It seems as if the one man show is the new black. At least to theatre folk who have embraced the style as this seasons must try format. There are 19 such shows in the Absolut Fringe where the next generation of theatre makers sink their fangs into a vein more used to nourishing artists in the later throws of their career. With seemingly goading and irreverent titles like The Year of Magical Wanking and Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You, scratch away at the artifice and you discover that still waters don’t just run deep. They run over. And their aim is to sweep you up in their flow.

“Nobody wants bullshit anymore” says Amy Conroy, the writer/star of Eternal Rising of the Sun, a dark tender and moving story of transformation, where to err is human, to dance devine. “There is a desire for honest, driven theatre where we expose part of ourselves to the audience and cut out all the crap and pretension.”

Eternal Rising of the Sun continues her desire to make theatre about invisible people. “The people you don’t see in societey. And if you do, you make a snap desicion about them and move on.” Just like the elderly Lesbians she wrote of in I Heart Alice Heart I, were dismissed as “cute” or “sexless”, Gina, who uses dance classes as a catalyst to seing a world of possibility, could be dismissed as a tracksuit wearing buggy pusher. “So it had to be Gina’s voice centre stage” says Conroy, “because she’s never had a voice before.”

It’s directed by Veronica Coubourn, a long time friend and collaborator, a relationship Conroy says is integral to her undertaking the project. “It would be really hard to go into a room with a stranger” she says. “You don’t want it to be just another job for them. A one person show, it’s all consuming and incredibly intense. You’re vulnerable and you need to know that you are in safe hands.”

So why put yourself in the spotlight and the firing line? Is there a certain amount of ego involved/needed?

“I think it is the exact opposite of ego” says Maeve Fitzgerald. “It’s a terrible mistake to do a show just because you think it will do something for you. It should be because you believe that you can add something to it.”  She undertook The Yellow Wallpaper, a groundbreaking short story about a woman with post partum psychosis, so she could put her voice on it.  “I wanted to put my own experiences in life to work to make it something real” she says.

A demanding and disturbing show, Aoife Spillane-Hinks directs, tailoring the rehearsal process to Fitzgerald in a way that just isn’t possible with an ensemble. “We have spent a lot of time working through this extraordinary text, working-out what this and that is, and if Maeve said, ‘this moment I don’t get, lets go back to the table and figure it out’ we can do that. Where as with a larger cast one person might get it, another person might want to go back to the table and another might want to walk it through. “

For Neil Watkins, writing and starring in The Year of Magical Wanking was a form of exorcism. “One of the things I really enjoyed doing was being private in public. There was something really cathartic about that.”

With its punning title and blasphemous imagery you’d be forgiven for thinking that you were in for an evening of cheap shots and tasteless humor. However it is an astonishing intrusion on ones private self, where Watkins’s confessional monologues, detailing the ugly facts of his sexual history, ricochet around your psyche no matter how far you may be removed from his reality.

“I believe that that show is a healing for me,” Watkins says. “Being honest in public about my sexual shame and my reengagement with spirituality, it’s healthy for people to see. There are a lot of people who are trapped by notions and who are confused.  For someone to stand up and say what I am saying will, hopefully, help them deal with that.”

The show is a monologue because it is about solitude. The framework and style reflect Watkins’s state of mind. Nyree Yergainharsian aims for a similar effect with Where Do I Start? A sort of group therapy for those with an identity crisis.

“The nature of the subject and what I am trying to communicate meant I had to speak directly to the people. It’s a matter of connecting genuinely with them. There’s no way to manufacture that energy. You need to absorb the situation as it happens. I can nod or agree. But the energy comes from having that conversation. “

Given the confessional nature of their shows, Watkins and Yergainharsian, have a defined relationship with the audience. But what of the others who have a more traditional, storytelling role. Who are they speaking to? “That is the crucial question,” says Conroy, “If you don’t know why they are there and the character doesn’t know why they are there than it doesn’t ring true.

“Gina is there to testify, to put something down.  This show is her version of an autobiography. So she is speaking to a camera, editing it and uploading it to YouTube. The audience are the people on the receiving end of that message.”

“My character has been locked away in this room,” says Fitzgerald. “She is talking out loud in an imagined conversation in order to remind herself that she is part of society. Explaining her situation to her peers and making it all right to them. But loosing track of that because they are not actually there.”

Money makes the world go round but companies bereft of it are finding ways to insure that it keeps turning on its axis. For Corn Exchange the decision to do a one-man show (Man of Valor) was largely motivated by a cut in funding. “We can’t ask people to come and explore with us without paying them,” says director Annie Ryan. “Our work is relatively expensive. So we had to ask how many people can we afford to have in the room and for how long? “

The solution presented itself in the shape of Paul Reid, an actor with a gift for telling stories through his body. “We do workshops with members of our company and invited players and most people, when they are improvising, they just get up and they talk. But Paul would sprout wings, fly over the city, catch bullets in his teeth, come back to life in slow motion. It dawned on me that there was a one-man show in him.”

While some actors thrive on flying solo, Reid felt like a lonely only.

“If something goes well you have no one to bounce off and no one to have a good old little bitch, which is as important as the compliments.”

“It’s the loneliest moment in the world before I go on.”

Actors pay an incredible mental tax when they undertake a one-man show and the right kind of preparation is crucial. Conroy and Reid both mention the difficulty they face when warming up prior to the Fringe thanks to the cattle market that each venue becomes at fringe time.

Fitzgerald and Watkins have both picked up hot yoga, part of their over all plan of living well, which also includes a healthy diet, abstention from alcohol and generally trying to eliminate any stress from their lives. “I did a show before where I had to go to a really bad place” says Fitzgerald “and I got into a really bad place myself after it. And somebody pointed to me that if you really go for it each night on stage your body doesn’t know your acting and it will get sick. So you learn from those experiences to be a little bit more careful with yourself.”

“It’s a challenge,” concludes Conroy. “If you love what you do you want to push yourself as far as you can within your chosen field. It’s terrifying and thrilling at the same time but if it works out I will feel triumphant. I’ll feel like I really achieved something. For me as an actor this will be my Everest.”

No one could accuse the Irish of passing up on a little flagellation when their mother tongue is involved. And it’s easy to tut and nod along with the naysayers when looking specifically at theatre ‘tri ghaeilge’. In 2007 An Taibhearc, the countries national Irish language theatre was shut due to fire and since the present government reneged on an agreement made by the previous one (to split the refurbishment costs three ways) it remains closed. The Abbey Theatre has mounted just one full-length production in the past 15 years (Aodh O Domhnail’s Idir an Da Shuil, in December) while you’d have to go back to the 1960s to find the last in-house production on its main stage. And although The Arts Council says that it is in no way unwelcoming of Irish speaking applications, Foras Na Gaeilge’s 2007 calculations revealed that they gave a pitiful 0.001% of their total budget (€216.56 million) to theatre practioners working through the language.

Facts like these would make you think that, just like poor Peig Sayers at the start of her much maligned tome, theatre through Irish ‘has one foot in the grave and the other on its edge’.

Yet ask the artists themselves and they’ll tell you it’s never been healthier. The person with the most important theatrical post in the country, Fiach Mac Conghail, is a vehement and passionate Irish speaker; there are more companies operating through the language than there has been in years and, most importantly, there are people working within the industry, regardless of language, who are looking at new ways of presenting plays through Irish.

So what do they believe the problems facing them to be?

“You see the real state of the Irish language when you try and perform through it in front of a general audience” says Manchan Magan, who won the Stewart Parker Irish Language Award in 2009 for Broken Croi/Heart Briste. “You are faced with these blank, zonked faces. To see the guilt, silence and intelligibility in their eyes, it’s just so disheartening.”

Added to the limited vocabulary is the issue of dialect- or the different canúinti, which confuses an already hesitant audience who then become less willing to fork out for a ticket for something they fear they should, yet don’t, understand.

Magan believes that we need to simplify the speech to give the audience the confidence to go with the work. “There is an undercurrent of around 800 words that every Irish person knows, but might not be aware they know. Play a game with their self-confidence and see where you can take them.”

“We need to see it less as a barrier and more as a challenge” agrees Mairead Ni Chroinin, Co-Director of Moonfish, a Galway-based, bi-lingual theatre company. “If you are speaking a language of motion and image, rather than just the spoken word, it’s easier to travel over boundaries.”

European audiences are a lot more open to modes of translation, be it through audio or surtitling, which Moonfish opted for for their 2009 production of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (Namhaid Don Phobal). Where a person fluent in both languages used power point off stage so those with little or no Irish could read along as the action occurred.

Surtitles don’t work for children. So for companies working with young audiences-companies like Fibin, Branar and Graffiti- the physical expression (song, movement, puppetry, shadow play) become important.
“What we found was that children were fluent in the emotional language of a story,” says Marc Mac Lochlainn, director of Branar. “Yet they weren’t able to express themselves in Irish.” Since children have a natural ability to pick up on emotions, and are closer to body language than they are to actual words, Branar stick to this mix of movement, script and puppetry “so that they will be able to look at the story and understand the feelings and the essence of it.”

The whole area of theatre made specifically for children through Irish seems to be flourishing. “The work they are doing is very significant,” says Deirdre Davitt, programme manager at Foras na Gaeilge. “Branar and Graffiti have been pioneering theatre for pre schoolers that is recognized at a global level while Fibin have been invited all over the world, to Brussels; to Paris and most recently to Malawi to put on these fabulous shows with giant life size puppets.”

There is a belief that the Arts Council practices a policy of cultural apartheid, where they fund English language theatre and leave it to a number of other bodies to pick up the Irish language slack.

“They need to look more seriously at what is happening in Irish,” says Davitt. “To realise the quality of the work. Young companies need the support at the beginning so that their ideas come as far as a production.”

Davitt ventured into the area of funding out of necessity. “Companies were going from Billy to Jack, getting nowhere.” When Bord Na Gaeilge was turned into Foras Na Gaeilge in 1999 she had a far bigger budget to give small grants, to companies, or venues, per anum.

Theatre is a minority art form. Irish language theatre is a minority of a minority. So new writing is something that needs to be fostered and developed so in the next few years we don’t just have one writer we can turn to but a number of writers.

This is a key point being addressed by Aideen Howard, Literary Director of the Abbey Theatre. “It isn’t adequate to push one play out into the world unless you are able to sustain this activity with another play every two years.” Admitting that the Abbey’s record has been slight of late, she wants to create a tradition of new work being developed for the national theatre. “My ambition is to insure that of the six playwrights who take part in the New Playwrights Programme each year, at least one will be working through Irish.”
They have taken a number of proactive approaches to actively communicate with Irish language playwrights. They staged a series of short play readings, directed by Paul Mercier, called Gach Ait Eile. Three 20-minute pieces commissioned from three separate writers in three separate canúint. “ This allowed us to connect with the writers that were out there already,” says Howard.  “To see how they wrote, rewrote and what they were writing about. “

They then approached writers who were writing in the language, but not necessarily for the stage, through a workshop called Bi ag Scriobh. “It was amplifying our regular, unsolicited script process,” says Howard. ‘Ramping it up and saying “come show us what you have got’.”

At present they are working with at least three artists to develop shows. But there needs to be an artistic impulse behind each commission. “It can’t just be some token gesture.”

For Ray Yeates, Artistic Director of the Axis Theatre, it’s all a matter of audience. “If someone approaches me with an idea, as an artist, I am dying to hear all about it. But then I have to change my hat and ask, ‘who is going to go? Why would they go? What are we going to do to insure they go?’ Cause it is absolutely useless if the audience doesn’t show up”.

When he started in Axis her realized that people would come from the Southside to Ballymun for a play in Irish. “At first it was a big struggle. But eventually people began to find the venue.” He put on an Irish language event with every performance to attract audiences and actively sought out and invited practitioners to perform in the venue, hosting the only professional Irish language theatre festival in the country, Borradh Buan, since 2005.

“There are some exiting practitioners working in the area” he says. “They are very small but the are very good.” By uniting the separate pockets around the country he believes they could establish a circuit for plays, collaborations and co-productions; “If you decrease the competition and increase the networking we can exploit each others audiences.”

Magan believes it is make or break time for theatre through Irish. “All it needs is one innovator. One Michael Keegan Dolan, one Mikel Murfi, to come up with a dynamic, innovative story and the whole thing could really take off.”

“It’s going to take a singular commitment” says Yeates. Because the practitioners themselves can do better elsewhere we need to create an environment where their work can be rewarded with a steady paycheck. Amharclann de hide trained actors so that they could speak Irish to a professional standard, TG4 gave them the work that put bread on the table. What will a commitment to theatre get them?

“There are few opportunities to work in English, less in Irish. Why would you do it? You’d have to be mad” concludes Yeates. “But there are still a few mad people out there. For my part I am always going to help them.”

“…the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”
Hamlet, Act III, Scene II

It’s been like Groundhog Dane on the Irish boards of late with no less than four productions of Hamlet having run nationwide in the past 12 months. There was Pan Pan’s The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane- where three actors auditioned before the audience for the right to play the Prince; there was Max Lewendel’s British transfer which recently ran at the Tivoli while the other two productions derived from the one company, Second Age, who marked their 21st year last year with Marty Rea in the title role, a performance so acclaimed he won Best Actor at the recent Irish Times Theatre Awards. Since Conor Madden, to whom Marty passes the mantle, was one of the three wannabe Dane’s in the Pan Pan piece, there is a sense of ingemination symbolic of a play that gets its strength from repetition.

“The most important thing is not to think about the comparison” says Aoife Spillane-Hinks, the 25 year old director of this newest Second Age Hamlet which opened at the Helix on March 1st. “In fact, I thank god they were so good. It means people have engaged meaningfully with Hamlet for over a year now.”

She sees each production as merely another part of the conversation. Her own focuses on that deep humanity which courses through the text. “It’s got this immediate relevance because it describes a very basic experience- a very violent coming of age- that all the characters go through. At some point or another we all realise the world is different to what we thought it was. The difference here is that the people involved can’t afford to make the mistakes which we all need to make.”

The script of Hamlet is a dexterous cloth. Cut it one way and you have your Oedipal Hamlet. Cut it another and you have a political one. Having gone for a more familial Hamlet last year, steeped in Victorian costumes and conduct, this latest production is in modern dress and hopes to tell the story of a political system and the effects it has on human beings

“There are so many speeches that are relevant to now,” says Mark Fitzgerald who plays Fortinbras. “This county is so angry and hostile while in Elsinore we have the corrupted Claudius who, in turn, has corrupted the state.”

The Rehearsal, Playing The Dane was perhaps the hit of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival and was crowned Best Production at the Irish Times Theatre Awards. “We made a piece about Hamlet, using our own interpretation of the text,” says Gavin Quinn, Artistic Director of Pan Pan who previously experimented with Medea, Oedipus and Hansel and Gretel. Taking us into the audition room, we were presented with three differing would be Danes, each giving their own interpretation on the most regarded role in theatre as well as a glimpse at the effect it has on the psyche of the performer. “You need a lot of humility to play Hamlet “says Quinn. “And a certain amount of intensity. It’s not just about acting. They have to try and find something within themselves, find their own personal connection to the character and make it clear to the audience.”

A Dane in place (voted for by the audience at the end of the act one) the second act gave us a pruned and disheveled production of the play with a choral delivery of the “to be or not to be speech”, a playful presentation of the players (some local school children who performed Hamlet rather than The Murder of Gonzago) and a wonderfully thought out design by Aedin Cosgrove.

The aim was to make us think and wonder how anyone plays the part. “He’s a man, a human being, and that’s what is so important to remember,” says Madden, surely the only actor in Ireland to play the part twice in one year for two separate companies. “We want to get past Hamlet being a play of famous lines you’ve heard before but couldn’t make sense of.” His aim is to bring Hamlet back to the core of what the play is about. “He’s not this amazing philosopher whose really got the world figured out. He is in a world which he thought was one way but wasn’t.”

“Traditionally Hamlet is thought of as a play where the lead character is caught between two courses of action and doesn’t do anything” says Max Lewendel, artistic director of The Icarus Theatre Collective whose version of Hamlet had been touring the UK before Tony Byrne invited him to transfer the concept, kit and caboodle, to the Tivoli stage. “That is a horrific mistake. He’s constantly pulled between two directions, to kill the king or to kill himself. But he is really engaged in doing one before something else happens to divert him, causing him to be tremendously self deprecating or to lash out at his friends.”

Hamlet’s depression is the cornerstone of Lewendel’s production. He even wrote an entire piece on it in the programme. “The stereotypical depressed teenager locks himself in his room railing against the world. And while that is often the case it’s not something I want to put on stage. That same person, when they have energy, can be angry and can lash out at the world. They are furious and shout at people and shout at themselves and can do very damaging things.” Seeing his father’s ghost gives Hamlet the medication he needs to lift his apathy and inspires him to action.

Despite being set in the 1600s Lewendel’s production is far from your traditional staging. It takes large liberties with the text. There’s a female Horatio, a choral delivery of the soliloquies while almost half the text has been cut. “It’s a blending of physical theatre and Stanislavsky technique which makes it more kinetic than academic” says Lewendel. “The soliloquies are the voices in his head and by doing parts of them chorally we can create the chaos caused by depression in a very visual way.

“You have the voices in his head going “to be or not to be” to which he answers “that is the question.”

While no one can really say how Shakespeare should be staged there are some conservative voices that bridle at those who try to infuse the Bard with modernity. “What you find with theatre in Ireland is that people don’t really challenge its function,” says Quinn. “They don’t really care about form. They just put on the same thing over and over again. It’s pretty much a craft.

“We’re just making theatre from another point of view. People who say you can’t are Luddites.” He says it is easy to put on a classic play with a weeks rehearsal and not bother thinking about it for two years, showing no rigor. “But theatre is an artistic process. It’s about investing all your time and imagination, experience and vigor. Not just giving the audience what they want.”

Pan Pan may have their critics but they are in no way as vocal as Second Age’s primary audience. Founded by their current artistic director Alan Stanford and three others in 1989 their raison d’être was not to bring theatre to schools but to bring young people to the theatre.

“ We put on shows for the most important audience in the country and we do it to the highest quality in every aspect of presentation”. A schools audience, says Stanford, is the closest a body will get to experiencing what Shakespeare would be like, played in his own time. “If they like it they’ll cheer and if they don’t like it they will mess. So you go out there and win them over. Because that is your job.”

He wishes more audiences were like a Second age audience. “If something is funny they laugh, if something is sad they cry and when they say at the top of their voice ‘ahhhh no’ I think that’s fantastic. “

“You can see Hamlet as being one big rehearsal,” concludes Quinn, “with Hamlet as the connoisseur of theatre. He advices the players how to act, he is familiar with the theatre of the day and he plays all these roles within the drama. It’s like he is the player in a modern drama and the rest are in an antique one.”

Second Age’s Hamlet is playing for 4 weeks at Dublin’s Helix Theatre from March 1st, and touring to the Townhall Theatre Galway and the Everyman Palace Theatre Cork.

The currach is as identifiable with the green, green shores of Ireland as the harp, the shamrock and the IMF bail out. And while no longer needed as a means of survival Danny O Flaherty has committed the last 20 years of his life to reviving the popularity of the boat. First by forming Coiste Lar Na gCurrachai (Central Currach Committee), with the objective of promoting currach racing in Ireland and then by forming the Celtic Nations Heritage Foundation, who host the annual World Cup Currach Regatta in his adopted home of Louisiana.

Like many Irish Americans, he has never really gotten over the country of his birth. Leaving his home in Ardmore, Co Galway in 1967, his journey has taken him first to London, then Chicago and then all over the Unites States as a member of The Irish Minstrels, a traditional Irish folk group with whom he recorded two albums. He settled in New Orleans in 1984 but often looked back at the country he once delighted in.
As Ireland established herself on the European stage in the early 90s he became dismayed by what he saw. Interest in our national tongue and music was dissipating and his beloved currachs, from which he derived so much pleasure as a youth, were close to becoming obsolete. In an effort to keep the tradition alive he got together with some other currach enthusiasts to form Coiste Lar Na gCurrachai in 1994.
“Before we set up the Coiste, there were only two counties — Galway and Kerry — rowing in any kind of regular fashion,” Danny says. “So our objective was to establish set rules and dates for regattas and to encourage other counties and regions to row.” Currach clubs began to spring up all along the western seaboard from Donegal to County Cork and a points system was devised to encourage regular activity. “You get a certain amount of points for coming first, second, third and fourth,” says Danny “and the more you compete the more points you pick up.”
Competition is fierce and missing even a single regatta can make all the difference between winning and loosing.  In the past competitors were known for getting a little dirty on the water. “Everything was foul,” says Michael King, chairman of the Coiste. “People would obstruct the boat behind them if the thought it was going to over take them, they would flick oars out of the water, that kind of thing.” So they introduced rules and a referee who sails alongside the currachs in a speedboat to make sure that everything is in order. He also keeps those back on shore informed of what is happening out of their eyesight via radio.
There are 12 senior men’s, four ladies and six junior teams competing nationwide. About 80 people in total. They race every weekend at different events along the western seaboard using four standard currachs, provided by the Coiste. “Each club pays an annual levy of €200 to rent the boats,” says King, “which are fully serviced and used only for racing”.

The type of race differs from bay to bay but typically four currachs row to a distant buoy, round it in a particular fashion and pelt it back to cross the finish line first. There is a certain technique involved since if you don’t slow down as you approach the buoy you’ll shoot past it and if you don’t go round it the right way you have to go back and try again. “You have to understand about winds and tides and all of that as well,” says King.

There are four heats with four teams in each race with the top two qualifying for the semi finals from which the four finalists are chosen. The Regattas in Ireland take place between May and August, though the temperamental Irish weather can see the season dragged out until September, with teams training all year round.
“We take the boat out three times a week between February and May and twice a week when were in action” says Eileen Quirke, a childcare supervisor from Kerry. “We take two boats out so we can be in a racing situation, set out courses, conduct sprints and work on endurance and co-ordination.”

When the weather gets too rough they use the treadmill and the rowing machine and it takes a major commitment from all involved. As well as the training they have to commute along the western seaboard almost every weekend in their continual search for points.
“Basically you’re social life is doomed for the summer” says Leah O’Sullivan a 33-year old playschool teacher who rows with the West Clare Currach Club but is originally from Clondalkin, Co Dublin. “There is no drinking and no smoking and you have to watch what you eat.” Quirke, who has been rowing for over 30 years, has noticed that people have gotten a lot more diet conscious of late. “Before we would just eat the regular stuff and hop in the boat for a bit of fun. Now we eat high protein, high-energy diets. Pastas and a lot of supplements.”
The sports gear is simple but needs to be durable.  “Even having a pocket in the wrong place can totally throw you” says Quirke. So it’s tracksuit pants, tight tops and a boot with a heel in it. The tracksuit has to be made of a particular material “or you’ll end up with a backside that looks like it came off of a meat slicer,” says Quirke. By the end of the season their hands are also covered in calluses.
To encourage regular attendance the male and female teams with the most points at the end of the season win an all expenses paid trip to compete against their American brethren at The World Cup Currach Regatta in Louisiana.  Last year both the male and female champions hailed from Galway, succeeding the reigning champions from Kerry and Clare. Because of the economic troubles, The Celtic Heritage Foundation which organises the regatta was unable to afford the price of the flight in 2009 so they worked extra hard at raising the funds to bring both sets of winners to the Regatta in 2010 (Due to injury the Clare team were replaced on the trip by their runner ups who also hailed from Galway).
“We underwrite all the expenses,” says Danny. “We don’t get any help of the tourism board, who are only too willing to put currachs into their publicity shots.” It costs the Celtic Heritage Foundation around $15,000 between airfares, transportation and other added costs and they are relying on the charity of the people of Louisiana and Lake Charles to house the competitors.  “The Hilton in New Orleans used to put people up for the week but because of the economy they’re unable to do that any more.”
The recession has had a larger effect on currach racing stateside than it has had here. “Everyone is sitting on their wallets,” says Pat Clarke who is the captain of the Pittsburgh Irish Rowing Club. “We used to be heavily sponsored by construction companies but the economic crash killed that dead.”
While the only real expense in Ireland is your lifejacket and your dues, in America it’s a far costlier sport with each club having to rent a marina, buy their currachs and trailers and shell out for travel. “The nearest race to us is Columbus,” says Kristen Scheuing, the Milwaukee captain, “and that’s over seven hours away.”
Ironically, organised competitive currach racing began in The United States before starting up in Ireland when economic migrants in Boston began competing against fellow immigrants in Annapolis and New York City in the early 80s.Pittsburgh joined soon after, then Albany and by 1982 there were seven teams who bandied together to form the North American Currach Association. It established conformity in the sport, standerdising the boats and setting dates for the regattas.
Their season runs from June to September with each club hosting a regatta. While the winners are presented with little trophies and medals the main focus is on attaining bragging rights. “It’s a small group but we see each other seven times a year,” says Scheuing. “It’s supper competitive. Even if we are all a little older, we might not all be in the best of shape, we all want to get out there and kill the other side.”
Danny has spent 25 years encouraging a strong Celtic revival in the Southern states but his efforts were dealt a serious body blow when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. “A lot of the people who were involved left and we cannot contact them. They may have moved to Seattle, Washington, Georgia permanently. So we need to attract new blood to the sport. But trying to interest people in a cultural event is very difficult when they are trying to rebuild their homes and their lives.” Danny spends much of his time fundraising and forming separate committees to ensure that the sport remains visible in America.
Although there are no set figures, he estimates that there are over 1,000 people actively involved in Currach racing around the world. “The game plan we had in the early ’90s is working,” Danny says. “But we’re still behind in our efforts of getting the youth involved. We need to get children out in the boats. We need to pass the torch on to future generations.”
He hopes that the Irish Government will give the Coiste some funding in future so that they can implement a programme educating school children about their Celtic marine heritage. “We’re not just a group of people getting together and rowing a boat. We’re making a conscious effort to keep our language, music and all parts of our culture alive.”

In his most notable hit ‘Lisdoonvarna’ the singer songwriter Christy Moore wrote, “If it’s music you want, you should go to Clare”. And while it was the now defunct titular festival he was eulogising, thousands of trad lovers will this week be following his advice for the start of the annual Willie Clancy Week. Based around the Willy Clancy School, where 800 students have signed up for lessons in music, song and dance, a further three to five thousand people are expected to pour into the tiny town of Milltown Malbay (population 600) to avail of the jigs and the reels and the many, many pints that will flow over the week long event.

Held in commemoration of the famed uilleann piper, who died seven months before the first festival in July 1973, the idea was to hold a non competitive summer school, where people could come in, pay their tuition and be exposed to the best musicians around.   “Willie was very reserved about playing,” says Michael Falsey, a neighbor who knew Clancy from a young age. “He was quite happy being in the background, playing a few tunes.  But if ever there was anyone with a love of music around he was more than willing to sit down with them and give them advice”.

It is through this spirit that the week gleams its dynamic chemistry, where 70 year old musicians can sit down and play with those as young as 10, 11, 12, talking to them and taking them seriously, helping them learn the etiquette and the technique of session playing. The week attracts some of the biggest names in trad, some to teach, some merely for the craic and chances are you will meet-and possibly play-with them at one of the many sessions that spill out onto the street, and weather permiting, the beach.

For the first seven years of its life attendance rarely rose above 200 people but the set dancing revival of the early 80s meant that car loads of dancers descended on the festival, doubling the figures year after year till they peaked post Riverdance in the mid nineties. The demand for other instruments to be added to the original four- Tin Whistle, Flute, Concertina and Fiddle- stimulated this growth and now classes are offered in the accordion, banjo, harp, harmonica and the Uilleann pipes. There are also twenty different dance teachers on hand plus classes in Irish and Scots Gaelic.

The school costs €140, with students getting tuition, lectures and free admission to recitals, plus half priced tickets to the nightly celli. There are also several set dances, sessions in pubs and exhibitions which wouldn’t be part of the school itself but add to the whole festival atmosphere.

“The atmosphere reinforces the tuition,” says Harry Hughes, a schoolteacher who founded the festival with Martin Talty and Muiris Ó Rócháin soon after moving to the area in 1970. “Once the students finish there classes they can wander up and down the street, they can hear what is going on in this pub and that pub and they can go in and join in. They are in a relaxed environment, listening to these musicians and teachers, talking to the them and exchanging information.”

There are classes in the morning and lectures in the afternoon on various aspects of traditional music. Not just traditional Irish music but European and American folk. In the evening there’s recitals from musicians of note followed by a rip-roaring celli to end the day.

Hughes believes that it is a generational factor that makes the week so special. “We are having grandchildren of the first students from the 1970s coming to us now and many’s the person who has told me they have met and fallen for someone at the Willy Clancy week and ended up married to them.” Friendships are picked up after yearlong interludes and polished by a mutual love of trad.

It costs 300k to get the “Willie” (as it is affectionately called) up and going and the local community pulls together to ensure that it does. As well as sponsorship from local businesses (and more nationally recognized corporations like Diageo, Bus Eireann and IMRO) many locals give up their time to man the venues and to insure the event runs smoothly. 230 work on the artistic side of the festival with 75 doing the administrative day-to-day running of the event.

“It pays dividends,” says Hughes. “The investment that it brings into the town would tune out a fair economic return “. In 2003 May Day consultants were commissioned by Failte Ireland to survey the financial benefit that the week had to the Milltown area. It found that the festival brings in around five million to the local economy over 7-10 days.

The festival grew organically so the people of the town have become skilled at dealing with such a large influx of visitors. Given its size and the size of the town , however, there is a bit of pressure when it comes to housing everyone. People taking the classes book their accommodation early, as do those coming from abroad, but there is the usual rush in the run up to the week itself with some visitors having to settle for guesthouses up to five or six miles outside the town.

“The sheer quality of the musicians that attend the Willy Clancy is what sets it apart from other such like events” says Hughes.” Where else do you get that level of talent mingling with the everyday people, passing information on to the next generation.”  And he has seen the talent bleed back into the music.

“In the older days they came in to learn the music, to get a basic style. The technical skills of people coming in now are far, far superior to those of those who came first. What they need is more tunes and development of style. That is what they are looking for. To hear older musicians and how they interpret the tunes.”

The 39th Willie Clancy Summer School will run from the 2nd- 10th July 2011, Miltown Malbay, Co Clare. Go to http://www.setdancingnews.net/wcss/ for more details.

A girl with Bosco red hair fly’s around the hall at high-speed on roller-skates, lapping her opponent and cheekily tapping her on the ass with her baton. The winning team cheer loudly only to be drowned out by the loosing side’s groans and moans as they trudge of to the side of the hall to do wall squats, placing their backs flat against the brick and pushing their knees out, their bodies consumed with a burning pain and uncontrollable shakiness. The main hall of the Poppintree Sports Centre, which traditionally plays host to ladies indoor soccer and volleyball teams, is a wash with purple leopard print, tattoos, piercings and fierce eyeliner as the Dublin Roller Derby Girl’s hold their “Fresh Meat”, a quarterly open day in which the established rollers put the newbie’s through their paces in the countries most exiting, fastest growing all female sport.

An incredibly visual game, linked to the punk rock and Goth scenes, many of the girls claim to be the ones who were last picked for sport at school and bring this rebellious streak out onto the track. Stripy socks, fishnets and short, short skirts are de jour, lending an exhibitionist feel to proceedings and the girls create an alter ego to help release aggression they might not feel so comfortable expressing as themselves. “The name is whatever feels right for you” Christine O Connor (31) AKA Kitty Cadaver, a children’s book buyer tells me. “Some people take their derby on as an alter ego and channel their new persona, to help them push on through and meet a challenge they might not have felt up to as themselves.”

Imported from the States, roller derby is a high-speed, full contact team sport for women played on an elliptical (oval) track. With two teams of five, the jammer at the back has to lap the player in front, known as the pivot, by getting through the opposing teams three blockers who use their shoulders, hips and booty to prevent you getting through. There are legal and illegal hits and there can be a surprising level of violence between teams including vicious nudging, pulling and slamming into one another.

Safety is foremost but accidents do happen and injuries the Dublin Roller Girls have incurred so far include a strained groin, ruptured shoulders and badly torn ankle ligaments. “ One of the girls who visited us from the States had two pins in her color bone, a broken ankle and has since torn something else” says Ruth “Feline Rowdy “ Hirsch, a 27 year old retail manager from Dublin.  “But you learn the safe way to fall, you wear protection and for most Rollergirls their injuries are like a badge of honor.”

There are those who bristle at its exhibitionist nature and fear that Derby will be seen as a fake sport, like WWE, as it was during its previous incarnation in the 70s when an attempt to boost attendance backfired badly and pile ups and brawls were incorporated into bouts.

“But Roller derby is different” Feline Rowdy says “and I think it’s important to keep it different. I think that the fact that we are not out there in gym shorts and basketball singlet’s is part of the essence of what Roller Derby is about.”

It has an alternative feel in Ireland at the moment but in the States it attracts all types and ages. “People look at derby and they see punk, they see fishnets, they see tattoos and stuff like that” Michelle “Kim McKazzie’ Keeley a 37-year old full time mom tells me. “That’s not our target market. It’s women who want to get into sports. Anyone over the age of 18 is a possible Rollergirl as long as she is fierce and committed.” In America many teams have mothers competing on the same side as their daughters.

It made its way to Dublin via Boards.ie where Feline Rowdy placed an ad inquiring as to whether the city had a Roller Derby League. With none in place she and those who responded to the post decided to set up their own, meeting every Sunday to discuss the various steps needed to turn their dreams into a reality.

“The gear required (skates, pads, helmets) can run from between €200-€400” says Feline Rowdy. “And while we were prepared to spend that amount we knew that we couldn’t expect a person with what could just be a passing interest to do so, so we needed to fundraise to kit them out for the first month or so.” They sorted out insurance, venues, sponsorship and recruitment drives and will play their first ever bout on home ground this summer when they take on the Liverpool Roller Girls. There are teams now active in Limerick, Cork and Belfast with activity in Galway and Carlow while the Irish will be represented with a national team at the first ever Rollerderby World Cup to take place in Toronto this Christmas.

The girls live for derby. When they are not training they are reading about derby or watching videos about derby or trying to get more people involved in derby. Partners and boyfriends can get left behind if they don’t pitch-in in someway. “It’s get involved or see less of me,” says Martina “Tina Gut Her and Jam” McDonald (24) an artist who handles the teams press.

It’s a big commitment. “If you join you also have to make 75% of practices and 80% of our launches,” says Kitty Cadaver. “You skate on Mondays, Wednesdays and then again on Sundays. I try to skate at least once more during the week in the park or in a roller disco. Then you have events and committee work that takes up a lot of your time. “

So what should potential roller girls keep in mind before pulling on their skates? Coach Christopher “Violent Bob” Goggins (29) thinks that girls need to look past the aesthetic. “This is a tough, tough, sport, played by tough, tough women. You are going to be on 8 wheels, you’re going to fall, you’re going to get hurt, and you are going to wake up the next day stiff as a board.

“But don’t be too scared. It’s going to be weeks and weeks before you get involved in any of that. We teach you how to fall properly, how to be safe. You’re taught all of this before any bad stuff happens. So come down, try it, get your aggression out.”

Contact dublinrollergirls@gmail.com for details.

THEY say that necessity is the mother of all invention.

So when the arse fell out of the Irish music industry in 2007 a collective of musicians, photographers and artists decided to tackle the problem head on by setting up their own music festival to provide unsigned bands with a platform to promote themselves. The only independent, volunteer-run festival in the country, KnockanStockan is now in it’s fifth year and will this weekend lure 3,000 punters to their beautifully scenic location, overlooking the Blessington Lakes, for some hippy-infused revelry.

They pride themselves on being a festival for musicians, by musicians and use the event in Lacken, Co Wicklow, as an opportunity to gain exposure for the numerous bands struggling to get noticed on Dublin’s heaving music scene.

“Because there is no way of getting an unsigned band any airplay in this country we figured the best way to get 1,000 people to hear them at the same time was by attracting them to an event like this” says Graham Sharpe, one of the core organisers of KnockanStockan and guitarist with punk blues outfit Scarecrow Disco.

“It’s strength in numbers. Some of the acts would be somewhat established in the unsigned music scene and they bring down the crowds for the lesser-known bands,” says Sharpe.

Held across two stages, the KnockanStockan festival is run for passion, not for profit, and relies on 150 volunteers to get the whole thing up and running. “The whole idea is that if everyone has volunteered to be there, then they WANT to be there and it creates a great, family atmosphere,” says Jenny Guirean, photographer and self proclaimed ‘gig wench’. They have literally zero budget at the offset, with volunteers having to provide their own petrol and credit so “when people are ready to sit in the trenches with us when it gets tough it means that they really believe in what we are doing and want to contribute”.

The workload is massive and there is an endless amount of tasks to be dealt with before a chord can be struck. “We started work on the festival in January,” says Guirean. “We meet with the farmer who owns the land and make sure that he is happy for us to come back another year.”

Then they have to deal with the guards and the local authorities, sort insurance, paramedics, drinking water, security: “All the endless little headaches needed to have the craic.”

They have built close ties with the people of Bracken over the years, donating to the local school’s fundraiser by helping raise €10,000 through a barn dance for which they provided the PA system, artists and decorating services. So far, they haven’t had any objections to their annual event.

There is a core crew of 20 volunteers, who congregate in a tree-lined, gated 170 acre estate just outside of Dublin, Knockan-Stockan HQ. At this time of the year, it’s littered with schedules, whiteboards, demos and rigging. Twelve people (and three dogs) live there all year round, with the rest of the crew decamping for the summer. While the recession may have led to a funding vacuum in the music industry, it has also led to a major slump in rent and it is this that allows them to reside in such a lavish abode, equipped with a bar, poolroom and stables, all of which come in handy when road testing acts for the line-up.

“The demos are piling in all the time,” says Sharpe, “and there can be three to four of us listening to one at a time”. They run gigs in town, as well as in the house, so that they can see as many of the acts as possible. They received 600 demos in six months, which they whittled down to the 102 acts who will play this weekend.

They have faced criticism in the past for being cliquey, but as Sharpe points out: “It’s different to most music festivals where there is a budget and people get paid. This is a collective of musicians who decided there is nowhere for them to go. So they do it themselves. That’s why you see a repeat of the bands.”

The week before the festival they move, kit and caboodle, to the location, where they are joined by the rest of the volunteers who help set up the stages and sound systems, create the artwork and prep’ the site so it can hack such large numbers. Once the punters arrive, the volunteers act as stewards, feed the crew, help bands turn over, moving gear on and off stage, registering instruments and working the box office.

“It’s chaos,” says Peter Keogh, another core organiser, “but it is a much friendlier, much more approachable festival than any other. Everyone’s smiling, not freaking out. All the musicians are mingling with the punters. We don’t have that separation, backstage nonsense.”

The first few years slapped them around but now, they feel they have honed the art of festival organisation. “We’ve tried every stage imaginable,” says Keogh. “Truck stages, tent stages, stages made to look like fish”. “Stages,” adds Guirean ” that weren’t there when we woke up in the morning.”

During the typhoon-like 2009 festival, the Melty Marquee stage was blown down after one particularly nasty night of huffing and puffing. “But last year we nailed it,” she says. “One hundred and four bands played and only two started late.”

It costs in and around €100,000 to stage Knockan-Stockan, traditionally making a ‘nice loss’, which they carry with them to the following year. Most of the money comes from ticket sales and traders but they would love sponsorship of some sort.

“We don’t want booze or fags or corporations like Lynx and Boots. But people like Marshall Amps or Rolling Stone, companies connected to music and art would be great,” says Guirean.

The Arts Council has knocked them back two years in a row. “I don’t understand. We are five years old, proven to be feasible and doing a lot with less than nothing. Yet they turn us down and support other festivals.”

“I read an Oireachtas report which revealed that Hard Working Class Heroes received €100,000 from the Arts Council,” says Keogh. “That’s a gig that could be ran with a week’s worth of work in Dublin’s city centre. Plus they are charging on the door and bands have to pay €10 or €20 submissions?”

Given that the festival was started up to act as a showcase for the best unsigned Irish acts, has it achieved its main goal in life?

“Not as much as we had hoped,” says Sharpe. “We are trying to get the promotion companies down this year so they can see these bands playing in front of 1,000 people and see what it is like. And we’ve had MCD bookers looking for slots, which is a big development.

“But on a smaller scale, if nothing else, we’ve helped out countless of bands with an unbelievable amount of talent, who weren’t getting it anywhere else.”

* KnockanStockan, Blessington Lakes, Wicklow, until July 24, Weekend ticket: €75 website: knockanstockan.ie

Once leading singles were put out by acts to whet the public appetite for their forthcoming opus. Nowadays chart divas use them to lower expectations so that what eventually appears will seem better than it actually is. Just like Gaga, Christina and Britney pre-empted their albums with stinkers, Beyoncé Knowles returns from the wilderness with (Who Rules the World) Girls, a dulling of Major Lazers Pon De Floor with a tired Girl Power message added on.

The experimentation hinted at by the talent assembled (Diplo, Switch, Sleigh Bells) never emerges and there are far too many tracks here that she throttles with her impressive but unnecessary vocal hysteria.

The key to 4′s charm is it’s throwbacks to late 80s early 90s hip hop. Prince is an influence. Album opener and near highlight 1+1 is a delightful rip off of the purple pervert’s The Beautiful One’s, and bonus track Schoolin Life highlights her skill at aping artists who have carved out an individual niche.

But that is what is missing here. Beyonce’s vocals have soul and her beats have lineage. But they are collectively a dilution, serving as a gateway to superior artists but providing nothing she can claim as her own.

Time and again Britney Spears has been deemed mentally incompetent when it comes to her business affairs.  It should come as no surprise so that her recent album is a bit like a lobotomy.

It’s still recognizably Britney but it has that glassy eye sound like she’s not really in there. It’s like the team of hit makers brought in to put fried chicken on her table wired her up with the rest of the equipment and tapped her when they needed a hollow sound. The influences are vast but the intricacies and innovations are slathered in synth and pounding beats and, like covering a fine piece of steak in ketchup, it ruins the overall effect.

It has three excellent moments. Trip to Your Heart is one of the most ethereal pop tunes I have heard in a while, where the combination of delicate vocals and comforting melody speak to that part of your soul that becomes celestial on the dance floor.  How I Roll, where she indulges in a bit of call and response with a computer while it glitches away and throws in a few retro video game beats is weird, wonderful and what this album should have explored more. While Trouble for Me, lyrically, gives us the voyeuristic snap shot into what sends Britney’s strictly managed train of its track.

Lock up your closets. The Gaga conglomerate is on the move and it won’t stop until it has milked every last penny out of the pink cash cow. It’s not half as woeful as the appalling lead singles, Born This Way and Judas, would have had you believe it would be but there is nothing on here that justifies her recent crowning as Queen of Pop by Rolling Stone.

The originality she strives for in her titillating aesthete is sadly lacking in her sophomore album which doesn’t contain a single track that can compete with her catchy as all hell previous efforts; Telephone, Bad Romance or Poker Face. I’m sure Hair, Highway Unicorn and Bad Kids will have some kitsch appeal when performed live and accompanied by a visual gimmick. But standing alone they are overpowered by the buzz guitars, “club” beats and soulless vocals that are this albums trade mark.
Worse yet is when she straps herself to a crucifix and self flagellates for all her ‘little monsters.’ Her trite and tired attacks on religion, her overly simplistic message of acceptance- that never really tackles the challenges that arise from being different, expose her as a false prophet and are utterly joyless.

Nearly every track here has something positive of note about it, but she drowns it out with her trite lyrics and a cacophony of hi-jacked sounds. When she drops the agenda and has the craic-as on the tongue in cheek Government Hooker, cock rock balladry of You and I and house indebted Scheise you see what could have been.

But the playful lyricism that defined her early work, the kooky kink that made it such a guilty pleasure has been passed over for forced fun and  painful promulgating of her transparent message of acceptance.  As a whole she is to busy name checking and patronizing the marginalized to say anything of note to them.