony Space. It is seeking a partnership with us, the first time they have sought to make connections outside their own operation. They typically do celebrity readings from Joyce, and last year it was Sirens.
In an interview with them, they were very curious about why we turn Joyce into theatre. We are unusual in doing this, and it's set me thinking about why turn a perfectly wonderful novel into theatre? You'll hear more of this in the leadup to Bloomsday!
Watch this space for the interview.
A second major international event in which Bloomsday in Melbourne is involved is an international streamed video reading of the novel organised out of the James Joyce Centre in Dublin. It goes under the grand title of The Global Bloomsday Gathering. The reading will start in Auckland at 6am their time, and Melbourne picks up the batton at 8am, and will be reading some of Proteus, Calypso and part of Lestrygonians from 8am. It's an ambitious venture and we wish Yvonne Thunder and her team all the luck in the world as they negotiate barton-changes and daunting technical issues. It will be launched in Dublin and be streamed live on the web, so tune in for a cornucopia of accents and a feast of the big book.
In Melbourne, we are very lucky to have found a tech-savvy enabler in the undauntable Stuart Traill who will oversee a team of radio interns to set up the internet connection and to field directions from the nerve-centre in Dublin. We'll be working out of a ZZZ studio. We're expecting it will be a blast!
Meanwhile a team of readers is assembling to rehearse the readings and it is exciting - Renee Huish, Silas James, Deirdre Gillespie, our new director Wayne Pearn, Eugene O'Rourke, maybe Ted Reilly and myself. Proteus has its challenges, being a Stephen chapter, and full of poetry, and French, Latin and German, but it's a gift. Calypso and Lestrygonians are simpler to get the tongues around. We will all have to keep ourselves nice at the dinner the night before!
New York Bloomsday this year notches up 32 years of Bloomsday on Broadway at Symphony Space. It is seeking a partnership with us, the first time they have sought to make connections outside their own operation. They typically do celebrity readings from Joyce, and last year it was Sirens.
In an interview with them, they were very curious about why we turn Joyce into theatre. We are unusual in doing this, and it's set me thinking about why turn a perfectly wonderful novel into theatre? You'll hear more of this in the leadup to Bloomsday!
Watch this space for the interview.
A second major international event in which Bloomsday in Melbourne is involved is an international streamed video reading of the novel organised out of the James Joyce Centre in Dublin. It goes under the grand title of The Global Bloomsday Gathering. The reading will start in Auckland at 6am their time, and Melbourne picks up the batton at 8am, and will be reading some of Proteus, Calypso and part of Lestrygonians from 8am. It's an ambitious venture and we wish Yvonne Thunder and her team all the luck in the world as they negotiate barton-changes and daunting technical issues. It will be launched in Dublin and be streamed live on the web, so tune in for a cornucopia of accents and a feast of the big book.
In Melbourne, we are very lucky to have found a tech-savvy enabler in the undauntable Stuart Traill who will oversee a team of radio interns to set up the internet connection and to field directions from the nerve-centre in Dublin. We'll be working out of a ZZZ studio. We're expecting it will be a blast!
Meanwhile a team of readers is assembling to rehearse the readings and it is exciting - Renee Huish, Silas James, Deirdre Gillespie, our new director Wayne Pearn, Eugene O'Rourke, maybe Ted Reilly and myself. Proteus has its challenges, being a Stephen chapter, and full of poetry, and French, Latin and German, but it's a gift. Calypso and Lestrygonians are simpler to get the tongues around. We will all have to keep ourselves nice at the dinner the night before!
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