Author Archives: SummerhallTV

Lauryn Gaffney : Big Shot

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Written and composed by 23 year old Dubliner Lauryn Gaffney, Big Shot received outstanding critical acclaim at the San Diego International Fringe Festival last year.

Described as an ‘absolute success’ by the festival organisers, Big Shot the musical was awarded the admired ‘Spirit of Fringe’ Award. The ‘Spirit of the Fringe’ award is the most prestigious award, given to the show that embodies the essence and ethos of the festival, demonstrates dedication and commitment to their work.
Big Shot will perform for 6 nights in The London Irish Centre from the 15th – 20th August. This will mark the UK Premiere for original award winning Irish Musical Big Shot.

Big Shot tells the story of one Jeremy Crocker, a savvy defense lawyer thriving in New York City’s bustling legal profession. Despite his ambitions, Crocker falls in love with Carrie, a struggling Irish artist who works in Crocker’s go-to café in Downtown Manhattan. Although the two become ever more infatuated by each other, this threatens to derail Crocker’s career, with regard to the dubious new defence case he has taken on. Does Crocker follow his heart or stick with his legal client obligations? The theme of the story is love, justice and living in the moment.

Siubhán McCarthy : Cork Craft Month 2016

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Cork Craft & Design is a social enterprise representing craft makers in Cork City & County.
We bring together the very best of Cork’s unique craftmakers and artists; ceramicists, jewellers, textile-workers, furniture-makers, woodturners and carvers, paper and felt makers, sculptors and many more.

From 2nd August to 4th September

Debs Newbold : Lost in Blue

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– Venue: Demonstration Room
– Category: Performance Theatre
– Age Suitability: 14+
– Times: 11.30 (90 mins)
– Dates: 16th – 28th August

A man, deep in a coma, hides out in the bedroom of Vincent Van Gogh while his teenage daughter struggles to understand her part in the accident that put him there. Paintings, pigeon racing and a family about to implode meet in this vital, gripping story, told using innovative sound technology and gate-crashed by Vincent himself. Moving and funny, Lost In Blue is a dynamic fusion of spoken word and performance storytelling created and performed by Debs Newbold, Storyteller for Shakespeare’s Globe, and directed by John Wright, co-founder of Told by an Idiot.

Gillis Biesheuvel Manja Topper : Macbain

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Location: Summerhall, Old lab
Times: 20:55pm
Dates: 11th – 14th

Dood Paard, Big in Belgium, Richard Jordan, Theatre Royal Plymouth

MacBeth and Kurt Cobain and Lady Macbeth and Courtney Love inspire a pitch-black comedy about unbridled ambition, hunger for power and an addiction to intoxication and ecstasy. A triptych of hilarious interviews with the pop stars, a freaky fast-forward puppet version of Macbeth which results in a merciless symbiosis of the grunge couple Cobain-Love and the Thanes of Cawdor. A crazy journey into the world of two seriously troubled people who are trying to escape from their mental prison, as their loneliness howls through the room and the attempts to reverse the inevitable end are heart-breaking.

Sound Effects and Strobe Lighting

Age category: 16+

Maggie Gallagher : All things woolly! A celebration of Irish wool

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During the month of August the Courthouse Arts Centre will have an exhibition celebrating the versatility of Irish wool in both a practical and art context.

Exhibitions by professional artists and Craft’s people will display examples of wool use. Also on display will be samples of the various stages wool goes through for processing alongside samples of bolts of wool and finished products.

From August 7th – 27th 2016, The Courthouse Arts

Matt Holt : The Trial

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Venue: Rose Bruford @ Upper Church, Summerhall
Age Suitability: 12+
Times: 20.15 (80 mins)
Dates: 5th – 15th August

Josef K. wakes up one morning, hungry and disconcerted, only to find himself arrested. He is not told why, nor by whom. He does not get to eat his breakfast. And so begins The Trial. A grotesque and darkly comic adaptation of Kafka’s classic novel tracking one man’s struggle against a malicious and faceless power. Fighting against ritual humiliation, impenetrable secrecy and unfathomable procedure, can Josef K. prove his innocence? Directed by Craig Sanders, adapted by Evelyn Roberts and Matt Holt.

Kate Gray : Collective Gallery Vision

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In 2017 the A-listed City Observatory complex on Calton Hill will open freely to the public for the first time in its history. In partnership with the City of Edinburgh Council, Collective will save the site, which is on the Buildings at Risk Register and become custodians of this important piece of our nation’s heritage. The Observatory complex will become a world-class contemporary visual arts space, commissioning important new work by local and international practitioners.

Historically the City Observatory complex was a place to house telescopes and observe the stars, but observatories are also places to view, to reflect upon a city, to bring people together; laboratories to research and places to follow academic pursuits. Collective are developing a new kind of City Observatory for Edinburgh, encouraging engagement, connecting with the locality through the acts of looking, thinking and importantly producing in relation to the historic culture of the site.

Andy Manley : Mikey and Addie

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Venue: Old Lab, Summerhall
Age Suitability: 9+
Time: 11.25 (55 mins)

Mikey is a sunny boy. He lives alone with his mum. Mikey’s mum has a secret. It’s not well kept. Everyone knows it. Everyone except Mikey. Addie is a good girl. She doesn’t tell lies. Her father makes sure of that. Addie tells the truth. It’s what you have to do. Isn’t it? It’s hard to tell when your life will change. The day you wake up normal but end up falling far from everything you’ve ever known. Spinning into nothingness. Today is that day.

Denise McAuliffe : The Weight of Attraction

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Local artist and WIT graduate, Denise McAuliffe Hutchinson, has recently completed a Masters in Fine Art Painting at NCAD Dublin. “The weight of attraction # 2” explores a number of concepts surrounding the theme of sensuality. In most situations we feel affection for people because of the way they communicate with words and ideas regardless of their appearance or age. When we move from affection to attraction we stimulate the senses beyond discursive exercises. We enter the unknown. It is this fleeting and primal glimpse of sexuality, set in a bedrock of memory that has informed and stimulated this body of work.

Exhibition on from Mon 11 Jul – Tue 30 Aug, Garter Lane Arts Centre.

Jacinta Crowley Long : Butler House Exhibition

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Jacinta is a professional artist based on the Carlow/Wicklow border in Ireland. She has a deserved reputation as Ireland’s foremost contemporary canine and equestrian artist.

She exhibits widely, her work being shown in the Gormley Gallery, Dublin; The Lee Gallery, Cork; The Forge Gallery, Collon, Co. Louth; The Narrow Space Gallery, Clonmel, William St Gallery, Kilkenny, together with one woman shows in various other galleries and locations around Ireland.

Her paintings are in many corporate and private collections in Ireland, America, Australia, and throughout Europe.
You can follow her on facebook at Jazz Crowley-Long.

The exhibition will be on from 5th August to 15th August, Butler House

Adriaan Van Aken : Last Call

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Location: Summerhall, Main Hall
Date: 10th – 28th
Time: 10:40pm

Het nieuwstedelijk, Big in Belgium, Richard Jordan, Theatre Royal Plymouth

A teenage girl runs away from home to the city. Nobody notices, but is there actually someone looking out for her? Belgium’s foremost graphic novel artist, Philip Parquet, and playwright/director Adriaan Van Aken’s urban adult comic book is brought vividly to life, fusing together live voices, dynamic video, projection, sound and music into a thrilling after-dark fantasia of theatre and art. From the producers of Summerhall hits Tourniquet (2013), Looking for Paul (2014) and The Great Downhill Journey of Little Tommy (2015), you won’t want to miss this year’s new late-night cult Fringe show.

Age category: 16+

Yinka Kuitenbrouwer : One Hundred Homes

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One Hundred Homes
Big in Belgium, Richard Jordan, Theatre Royal Plymouth
Venue: The Old Generator, Summerhall
Age Suitability: 14+
Time: 14.05, 16.05 (50 mins)

Join Yinka in her new Edinburgh home, a small wooden cabin specially built in Summerhall’s Courtyard, to experience an intimate performance. One Hundred Homes is an ongoing performance; each time that Yinka performs the play, she also visits people from the area, adding their stories to her archives.

Jean-Marc Mahy (with Philip Crispin) : A Man Standing

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Théâtre de L’Ancre
Venue: Old Lab, Summerhall
Age Suitability: 14+
Time: 17.25 (75 mins)

Jean-Marc Mahy entered prison at the age of seventeen. He spent nearly 20 years detained, three of them in solitary confinement. On stage with performer Stephane Pirard, Jean-Marc describes the prison, humiliation, isolation and madness that was to come…

Ben Lewis : The Lounge

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Inspector Sands, The Lounge
Venue: Main Hall, Summerhall
Age Suitability: 12+
Time: 15.25 (80 mins)

97 years go by in a flash. An afternoon lasts an eternity. In a care home lounge somewhere off the A1, Marsha Hewitt begins the last day of her life. But she cannot go quietly. As the radiators burn and Jeremy Kyle blares, rivalries, relatives and murderous impulses jostle for space on the Axminster carpet. By teatime, a riot is brewing. The award-winning Inspector Sands shine a light on how we cope, or fail to cope, with ageing.

Katie Bonna : All the things I lied about

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All the Things I Lied About

Katie Bonna and Paul Jellis in association with Soho Theatre
Venue: Roundabout
Age Suitability: 12+
Time: 16.40 (60 mins)

Would the world be a better place if we were all honest? Fringe First winner Katie Bonna (Dirty Great Love Story) is giving a TED talk on the science of lying.

Nicola Chestnutt : Fragments of Dreams

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Nicola is from Waterford and received the Garter Lane 6 Month Studio Award after graduating from Visual Art in WIT in 2015. Fragments of Dreams is an exhibition of watercolour illustrations with a fairy tale quality. During the process of painting, as each illustration came to life, it revealed part of a story that was both familiar and unknown. Each painting can be seen as an attempt to recreate the magic of a dream of which only fragments remain or to complete the story of a dream that ended too soon.

Exhibition on from 30 June to 10 August

Hallie Siegel : The Rust Garden

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Exhibiting artists Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel talk about the new work in their exhibition, and the themes that inspire their wider artistic practice. This launch reception celebrates Donovan & Siegel’s ambitious, organic and highly visible new artwork Rust Garden, commissioned by Edinburgh Printmakers for the building of Castle Mill Works. This artwork will monumentalise the heritage of Castle Mill Works and Fountainbridge’s industrial past.

Created in conjunction with the exhibition ‘History Machines’ by Donovan & Siegel at Edinburgh Printmakers

Location: Castle Mill Works, former North British Rubber Company HQ, Gilmore Park, Fountainbridge, EH11 1AL

Temporary installation lasting until 28th August 2016.

Mauro Paccagnella and Alessandro Bernardeschi : Happy Hour

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With their friendship and complicity spanning almost two decades, Mauro Paccagnella and Alessandro Bernardeschi meet again to dance together.

Summerhall Venue: Demonstration Room
Category: Dance & Physical
Age Suitability: 14+
Time: 13.30 (55 mins) From 4th to 14th August, Summerhall

FK Alexander : Over the Rainbow

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Venue: Summerhall Basement
Installation Music Performance
Age Suitability: PG
Times: 20.15 (60 mins)
With live accompaniment from Glasgow-based noise band Okishima Island Tourist Association, FK Alexander sings along to the recording of the last time Judy Garland ever sang Over The Rainbow, four months before her death. Stand hand in hand with FK, and witness others do the same. This performance is an intimate interactive live experience of undivided attention and love, for an audience of 20 at a time.

Winner of the Autopsy Award.

Gytha Parmentier : Us/Them

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Venue: Main Hall, Summerhall
Big in Belgium Feature Theatre Young Audiences
Age Suitability: 9+
Time: 10.00 (60 mins)
In September 2004, during a school hostage drama in Beslan, the greatest of evils (terrorists) chose the greatest good (a group of children) as their victim. Us/Them is not a straightforward account of this terrible drama, but is about the entirely individual way children cope with extreme situations.

BRONKS, Big in Belgium, Richard Jordan, Theatre Royal Plymouth

Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel : History Machines

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29 July – 22 October 2016

Location: Edinburgh Printmakers, 23 Union Street, Edinburgh, EH1 3LR, Scotland, UK
A UK premiere exhibition of new commissions and existing artwork by Toronto artists Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel, that explores the enduring legacy of print that continues to shape how we communicate – even as we launch ourselves into a digital future.The new commissions in this exhibition are playful graphic hybrids that encourage us to look at ‘ print’ as not merely a series of technical processes and products, but as a graphic culture that exerts its influence over even our most mundane interactions and activities. Accompanying these prints, is a selection of other print-inspired work, which merges sculpture, graphic design, poetry, found text, and storytelling, to produce curious hybrid devices that embody the culture of printmaking. Examples include the Haikube, a poetry generation machine modelled on the Rubik’ s cube, and a machined brass Self-Printing Book – the ‘ sculptural edition’ of Vannevar Bush’ s 1945 essay “As We May Think”, commonly cited as a harbinger of the digital era and the first printed description of what we now know as personal computers, hypertext and the internet.

Sorcha Carey : Edinburgh Art Fest 2016

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Founded in 2004, Edinburgh Art Festival is the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art. We bring together the capital’s leading galleries, museums and artist-run spaces, alongside new public art commissions by established and emerging artists and an innovative programme of special events. The vast majority of the festival is free to attend. About

Edinburgh Art Festival is a unique celebration of the visual arts, delivered in partnership with the city’s leading galleries, museums and artist-run spaces. Over the past ten years the Art Festival has grown to become the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art, recording nearly 300,000 attendances at over 40 exhibitions and 20 venues throughout August 2015. The Art Festival engages new audiences with the visual arts, supports artists to deliver ambitious projects and fosters rich debate amongst local communities about culture and heritage in our city.

Ruth Duignan : Previewing ‘Future Makers 2016’

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Ruth Duignan is a Leitrim based fashion designer. She graduated from the fashion department of the Limerick School of Art and Design in 2009. In 2008 she completed a 6 month internship in Tokyo at the Japanese menswear label, Aptform. While in Japan she observed the simplicity of Japanese design and its roots in indigenous culture and fabrics. Upon returning to Ireland she began to apply this design philosophy to traditional Irish craft and textiles, drawing inspiration from native materials and the Irish countryside. Her graduate collection which used Irish woods, linens and traditional techniques to produce a simple but contemporary collection which went on to win the A. I. B. Student Development Award.

This Future Makers Exhibition will be running from 16th November 2016 until 29th January 2017 at the National Craft Gallery in Kilkenny.