Tag Archives: history

Reunion at the New Theatre, Dublin

  By bngr | November 10, 2010 - 8:07 pm | The Culch
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Reunion is a one-man show performed by Daniel Reardon adapted for the stage for the first time by Ronan Wilmot, from the autobiographical novella by Fred Uhlman. This is a story of two sixteen year old boys and their time together in the early 1930s at Karl Alexander Gymnasium in Stuttgart, as narrated 40 years later by Hans Schwartz, a now successful German-American Jewish lawyer. Having been asked to contribute to a memorial to his former classmates who died during the Second World War, Hans revists the story of his school friendship in the early days of Hitler’s rise and growing anti-semitism. This is a nice play, with a story that grips you and a poignant and surprising end. Good for people who like history; the Holocaust; mis-lit; or just a good story, told well. And if you haven’t been before, the New Theatre is a great theatre experience. Reunion … There’s more →

Competition Closed: Win family tickets to Dublinia

  By Niamh | June 9, 2010 - 11:00 am | Competitions, The Culch
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*** Competition Closed *** To celebrate the recent renovation of Dublinia and the opening of a new exhibition, History Hunters, Dublinia and Conway Communications have kindly offered us 3 family tickets (two adults, two children) to give away to three lucky Culch readers. In case you haven’t heard of it, Dublinia is Ireland’s only Viking Medieval Heritage Centre located in the Christ Church area of Dublin. As part of the relaunch I got to visit Dublinia (for the first time ever!) and was really impressed. I can imagine taking a few kids there and them being totally engrossed in the life-like displays of huts, homes, market places and of course the real life Viking guides! The whole experience is multi-media, tactile and engaging and invites questions and participation from people rather than just viewing like in a museum. You’ll find out interesting nuggets of information, like the fact that many … There’s more →

Anniversary of Irish Cinema

  By bngr | April 20, 2010 - 2:14 am | The Culch
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Thinking about heading out to the cinema tonight? Well if you do you’ll be repeating what was first done on this island 114th years ago today. On 20 April 1896 (on Hitler’s 7th birthday) screenings by the famous Lumiere Brothers took place in the Dan Lowry’s Star of Erin Palace of Varieties, aka the Olympia Theatre on Dame Street Dublin, only a few months after the first ever public cinema screenings took place in Paris. The Lumiere cameramen showed footage from Ireland back then in the Olympia, but take a look at some of the first films by Lumiere to give you an idea what it was like:

Review of Who Is Fergus Kilpatrick

  By bngr | April 15, 2010 - 1:49 pm | The Culch
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There are two ways of coming to Who Is Fergus Kilpatrick. If you read the play’s initial subtext or come to it blind, this play is a feature about an historical Kerry rebel that veers off mid way, playing tricks with you for the rest of the time until you get comfortable with the tricks being played and accept that it is a play that’s questioning reality. Or you can read into it a bit further and know in advance that it’s a play about the philosophy of reality and with that comfort, enjoy the entertainment and comedy that is offered in the process of its analysis. I confess I came to it blind and my head hurt by the end but the question that I’m still trying to figure out is which of these two audiences are the producers trying to reach? Maybe a bit of both, and naturally … There’s more →

Pushers Out on DCTV

  By Niamh | November 20, 2009 - 4:21 pm | The Culch, TV
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DCTV are having a themed weekend this weekend, Drugs: They’re Everyone’s Problem. As part of that, a documentary will be premiered chronicling the huge ‘Concerned Parents Against Drugs’ movement of the early 80’s to get pushers out of inner city communities where they had taken hold. Communities were destroyed as Dublin’s first heroin epidemic spiralled out of control until the local people took charge of their communities and local areas, taking to the streets to try to rid them of the drugs and drug pushers which were killing their families, friends, neighbours. Some even went so far as to barricade their areas, refusing entry to known drug dealers. This particular documentary, entitled PUSHERS OUT will be shown in two parts over the weekend. Part One will be shown on Saturday 21 November at 8.30pm and Part Two will be on Sunday 22 November at the same time, 8.30pm. I’m quite … There’s more →

KAMP at the Samuel Beckett Theatre - an amazing piece of drama with no dialogue

  By darraghdoyle | September 30, 2009 - 4:57 pm | The Culch
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I attended the opening night of KAMP, part of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2009 last night. This is what they say it’s about: An enormous model of Auschwitz takes up the whole stage with crowded huts, a railway line, and a gate with the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei”. The model of the camp comes to life with thousands of 8cm high hand-made puppets, representing the prisoners and their executioners. The actors, like colossal war correspondents, weave through the scene with hand-held cameras. They film the atrocities. The audience becomes witness. Not a word is spoken, the audience only experiences the sights and sounds, which transcend the powerlessness of the figures into much more than a mere reporting of events. It is, quite simply, amazing. Performed by Herman Helle, Pauline Kalker and Arlène Hoornweg has three amazing attributes that make it worth seeing: The camera angles The sounds The … There’s more →

A Dublin walk with Pat Liddy

  By Niamh | September 7, 2009 - 11:30 am | The Culch, Tourism
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Sunday last week I was lucky enough to be invited to take part in a walk around Dublin city centre with historian Pat Liddy. Pat is a well-known historian and face around Dublin and what he doesn’t know about Dublin, you could fit on the back of a postage stamp. The walk was to promote a new initiative by Dublin City BID - the Business Improvement District. The BID are a non-profit organisation who are trying to improve the city through removing graffiti, removing rubbish, adding on-street flower displays, new Christmas lights, providing professional Street Ambassadors among others and now they have developed a new initiative of wrapping 14 of those boring, old, grey traffic boxes with drawings of landmarks, interesting facts about Dublin and a map of where in the city you are and what interesting things there are nearby to visit. Though mostly aimed at tourists, the ‘interesting … There’s more →

To Whom It Concerns

  By Will | September 6, 2009 - 7:27 pm | Music, TV
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To nearly everyone in Ireland, this means “The Late Late Show“, which restored the old theme tune to our screens on Friday. However, it turns out that the theme we know is actually a number 13 UK chart hit by Chris Andrews from 1966. I know that the Late Late started in 1962, however I don’t know when the theme associated to the show was first used. Direct link to the video if you can’t see the embedded one. Video link courtesy of TheChrisD. Interestingly Chris Andrews is still alive and working in Germany, so its possible that he might show up on the show yet. In fact, its also possible that Ryan is related to Chris (in a Today FM interview Ryan mentioned that he was trying to find out as he is part of the Andrews family). And I wonder if it is possible to get an old … There’s more →

Dublin In The Rare Oul’ Times

  By Niamh | August 27, 2009 - 1:30 pm | Events, The Culch
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The IFI are currently doing an Irish Film Archive: On The Road season, visiting various counties with rarely seen, exciting local footage of days gone by. The Dublin branch of the tour, Dublin In The Rare Oul’ Times will feature in a variety of Dublin City’s libraries. Originally supposed to be during Heritage Week, it seems that this has been extended into September and October. They reckon that the archived footage will not only appeal to “nostalgia addicts but also to anyone interested in social, economic and architectural changes in Dublin from the 1930s to the 1970s”. The films to be shown range from a 1932 cinema advertisement for Clery’s department store, a 1949 ‘Safe Cycling’ public information film made for the Department of Local Government to reduce bicycle accidents often caused by bad cycling behaviour (as demonstrated in the film), to the later films of the 60′s and 70′s. … There’s more →