OnTheTown : Acrobats (plus playwrights, composers, directors and musicians) walked quietly among us at a celebration to mark the start of Diversions in Dublin this week.
There were speeches at the party, but the contortions, drama, music, screenings and singing will happen over the coming weeks as part of this summer-long festival of free events in and around the city's Temple Bar area.
"Tá clár galánta againn . . . seo é an lá is mó sa bhliain ó thaobh an tsaibhrais chultúrtha a bheimid ag cur ar siúl," said a delighted Dermot McLaughlin, chief executive of Temple Bar Cultural Trust (TBCT), praising the cultural richness of the programme unveiled.
"We are celebrating 15 years of Temple Bar as a cultural quarter," said Gráinne Millar, TBCT's head of cultural development. There has been a Diversions festival in Temple Bar for the past eight years.
Among the featured highlights will be a series of short plays in association with Fishamble Theatre Company, by writers such as Tom Swift, Jacqueline Strawbridge and Belinda McKeon (of The Irish Times). The plays will be performed at venues around Temple Bar.
On Sunday, June 25th, Seamus Heaney and Liam Ó Floinn will give an exclusive once-off Irish performance this year of their double-act, The Poet and The Piper.
The previous Sunday, June 18th, there will be a world premiere performance by singer Maighréad Ní Dhomhnaill, with words by Cathal Ó Searcaigh and specially commissioned music by Belfast's Niall Martin. This will kick-start a week of traditional music events.
Among those at the launch party in Eden were Colm and Rossa Ó Snodaigh, of the group, Kíla, which will give a concert in Meeting House Square on Wednesday, June 21st; director and actor Karl Shiels, currently playing in Howie the Rookie at the Peacock Theatre; and mezzo-soprano Bernadette Greevy, artistic director of the Anna Livia International Opera Festival, which will perform a piece on Sunday, July 16th, in Meeting House Square.
All Diversions events are free, but note that many concerts are ticketed. For more information, visit the Diversions website at www.templebar.ie or call in to the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, 12 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 (e-mail info@templebar.ie or telephone 01-6772255)
Answering Ireland's musical call
They are young, talented and Irish. They generally have fun and liken themselves to the Irish rugby team because they play with passion. Camerata, a chamber orchestra set up in 1999 by international concert pianist Barry Douglas, is "like a big family", he said. "I wanted to bring them together to play fun concerts. We discovered it had an energy all of its own."
He chooses Irish musicians from both sides of the Border to play for the orchestra. Having the President, Mrs McAleese, and Queen Elizabeth as joint patrons of the chamber orchestra is "a wonderful feather in our cap", he added.
Following the successful international release of the orchestra's first CD last December, Camerata's profile rose and a series of international concert dates has followed. As part of its international series, Camerata will play later this year in Paris (in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on Thursday, November 23rd), London (Cadogan Hall, Tuesday, November 28th) and Dublin (National Concert Hall, Wednesday, November 29th).
"There's a vibrancy about the sound . . . The Irish have a romanticism and a melancholy, which comes across in the sound," said Douglas, the orchestra's artistic director. He set up the chamber orchestra because there seemed to be a "diaspora" of musicians coming out of Ireland.
Among those at the launch in Dublin to announce the dates of Camerata's upcoming concerts were Ciara Higgins, the incoming artistic director of the IIB Bank Music in Great Irish Houses Festival, who takes over the post from pianist Hugh Tinney this year; composer Michael Holohan, whose One Fine Day was premiered as part of the Beckett Centenary Festival at the National Gallery last month; Sen Martin Mansergh; Prof Gerard Gillen, of NUI Maynooth; and trumpeter Eoin Daly.
"In larger orchestras it can become a bit impersonal," said cellist Gerald Peregrine, who played Bach's Allemande at the event. "Barry's enthusiasm translates to the orchestra."
Camerata "took root in the optimism of the peace process and the new climate of hope and reconciliation", said Philip Furlong, secretary general of the Department of Arts. "Cross-Border initiatives . . . provide a powerful illustration of the capacity of music to transcend frontiers."
Out of the garret and into print
Now they will away to lonely garrets to write. But for a few brief moments, the fresh and eager graduates of the MPhil course in creative writing at TCD stood smiling for the cameras on the stone university steps.
"Writing is hard work - that was a revelation," said Therese Caherty, a journalist with The Irish Times, whose poems form part of Incorrigibly Plural, a published collection of new work from the class of 14 writers.
The greatest lesson learned over the course of the year by fellow student Megan Paslawski was "killing your darlings", she said scarily, helpfully explaining that this happens "when you really like something, such as your favourite lines or characters, that sounded really good to you, but that no one else liked".
Among those at the book launch in Trinity College's Atrium were writer Eilís Ní Dhuibhne and her husband, Bo Almqvist, former professor of béaloideas at UCD, with their son, Ragnar Almqvist, who is one of the creative writing graduates. Also there were Caherty's mother, Patricia Caherty, with a friend, Kathleen O'Moore, and many journalists, such as Kieran Fagan, broadcaster and science writer Mary Mulvihill, and Terence Killeen, author of Ulysses Unbound, a reader's guide to Joyce's masterpiece.
Gerard Lee, an actor for the past 20 years, who is also one of the graduates, was with his wife, Paula Greevy, and friends such as director Bairbre Ní Chaoimh and actors Karen Ardiff and Emma Colohan.
Over the course of the year, "the sense of being isolated is overcome", said Gerald Dawe, director of the writing programme. "They meet other writers, have time out from their own lives."
The secret to writing is "consistency, a little every day, rather than bingeing in the production of words", said writer Carlo Gébler, who is the Arts Council Writing Fellow at TCD.
"Friendship is crucial in it," said the recently retired professor, Brendan Kennelly, co-founder of the course with Dawe. "As they talk, they get to know each other as people, as writers and as readers of their work . . . The students teach each other."
Incorrigibly Plural: New Writing from the Oscar Wilde Centre, School of English, Trinity College, Dublin is published by Lemon Soap Press
Fantasies of being alone
Young readers had books at the ready for their favourite writers to autograph this week in Dublin's city centre.
The New Policeman is "about a boy who goes to Tír na nÓg, where they have too much time and he brings some home to his mum", explained Sarah Windle, aged 11, a student at Sandford Parish National School.
"It's really good," said 11-year-old Sorcha Kidney, a fellow primary-school student, whose classmates Nadia Skelton, Lia Cowan and Abbie McDonagh were all in agreement with her.
Kate Thompson's book was declared Bisto Book of the Year 2005-06 at the awards ceremony in the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre. Thompson, who has also won the Guardian Prize for Children's Fiction, the Whitbread Children's Book Award 2005 and the Dublin Airport Authority Irish Children's Book of the Year for this book, smiled shyly as young fans surrounded her for her autograph. Thompson also won the Bisto Book of the Year Award in 2002, 2003 and 2005 for earlier books.
In The New Policeman, "the unfolding plot manages to raise many complex questions about the past and present, but in a seemingly effortless way", said Declan Kiberd, chair of the judging panel and professor of Anglo-Irish literature at UCD. A number of the shortlisted books in the competition dealt with children surviving alone, he said. This was because, he believed, "nowadays children have so much supervision that they don't have that much freedom, and their fantasy is to be alone".
Oisín McGann, author of the shortlisted Under Fragile Stone, signed copies of his books for students from St Colmcille National School, including Megan Curtis (12), Amy Dudley, Deirdre Maher and Aoife O'Neill. They all gave the book 10 out of 10.
Hugh McMahon (11) had brought his copy of Bill and Fred?, by John Quinn, to be signed. This shortlisted book was a great story, he said, "a real page-turner".
Mark Strong (10), had Oliver Jeffers's Lost and Found, which he loved even though the beautifully illustrated book is "kind of for younger kids".
"It's about a kid and a penguin . . . He brings him back to the South Pole, but the penguin is still sad," Strong said.
This book, along with A Horse Called El Dorado, by Kevin Kiely, and Penny the Pencil, by Eileen O'Hely and Nicky Phelan, were presented with Bisto Honour Awards.
Snakes' Elbows, which is Deirdre Madden's first book for children, won this year's Eilís Dillon Award. Kiberd described it as "a wry and mocking take on contemporary culture, not least the fickleness of tabloid journalism".