Imagine! Festival of Ideas and Politics (18-24 March) … a preview of the more overtly arty events #ImagineBelfast

Happy birthday Imagine! Festival of Ideas and Politics. Ten years of delighting, educating, and engaging the grey matter of citizens of Belfast and beyond. Running between Monday 18 and Sunday 24 March, there are more than a hundred films, talks, gigs, walking tours, exhibitions, panels, workshops and theatre shows. This year’s strapline seems very apt: top enterbrainment.

I’ve posted on Slugger O’Toole about some of the policy and political discussions and panels. But what about the more arty events in the bulging programme?

Shoot Belfast’s studio and gallery space on Chapel Lane is hosting two plays.

Mother! The Story of Mother Jones // Tuesday 19 and Wednesday 20 at 7pm // A play about once the most dangerous woman in America. Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was 9 years old when she emigrated from Cork to America. Overcoming inconceivable personal tragedy, she became a fearless advocate for workers’ rights and child labour law reform., testifying before the US Congress in 1917. Prosecuting attorneys and corporate landlords described Mother Jones as “the most dangerous woman in America”. Written by Mike Broemmel, Mother! Starts DJ De Jong as Mother Jones and is directed by Greg West and produced by produced by Jennifer Dempsey, Colorado Theater in Non-Traditional Places (TINTS). Their team of writers, actors and directors create original scripts that highlight individuals whose achievements have been under-recognised.

I’m Harvey Milk! // Thursday 21 and Friday 22 at 7pm // A play about Harvey Milk – the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California. As 1977 San Francisco City Supervisor, Milk battled against anti-gay initiatives and sponsored bills banning discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment on the basis of sexual orientation. Described as a “visionary who imagined a righteous world inside his head and then set about to create it for real for all of us,” Milk was assassinated by co-worker Dan White who claimed the so-called Twinkie Defense. Starring Ben Beasley plays Harvey Milk. Written by Mike Broemmel and directed by Greg West.

Storytelling as Activism // Tuesday 19 at 1pm in Accidental Theatre // What happens when we encounter injustice? There are traditional routes to righting wrongs, although the outcome is often less than satisfactory. When we look to the arts, we discover that creatives have always been telling stories that pique our imagination and stir our sense of morality and empathy. Amanda Verlaque wrote the play This Sh*t Happens All the Time in response to a homophobic hate crime. (I reviewed a rehearsed reading of the play by Nicky Harley back in the 2019 Outburst Arts Festival. And returned when it was staged in the Lyric Theatre as a co-production with Imagine! in 2022.Now Nicky Harley returns to the central role this March in the Grand Opera House’s studio theatre.) At this event, Amanda will use her play to guide the audience through the importance of recording and sharing LGBTQIA+ stories to maintain visibility and encourage justice.

The Art and Science of Songwriting – Muse or Maths? // Monday 18 March at 8pm in Crescent Arts Centre // Chuck Berry said it all came down to mathematics, but you don’t hear people singing Pythagoras’ Theorem down the pub, do you? Join Nuala McKeever for a relaxed, fun evening of conversation and performance with singer-songwriters Anthony Toner and Brigid O’Neill about what makes a great song that stays with people for years and decades. As well as performing some of their best-loved songs, Brigid and Anthony reveal the secrets of their own writing and discuss the work of their favourite artists as they explore the nature of their craft – is it inspiration, perspiration or computation?

When Music and Politics Collide // Wednesday 20 March at 8pm in QUB Harty Room // What’s music’s role in shaping and reflecting the political landscape? Songs of protest. Becoming the theme tune to a particular era’s zeitgeist. Inspiring change? Or celebrating a political movement. Lifting a message off the page and bringing it to life. Musical performances and a panel discussion with Dr David Robb (Reader in Music at Queen’s University Belfast, Joby Fox (musician and activist) and Charlotte Dryden (CEO of the Oh Yeah Centre).

Cultural Diplomacy and the Art of Soft Power // Thursday 21 at 3pm in The Black Box // What has been and is the role of art and artists in shaping Ireland’s international image, north and south? What is the role of cultural diplomacy in a polarised and divided world? How can cultural diplomacy pave the way to wider cooperation and dialogue, and foster a better understanding between cultures and nations? A talk on the Art of Soft Power by Evgeniya Ravtsova (International Programmes Manager at the Victoria and Albert Museum) will be followed by a panel discussion with Sheena Barrett (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Cian Smyth (Ulster Presents) and Richard Williams (Northern Ireland Screen).

Poetry and Politics: Paul Muldoon in conversation with William Crawley // Friday 22 at 8pm in Crescent Arts Centre // County Armagh-born Pulitzer-winning poet Paul Muldoon will examine the relationship between poetry and politics and the challenges of addressing contentious and ‘difficult' political and cultural issues. The conversation will be interspersed with readings.

How many Bardic Harpers does it take to change a lightbulb? // Friday 22 at 8pm in Crescent Arts Centre // If serious poetry isn’t your thing, then join Ursula Burns at the same time in a different part of the same venue for a walk through 30 years of dangerous harping. The harp is an iconic part of identity on this island. From the Bunting Manuscripts of the Irish Harpers Assemble to Guinness, Politics, Weddings, and Funerals. Wafting through the mists of time, Ursula asks, “what got lost in our harping history?” Ursula will explore her relationship with Belfast through song-writing and finish her talk with a performance of new instrumental compositions that demonstrate her unique technique.

Henry Normal and Nigel Planer // Sunday 24 at 8pm in The Black Box // Festival regular Henry Normal returns for an evening of poetry, stories, jokes, Q&A, fun, knitwear and surprises. Accompanied by Nigel Planer, a prolific poet and author, probably best known as Neil in The Young Ones. As well as novels, plays and TV and radio scripts, Nigel has been writing and publishing poetry for over fifty years.

Just a sample from the full programme available on the Imagine! Belfast festival website.

Petite Maman – charming, beautiful, and perhaps even profound (QFT until 2 December)

Is there a more perfect film than Petite Maman? 72 minutes of loveliness wrapped up in a time-travelling tale of inter-generational love and loss.

Written and directed by Céline Sciamma, Petite Maman tells its story of what happened when eight-year-old child Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) helped her parents clear out her dead grandmother’s home. Exploring the nearby woods, Nelly finds a half-built fort in the trees, and a little girl her age (Marion played by Gabrielle Sanz). As they spend time together, their lives turn out to be connected through time. To be told more would spoil the plot …

Filming everything from waist height quickly asserts that Nelly is at the heart of the story. We watch how a delightfully precocious child understands her mother’s mental health and childhood medical condition (Nina Meuriss), how she pieces together her family’s history and navigates around the gaps, how she deals with grief and her wish that she had said goodbye properly, and how she asks the most brilliant questions to the adults around her and speaks truth into the grief-struck atmosphere of sorting through ephemera and memories. “You don’t forget … you just don’t listen” she rebukes her father (Stéphane Varupenne).

Much is said without words. The children play in the woods with an instinctive understanding of what happens next. It could be a dream, it could be magic realism, but we settle into the understanding that for little Nelly it is the most regular thing in the world to walk across to the other side of the woods and find a very familiar house with a rather familiar family.

The understated ordinariness creates a beautiful world in which the cinema audience can inhabit. One which doesn’t require an emotional musical score to signpost how we should feel. Our imaginations fire off, wondering whether there will be tragedy, some dark twist that changes the passage of time. But Sciamma has a much more virtuous path for us to tread. Softly leading us through the leafy path from one house to the next, reminding us how little we know – or are told – about how and why are parents act as they do.

Petite Maman is charming, beautifully filmed and directed, and in its own way quite profound. It’s a big hug of a film and much recommended. You can catch it at Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 2 December. 

 

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Previewing Rosemary Jenkinson’s new play, Billy Boy, as part of the 2021 EastSide Arts Festival

Northern Ireland theatre never stopped. The industry found novel ways of continuing to perform. Online. Outside. On television. In audio. But despite many other sectors and related practices being able to take mitigating action to minimise the airborne spread of the corona virus, theatres didn’t manage to return even in the gaps between previous lockdowns.

Without wanting to spook the horses, the NI Executive may yet confirm that theatres can reopen later today. And that could mean that in a fortnight’s time, Rosemary Jenkinson’s new play Billy Boy can have a live run at Strand Arts Centre as part of EastSide Arts Festival.

The premise is that it’s the 11th July. The sun is splitting the trees. The tarmac is melting on the ground and Aaron and his mates are protecting the biggest bonfire in east Belfast. It’s a complicated situation. Everyone has an opinion, but as everyone knows ‘Compromise Equals Sell-Out’.

“… flames flying, near roasts your eyeballs off, the heated last you to Christmas. We can’t stop staring at it, pulls us into it’s glow, it’s mesmerising, it’s primal, black pallets falling into the bright orange. And the rave’s back on …”

That’s a quote from Billy Boy and it summons up my own sensory memories of Eleventh Night visits to photograph and report on bonfires. I asked Rosemary if she’s been a regular visitor to the bonfires in East Belfast?

I used to visit the Annadale bonfire which inspired my first play, The Bonefire. In the East, I go to the huge Ravenhill bonfire, though I also checked out the contentious Avoniel bonfire two years ago which helped formulate the idea for Billy Boy. I’ve always loved bonfires as fire appeals to our primeval instincts. It’s hard to explain to people who have never been, but, to me, Belfast bonfires combine the atmosphere of a Glastonbury rave with something sacred like the ceremonial burning of a Viking longship.

It’s often said that loyalist culture isn’t as frequently portrayed or marked in the arts as republican culture and history. As a writer and playwright, were you surprised to find yourself returning to the subject of bonfires after a fifteen-year gap?

I’m not surprised, as the political landscape has changed – just look at the recent furore over the Tiger’s Bay bonfire. There may be anti-social issues around certain bonfires, but it’s interesting how bonfire builders often view themselves as on the front line of a cultural war. Back in 2006, tyres were burnt to make bonfires last longer, but thankfully environmental concerns are now more to the fore.

It’s true that loyalist culture isn’t as frequently portrayed in literature and that’s because it doesn’t fit conveniently into an Irish or British box. Republican culture fits into an all-Ireland and Irish-American narrative and has been embraced by both writers and the middle-classes. Writers have to paint a more balanced picture when it comes to identity, and I plan to bring bonfires to wider international attention.

Bonfire culture is much talked about, much criticised, much stereotyped. In some of your plays, you’re quite obviously taking a position against big banks and the finance system, or highlighting inadequacies in the asylum system. Having read the script, this time, it feels like you’re less judgemental and perhaps letting the bonfire speak for itself. As a playwright, did you start out with a sense of how you’d tackle the subject?

Plays are often fuelled by a playwright’s own moral outrage, but I decided to let my voice take a backseat, though I came up with the narrative myself with a nudge from Maurice Kinkead of the EastSide Partnership who suggested the Amsterdam angle. [A visitor from the Netherlands brings the gaze of an outsider to the finale.]

It’s all too easy for a writer to rage about the Irish tricolour being burnt on a bonfire, so instead I let the bonfire builders explain why they do it in their own words. In The Bonefire my target was paramilitaries, but in Billy Boy my target is those who completely condemn bonfires without recognizing the history, the sheer architectural talent, and the community spirit behind them. It’s great to look at a cultural phenomenon from different perspectives and with Billy Boy I made the decision not to look at it from the outside but from the inside.

Creatively, has the pandemic been tough for writing plays, knowing that other than filming them, there was no chance of an audience? Are you looking forward to seeing and hearing live audience reaction to Billy Boy at the EastSide Arts Festival? And do you hope some of the bonfire collectors and builders attend?

Tough? It’s been hell. I’ve written very few plays during the pandemic as filmed plays don’t garner the same attention as live performance. It’s also unbelievable that the Executive haven’t reopened theatres yet. Even Shakespeare at the time of the plague didn’t have to wait as long as this!

Our director Matt Faris has made an excellent film of the play, but it can’t compare to the thrill of live performance. I can’t wait to hear laughs and gasps and am especially excited about the standing ovation (thought I’d plant a seed there!) One thing’s for sure - John Travers is going to put in a scorching performance. EastSide Arts are inviting the bonfire builders I interviewed, and I’ll be dying to get their response.

What’s next? More plays? More short stories? A novel?

I’ve been writing historical partition plays for Kabosh and National Museums Northern Ireland which will be performed live at Omagh/Cultra in September – it’s been a pleasure to write politically on that theme. I have a new collection of short stories, Marching Season, coming out with Arlen House in the autumn, so fingers-crossed for a live launch. I’ve other projects on the go, but, unless they’re a cert, I don’t talk about them in public in case I tempt fate! Nothing is real until it happens.

You can catch Billy Boy in the Strand Arts Centre as part of EastSide Arts Festival at 3pm and 8pm on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 August. Tickets £15. Performed by John Travers, written by Rosemary Jenkinson, and directed by Matt Farris.