The local elections take place on 23 May 2014 and in an effort to make sense of what’s happening in Kilkenny, I’ve put together kilkennyelections.com to list the candidates running in the new electoral areas in Kilkenny as well as providing some background information on the areas and the elections themselves.
Contributions of information from those running in the local elections will be welcomed.
Visit KilkennyElections.com.
MacBook Pro, Tracktor Kontrol S4, manual Strand LX desk – tools of the trade for last week’s performance run of Devious Theatre’s Some Flood at Cleere’s, Kilkenny. Hilarity ensued.
From a rooftop on a cold day in Dublin’s city centre to an underwater world, here’s the final artwork for Devious Theatre‘s Some Flood. I’d showcased the teaser version at the end of January featuring photo work from Kasia Kaminska who again provided the full body portraits of actors Eddie Murphy (left) and Kevin Mooney (right) for this version.
If you want to get your toes wet, check out Some Flood performing in Smock Alley, Dublin, as part of Collaborations 2014 on 5 & 7 March, or catch a week’s worth of performances at Cleere’s Theatre, Kilkenny, from 11-15 March including two lunchtime shows on 14 & 15 March.
Tickets for the Kilkenny show are available via tickets.devioustheatre.com.
Mark E Smith’s The Fall took to the Set stage as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival last night with Dublin-based Toujacques opening the proceedings around 10.15pm or so. (more…)
Laura Gramzow’s first solo show, appearing at the Upstairs Gallery in the Watergate Theatre, officially opened yesterday afternoon, running alongside Kilkenny Arts Festival and continuing in the gallery space until 3 September.
Originally from the US and now resident in Ireland courtesy of meeting an Irishman, I had Laura on the show earlier in the week ahead of the opening. I didn’t get to catch her in person yesterday, but did get to catch some of her work, which takes a different approach to the usual appearance of the Upstairs Gallery.
Read on for the full blurb on the exhibition…
While my blogging continues primarily over at AnyGivenFood.com, I’ve been keeping myself busy in the past few weeks with the above – bash:latterday plays by The Devious Theatre Company. It’s been a good year for me so far in terms of theatre, producing three shows with DTC, working with Watergate Productions, bringing shows to festivals in Dublin and Cork and now, moving on to my fifth and final theatrical production of the year.
This year also marked five years on the go for The Devious Theatre Company and has been a massive transition year for us. We spent the first six months of the year working as artists in residence with Kilkenny County Council’s Arts Office on our In The Future When All’s Well residency and having recently gone through the company formation process, we’ve secured a physical home for the theatre for the foreseeable future, allowing us to spend more time developing work and planning and plotting our 2012 and 2013 calendars.
bash, for me, presents a theatrical homecoming of sorts as it’s our first major production to stage in the intimate surrounds of Cleere’s Theatre in Kilkenny since we revisited Heart Shaped Vinyl in 2007 for an updated run of our debut production in 2006. It is, as they say, where the magic happened for us in the first place and we’ll be looking to recreate that from October 17th to 22nd.
bash was first performed in 1999. It became quickly renowned for its shocking and unflinching portrayals of everyday evil with the New York Times calling it ‘insistently brutal’. Like much of LaBute’s work, it exposes the dark and sinister undercurrents of clean cut middle American life. The play was considered so shocking at the time that LaBute was disfellowshipped by the Church Of Latter Day Saints, of whom the characters in bash are members.
The play consists of 3 stories with a loose basis on Greek mythology, transposed to modern America. Delivered in monologues that are conversational, breezy, natural and ultimately gutwrenching, bash examines the horrific lengths that human beings go to in order to stay in control of their lives.
In iphigenia in orem a young utah businessman recounts a particularly chilling confession to a stranger in a Las Vegas hotel room. It will be performed by John Morton and directed by myself.
a gaggle of saints sees a young couple document the violent events of a romantic weekend away in New York. It will be performed by Amy Dunne and myself and directed by Annette O’Shea.
In medea redux a young woman tells the ultimately tragic tale about a romance with her high school teacher when she was a teenager. It will be performed by Annette O’Shea and directed by John Morton.
Neil LaBute’s plays include The Shape Of Things, The Mercy Seat, Fat Pig, Wrecks and reasons to be pretty. His film work includes In The Company Of Men, Your Friends And Neighbours, Nurse Betty and Possession.
Neil LaBute’s bash: latterday plays runs in Cleere’s Theatre, Kilkenny from October 17th – 22nd at 8pm nightly. Bookings can be made on 056 – 7762573. Tickets are €12 and are available to buy online now (subject to booking fee).
With THREE festivals taking place in Kilkenny this weekend between the Rockfall music festival, Savour Kilkenny Food Festival and the World Conker Championships / Festival, news comes by mail of another festival for Kilkenny, this time Ireland’s first economics festival. Of course, it’s not just all about business as some of the country’s leading economists and commentators will be joined by some of Ireland’s leading comedians.
Economists including David McWilliams, Bill Black, Martín Lousteau, Ha-Joon Chang, Vilhjálmur Bjarnason and Philippe Legrain are world class, all offering intelligent opinion on what just happened and what needs to happen next.
Commentators including John Lanchester, Peter Antonioni, Fintan O’Toole, Constantin Gurdgiev, and Olivia O’Leary all offer a unique take on our current circumstances and creative ideas for our future recovery.
Comedians, including Des Bishop, Colin Murphy, Karl Spain, Fred MacAulay, Neil Delamere and Barry Murphy all know how to find plenty of humour in dark times.
By the read of the release and Kilkenomics.com, they’re also introducing a new currency to Kilkenny for the weekend which can be used against shows, books and anything else on offer under the festival banner.
It all takes place in Kilkenny, November 11th – 14th with twenty four events on over the four days. You can buy an individual ticket for any of the shows or a season ticket for €80/€100 which gets you
For all the info, check out Kilkenomics.com.
I don’t usually go out of my way to speak at events or gatherings, social, business or otherwise. But when Keith Bohanna asked if I could fill in for him at last night’s KLCK Bloggers Network gathering in Kilkenny I figured I couldn’t say no, the event being on my doorstep and all.
I would equate the gathering last night to something akin to Open Coffee only minus the coffee and a bit more formal. The KLCK Bloggers Network was formed by Amanda Webb (of Spiderworking.com, in the running for best videocaster at this year’s Irish Web Awards) and Lorna Sixsmith of Garendenny Lane who I had met previously at Kilkenny Open Coffee (also turns out we’re both writing for a Carlow magazine). The event itself was held in the Kilkenny Pembroke Hotel who were providing one of their conference rooms complete with projector, screen, notepads, pens, all you would need to run an event like it.
While I was the second speaker on the night (which worked out a treat in terms of the content), Marie Ennis-O’Connor was first up to bat leading a great talk on driving additional traffic to your blog, from starting out as a blogger to building a community around your blog through email, comments, guest blogging and more. The audience (about 18/19 of us there) was a mix of beginner and experienced bloggers with some people simply coming in to get an understanding of what blogging is and does for people.
My own talk was quickly cobbled together yesterday on the back of what I call my WordPress toolbox – the plugins I deem essential to any WordPress installation and ones that I keep handy in a zip file whenever I’m starting a new blog either for myself or a client but I felt it went well for something that was a technical overview of additions you can make to your WordPress blog for the both the admin side of things and your theme out front. You can get the list of plugins and links here on Slideshare. The slides also feature a glimpse of the new branding I’m rolling out across the business later in the month.
Last night was the fourth monthly gathering of the network which heads to Kildare for November and should be back in Kilkenny come February or March. The name – KLCK – is an aconym for Kildare Laois Carlow and Kilkenny and they’re actively looking for topics for discussion that would benefit all in attendance, along with speakers. If the rest of the gatherings are along the lines of last night then they’ll be well worth heading along to. Having it hosted in the Pembroke created an opportunity for people to stay on for drinks and further the conversation in the bar but there’s signs there of a good group and network in the making, with everyone being able to contribute on some level from the own experiences. One thing I did note though is that for the 18 people in the room, there were only four men around the table, one of them being me as a speaker for the evening. Makes a change from the male-dominated Open Coffee mornings in Kilkenny.
That said, it’s also opened me up to the notion that I need to get to more events. Outside of Kilkenny, I think Media2020 and the Blog Awards in Galway were the only events I’ve been to for the year. Time to get back on the road, maybe as far as Kildare for the second Monday in November…
ONE OF the highlights of my calendar year (and that of Kilkenny) is the Kilkenny Arts Festival. Now in its 36th year, this year’s festival runs from August 6th to 15th and is packed to the hilt with the best in music, theatre and dance, visual arts, literature, children’s events and more. A long time spectator, last year was the first year I’ve volunteered on the festival and I’m back (along with John Morton) in the same role last year in producing the online content for the festival duration (and blogging the festival via the KAF blog).
That started yesterday with the launch in Dublin where Fergus Shiel put a group of professional singers through their paces to announce the KAF programme for 2010 through a choral performance. The same will be repeated in Kilkenny on August 14th where Fergus will lead a group of around 200 singers through a performance in St. Canice’s Catherdral where works will include Rossini’s Sabat Mater and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy.
Check out the video above, or watch the Qik clip of the launch yesterday as it happened.
photo credit: Yuki Mizuguchi
IT’S THAT time of the month again, tomorrow today is Open Coffee morning in Kilkenny (follow on Twitter).
For almost 18 months now we’ve been operating on the first Wednesday of every month and regardless of whether there’s a dozen people there or two people there, it’s a morning I very much look forward to in the month as a chance to catch up with folk, shoot the breeze over some tea, talk a little shop, sport, tech, gadgets, demos, whatever is going.
Wednesday’s meet takes place, as usual, at the rear of the Kilkenny Café in Market Cross Shopping Centre (map here) and kicks off at 11am. Free wifi and chats are available so if you’re reading this at your desk or on your phone this morning and you’ve got a half hour / hour to spare in your day or just want to pop your head in to say hello, do come along.
WORDCAMP IRELAND takes place this weekend, kicking off this morning in my own back garden (Kilkenny) where hopefully I’ll get to pop my head in for a few minutes over the course of the two days.
Langton House Hotel is the venue for the first Irish WordCamp conference and for bloggers, techies, non-techies and WordPress users of all levels there’s plenty to choose from. Things kicked off informally last night with some nibbles, drinks and a photowalk around Kilkenny and registration has just opened this morning for the start of talks proper. Up first are Hanni Ross & Sheri Bigelow, Leo Ibanez & Loughlin O’Nolan and Daryl Koopersmith all split across the three tracks – Intro, Bloggers and Tech.
Check the full WordCamp schedule.
Langtons are looking after the catering and judging by mentions of croissants and scones for the morning, lunches in the afternoon and the (ticketed) dinners in the evening, along with a special WordCamp cocktail menu, nobody will be going home hungry. There’s full childcare available, free wifi for all and plenty for speakers and attendees to link up with.
For those who haven’t picked up tickets yet, there are limited numbers available on the door with tickets today available for €50 and tomorrow (Sunday) available at €25.
It’s possible I’ll make an appearance this afternoon disguised as a clown (or I could be mistaken for a clown in the garb I’ll be wearing for the day) so if you see a grown man running in the door of Set Theatre wearing lime green dungarees, a bright pink shirt and a very white face, do say hello. To all those visiting Kilkenny for the first time, you’ve got the weather for it, you’ve got plenty to see and do so don’t miss out on what the city has to offer as well!
SURROUNDING YOURSELF with fantastic creatives (i.e. incredibly creative people) can be great for your health. It can be great for your sanity. It can inspire all kinds of creative thoughts of your own, bring ideas to life and much more. Of course, if you’re like me, it can leave you with a cap, a white face, a pencil moustache, incredibly large sideburns, a pink check shirt, electric green overalls and outrageous accents.
But in fairness, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
One of those creatives is fellow deviant, Paddy Dunne, who has produced the latest masterpiece. For the last few stage productions for Devious Theatre, myself, Paddy and John (Morton) have worked the angles and cameras coming up with funky setups and promotional imagery for the likes of Stags and Hens, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and next month’s production of Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! The phrase “I’ll just photoshop it in” took on a life of its own many moons ago, but “photoshop it in” he’s done and he’s created this gem.
Of course, we won’t mention his PPAI Designer of the Year nomination last year but you’ll find reference to it in the programme if you make it along to the show.
Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! opens in Set Theatre, Kilkenny, on Wednesday March 10th and runs to Sunday March 14th. Tickets, priced €13 are available from our online sales area. The early bird tickets (which were available at €10) have been snapped up but we’ve got plenty to go around. From March we’ll be taking a break from the stage for a few months, directing our theatrical sights into other areas online and off and this latest production brings a close to our Dario Fo season so we urge you to come out, you won’t be disappointed.
For more on the show, check DeviousTheatre.com.
THE SECRET of Kells has been on a good roll of late. Hell, it’s been on a good roll since the movie premiered last Spring. Of course, nothing says “good roll” than rolling on up to the Oscars as Cartoon Saloon’s The Secret Of Kells has been nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the 82nd annual Academy Awards. See full list of nominees here.
If Glen Hansard can do it, maybe the “luck of the Irish” can rub off as the Tomm Moore directed movie goes up against Corlaine, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess & The Frog and Up (which I loved in the cinema).
Congratulations to Tomm, Paul and everyone else at the Saloon who worked on the production, both in Ireland and overseas. It’s great to see another company from Kilkenny making a serious mark on the global stage.
FOLLOWING ON from yesterday’s foray into the world of online food shopping it’s safe to say that everything arrived, is packed away in the fridge or press and I’m stocked for the week.
From looking at the food on the table (in the above picture), *almost* everything arrived as ordered. As a follow up, I’ve broken the process down to a few areas.
Delivery
On the website I was quoted €4 for delivery, the window chosen being 10:30am to 12:30pm today. True to their word, at 11:50am the driver turned up with two crates, dropped them for unpacking on the table, got me to sign for the delivery and off he went. Charge on the bottom of the receipt reads €4. The bottom of the receipt also indicates that the goods were scanned and paid for at 11:16am this morning, so that’s a pretty good turn around (i.e. the dairy side of the order wasn’t out of the fridge all that long). Might be worth noting too that I didn’t order any frozen food and I’m trying to refrain from ordering anything frozen at all for the year. So far so good.
Substitution
Superquinn provide product substitution on your shopping list, where something you’ve ordered isn’t available. In my case, it was the beef strips for the stir fry. This is possibly due to ordering the beef strips as part of their online meal deal offering beef strips or diced chicken, plus fresh stir-fry veg as a bundle. Knowing I had some chicken in the freezer anyway, I opted for the beef, which now appears to have been unavailable in Superquinn Kilkenny.
That said, the diced chicken was available and it will certainly do. When ordering online, you do have the option of instructing your personal shopper *not* to substitute a product if it’s out of stock and if I was really picky I could have asked for beef regardless, break the special offer etc.
Pricing
On their website, it is noted that
Today’s price is an estimated total and may differ slightly from the original order value due to variables such as weight estimations for meat and produce, weekly specials, price changes or stock deletion
.
My order, at “today’s price”, yesterday, was estimated at €51.04. The final price, including delivery, came to €53.48 and there were a few differences on the final receipt.
The onions were ordered, I’d looked for 700g, the bag coming in at around 550g thus shaving a few cent from the order. Prices fluctuated here and there but most notably in the offers that weren’t adhered to. The site also has various price reductions running up to January 26th including 90c off packet soups (didn’t appear on the receipt), 89c off rocket salad (again, no go), 79c off fresh soup (no go), 95c off lemongrass noodles (again, no discount)… adding up to €3.53, plus the cost of the green tea jumped from €1.89 to €3.99 giving a total increase in prices to €5.63, yet the final discrepancy just €2.44.
Given there were certain things in the order that won’t need to be ordered again next week, I would expect things to balance out in week two and keep in line with my €50 p/w budget.
Overall
Overall, I’ve been impressed with it. Like I indicated yesterday, the online ordering process is a breeze, there’s full details available on everything going into your shopping basket and on delivery they provide you with a list of everything that was delivered
It would be nice if the printed dockets included notes on what was substituted, or differences in pricing, but other than that, I’m set for the week, didn’t have to leave the house and I’m willing to give it another lash next week.
THE DEVIOUS theatre company, one of my other / many hats, have announced details of our first major production in 2010, Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! and I’ll be on KCLR96FM around 4:15pm afternoon chatting about the show. You can tune in via KCLR96FM.com (live stream link).
We do a lot of things online as a company, given we have no physical premises as such (bar sharing each others offices for the odd rehearsal / recording session). We blog, we connect, we share videos, tweet, hold our meetings online, use private forums for staff discussion, provide online resources, scripts and schedules for cast and crew, we advertise (and have completed a few useful Facebook ad campaigns), we podcast, we’ve an online CRM setup for managing contacts and suppliers and a whole lot more besides. The next logical step of course was to start selling tickets online.
I had long thought about it for the group, given the wide variety of venues we’ve performed in, the growing and varying audiences we’re attracting show-on-show, and the difference in management for pre-bookings or box office practice per venue that it would be good to introduce something online that we could manage ourselves, cost effectively as well.
Enter Eventbrite, which within ten minutes of using I had our December performance of Accidental Death of an Anarchist up and running, with five nights of tickets to buy for, connected out to our Facebook profile to plug the event there and (add on another five minutes or so) tickets available via DeviousTheatre.com with their embedding service.
So with a new show on the horizon and tickets gone to the printers, we figured we’d do exactly the same for our production of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! in March.
There were a lot of plusses for using the service. To start with, it opened the door to a potential new revenue stream for the group. We decided that 2010 would be the year we focus on turning the group towards a business, the first step for us in bringing the company “professional” (join the queue for the debate between amateur and professional theatre) and as such, revenue streams have to be looked at. We spend a lot of time, as a group, online in promoting and documenting our shows and we felt that online ticket sales would give us the ability to reach those that are the more serious web users, those au fait with booking online. We also wanted a way to provide ticket sales to people traveling from out of town, those who couldn’t travel to Kilkenny before the box office closed at six, or those who didn’t want to give credit card details over the phone. On both, accounts, it worked.
That was the test – would it work. I would have considered it a success if one person had bought one ticket online, at least we know it worked. But one turned into three, turned into 17 and more as the weekend theatregoers turned up with their pre-printed tickets (made available by Eventbrite), our door staff crossing off the checklist of those who registered and paid for tickets online (also made available by Eventbrite) and as a plus for us, we had immediate access for funds to use online in advance of the production. As the payments go from Eventbrite to our Paypal account, and we’re avid eBay users for sourcing props for shows over the years, we’ve created a stream of income we didn’t quite have before.
For some of those people attending Accidental Death of an Anarchist, who bought their tickets online, it was their first time to see one of our productions – a further success in my eyes. Would they have come to the show or traveled 30 miles to Kilkenny if they hadn’t been able to buy their tickets online? Maybe, maybe not, but they came. And as a bonus, we’ve decided that those who did purchase tickets online for our first show will receive a nice discount on the online purchases if they want to buy tickets for Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! online. A token gesture for us, yes, but at the same time we’re hoping it would encourage people to return again and enjoy another night at the theatre.
The tickets for Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay are on sale. You can pick them up online here and here. There is a booking fee of €1.07 per ticket sold online, something that we’re also able to manage ourselves and it’s how Eventbrite (much like the credit card companies or physical theatres) will make their money from box office sales. When Eventbrite deliver funds per show / ticket sold, those funds include the booking fee. Post-event we’re invoiced from Eventbrite to recoup the booking fee, and again, it’s a straight Paypal transaction. Outside of that, there’s no other cost involved. No membership fee, no setup fee, nothing.
So we add online ticket sales to our bow, and we know that it works. I’m still tempted into doing an online theatre production, or live-streaming one of our own productions but we’ll have to talk to the licensing powers that be about that one.
And yes, I’m sure there are other ticket-selling resources available but we’ve tried Eventbrite, made it work, had it generate revenue and open a whole other realm of online promotion for the group so we’re happy to keep going with it.
Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! runs at the Set Theatre, John Street, Kilkenny from Wednesday March 10th to Sunday March 14th 2010. Tickets available online priced €13 ex booking fee. Keep an eye on DeviousTheatre.com for more details.
Photo via Twitpic, © Gav Reilly
Alas poor Supermacs, I knew ye well.
The taxi was called after nine for a few Christmas pints, having braved the drive from Sligo a few hours previous. The driver said “there must be something up” in town, evident by the large pillar of smoke rising over the skyline but by the time we reached the parade, restrictions were well underway. A quick detour around the town and five minutes later I’m standing on High Street watching Supermacs burn.
I remember when it opened, back in primary school at the time with some lads in the class tearing off in to town to be amongst the first few in the door and get themselves a free burger. Supermacs arrival in Kilkenny was massive, equaled, I guess, in size by the damage caused during last night’s blaze. For over an hour I found myself standing on High Street, blocked by the guards from venturing past the post office, watching on as a good half dozen units of the fire brigade went to work on containing the fire and stopping it spreading to the adjoining shops and apartments. Their efforts, if you read the Kilkenny People (here and here), were successful albeit having to return to a rekindled blaze in the early hours of the morning.
For many a year (before my appetite, diet and perhaps, sense, prevailed), Supermacs was a favoured haunt for secondary school Friday lunches or as a destination for post-pub grub on a night out.
The glass roof is gone, “other aspects of the building” have collapsed and ultimately it looks gutted but thankfully, not one person was hurt, injured or worse in the blaze.
Alas, poor Supermacs, we knew ye well.
The August outing of Kilkenny Open Coffee takes place tomorrow morning (Wednesday August 5th) at 11:30pm and we’re back in the Kilkenny Cafe at Market Cross for tomorrow’s gathering.
Last month we had a nice sized meetup in the Kilkenny Rivercourt Hotel but given recent unreliable twists in the weather, we’re taking to The Meeting Room at the rear of the Kilkenny Cafe.
For those of you traveling from outside Kilkenny City, check here for a map.
You can now follow Kilkenny Open Coffee on Twitter.
A special FX test shoot that turned itself into a mini short, by good friend and partner-in-crime at Kilkenny Music and My Music, Ross Costigan and featuring another partner-in-crime, Alan Dawson.
Hopefully some of those scripts he talks about come to light soon. Better be a part in there for me. Or you’re fired.
Go enjoy The Game.
