Archive News
Portumna Festival keeps arts flag flying despite setbacks
Date Published: 05-Sep-2012
Costume designer Joan Bergin, whose film credits include My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father and Dancing at Lughnasa, will officially open this year’s Shorelines Arts Festival in Portumna on Thursday, September 20. The event will also feature local Omna Singers.
Joan Bergin’s presence at the festival is particularly apt, given that she has strong links with Dublin’s Focus Theatre, which is being celebrated in this year’s Shorelines, says Festival Director Noelle Lynskey.
Portumna’s Festival is a voluntary event, and it is taking place despite cutbacks and a lack of promised government funding, according to Ms Lynskey of the Portumna Arts Group, which is organising the festival. She and the group are grateful to business sponsors and local friends, whose support has ensured that the event can continue.
The Tune Makers, featuring accordion player Máirtín O’Connor, guitarist Dave Flynn and American fiddler Liz Carroll, will be in concert on the opening night, September 20 at 8.30pm. The show, in Portumna’s Church of Ireland, will include the performers’ own compositions and those of East Galway musicians, Paddy Fahey, Finbarr Dwyer and the late Vincent Broderick.
Galway poet Rita Ann Higgins will give a reading at Shorelines on Saturday, September 22 at 8pm in The Church of Ireland’s Saturday Show. She will be joined by Portlaoise born poet and broadcaster Pat Boran, who is also facilitating workshops during the Festival. The Saturday Show will also see the debut Portumna appearance of a new group No Strings Attached. They offer a mix of vocals and music, with unique arrangements and vocal harmonies. Darren de Burca, guitarist and singer, will also perform at this event.
Those attending all the concerts are advised to come early as seating in the Church of Ireland is limited.
Visitors to that Church will have an extra treat during the Festival with Tapestry – A Flower Festival designed by Richard Haslam. Richard has over 30 years’ experience in the floristry trade and is a multi-medal winner in Chelsea, Hampton Court and Bloom.
Dramatists are being celebrated at Shorelines with a retrospective on the writings of Declan and Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy, founder members of Dublin’s Focus Theatre Company in Dublin in 1967.
They are still writing and producing plays, novels and poetry. Actors from the Focus, including Tom Hickey, Michael Ford and Bairbre Ní Chaoimh will take part in an evening of readings and performances, curated by writer, poet and director, Neil Donnelly.
Local drama is marked with the launch of Voices in the Loft, a new book documenting history of 60 years of Portumna Players, illustrated with photos of early and recent productions. The book was compiled by local author Aideen O’Reilly whose interest in preserving the history of one of Ireland’s most enduring amateur drama groups began with a search through her late father’s files. Members of Portumna Players will stage The London Vertigo, a one-act drama for adults during the Festival, as well as a series of comic sketches. There will also be children’s drama with The Upside Down Twits, based on the Roald Dahl story.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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