Síomha's trip to the Otherworld - using folklore to explore grief
In the heart of Donegal, Síomha's ready for their biggest protest yet. No one's building a hotel. Especially over Aunty Deirdre's fairy fort. This will end in agóid not tragóid...
Theatremaker Em Ó Ceallaigh introduces their new play Síomha and the Otherworld, a new Immersive work for young audiences, touring venues this June.
How do we remember people who have died? How do we accept and keep living with grief? How do we fight for what matters? And what do fairy forts, racing maggots and millipedes, and Sinéad O'Connor have anything to do with this?
Síomha and the Otherworld is an immersive, new play for audiences aged 9+ years by Sian Ní Mhuirí and me. Meet 11-year-old Síomha, who - a thiarcais! - is shocked to see us. Síomha's staging a protest to save a beloved fairy fort that holds memories with their late auntie Deirdre. No way is Mr Big Smoke building a hotel on top of it!
We wanted to explore the complicated emotions that come with grief. Sian and I are drawn to work with humour and heart that takes young people's curiosity and intelligence seriously. Artists often draw on fairy tales to create work, but Irish fairies are not your bog-standard cutesy fairies. They're mischievous, bold, not to be crossed - qualities that Síomha admires.
Síomha is a love song to people who love us fiercely. People who understand solidarity. People who see justice and joy as the best dance partners.
Donegal's rich folklore lives in the bones of our story. There are different theories about who fairies are. Maybe the old gods, the Tuatha Dé Dannan, who, having lost their adoration and power, live in the otherworld, passing through fairy forts. Another theory is that fairies are fallen angels. Not good enough to be saved, not evil enough to be banished to hell.
This show isn't an attempt to just retell fairy stories. It's a modern story full of magic about a young person navigating a big conflict with a best friend, and their first major loss. The show explores finding magic in the world during hardship, and embracing the magic of being different. Of being a little weirdo.
My own nana died this year. She was someone who, like aunties, mentors, friends, loved me uncomplicatedly as a young (and older!) person when I was scared, or felt too weird for this world. Síomha is a love song to people who love us fiercely. People who understand solidarity. People who see justice and joy as the best dance partners.
The show is set in the Donegal Gaeltacht and is peppered with Gaeilge Uladh. It has cultural references that Síomha shares fondly with their auntie (shout out to late greats, Sinéad O'Connor and Nell McCafferty). Audience members will sit inside the fairy fort. You meet Síomha, played by the tender and hilarious Aoife Sweeney O'Connor. Our second character is the fort, who speaks through light, sound, and video, brought alive by a talented creative team. Through song, storytelling and the occupation of a fairy fort, audiences are in for a tender, sensory, one-of-a-kind experience.
It'll be wild craic altogether, aye.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Daily Mirror
35 minutes ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
30 years since Riverdance blew our minds and our 'holy f**ks' still echo'
IT remains a flame that will never burn low for anybody gifted a ringside seat for its mighty, ecstatic, hot-blooded, jaw-dropping, spine-tingling, seven-minutes-of-wonderment unveiling. In truth, we were more than a little tipsy that night, yet even through that long-ago fug of alcohol, the wave of rapture that invaded the packed bar where we witnessed - stupefied, teary, a chorus of astonished "holy f***s" the only words we could summon - Riverdance being midwifed into the world remains as vivid three decades on as Michael Flatley's immaculately waxed chest. It felt like a detonation of some new Irishness, a marriage of ancient dance and modern expression, something liberating and fresh invading both the evening and the heart with its riveting beauty, mesmerising a global audience of some 300 million. Before writing this piece, to reassure myself my memory wasn't playing tricks, I re-watched Flatley and, first, Jean Butler thundering onto the stage at The Point Theatre on April 30th 1994, the interval act at the Eurovision Song Contest. It is gobsmacking, electrifying, primal, emotional, an authentic "wow" moment that retains all its capacity to fire a lovely cascade of shivers down the spinal chord. A cocktail of fiddles and bodhráns, the lead dancers owning the coliseum, alone under the klieg lights, a triumph of athletic movement, rhythmic tempo, exquisite balance and beguiling cadence. Master and Mistress of the universe. The urge then was to lock away the memory, retain it for the rest of time, the same compulsion that might overwhelm an art lover on encountering a renaissance master's brushstrokes hanging on the gallery walls of the Louvre. At that moment it felt unsurpassable. Perfect. Before it became a commercial behemoth - one watched live by more than 30 million people (five times the population of Ireland) at some 15,000 performances in 49 countries, selling over 10 million DVDs worldwide) - there was this. Just this. A seven minute slot. A transfixed house erupting in spontaneous, orgasmic acclaim. An 'is this really happening?' sense of disbelief and awe. And, as the camera pans to a breathless Flatley, giggling as he accepts the rapture of the audience, the vertigo of new possibilities opening dizzyingly before him, an impossibly youthful Gerry Ryan asking his audience a rhetorical question. "What about that, stunning music, amazing dancing, was that or was it not the most spectacular performance you have ever seen?" Few who had watched Flatley's feet move as if fired from the mouth of a howitzer were inclined to raise a dissenting voice. Looking at it now through the telescope of all those years, Ryan's words don't feel remotely contrived or rehearsed, but, rather an instinctive and visceral response to something irresistible. I was 25 years of age and Irish dancing was so far distant on the polar opposite side of the bandwidth to my interests that it might have existed on the dark side of the moon. And yet, like half the nation, I was entranced by the orchestra of sounds and the sway of elegant, angelic movement. Flatley and Butler had carried the night into another dimension. Our football team was in the long since vanished O'Dwyer's Bar on Dublin's Mount Street, celebrating a league title we had claimed that afternoon courtesy of our own exhibition of superior, Flatley-esque footwork (for some reason I still haven't figured we never toured the world, never had to fight off groupies, never made tens of millions, but, hey, them's the breaks). The Eurovision was on in the background. Nobody was too bothered. Then Bill Whelan's score exploded into life and it was like every living creature in that bustling tavern had been hypnotised. There was never a moment over the next 500 or so seconds when our attention was allowed veer from the TV screen. It was that good, that instantly stimulating, dance as mainlined narcotic, a mood-altering Celtic opiate. Sense of place played a significant role in the elemental ache of joy. It was one of the few times since Italia 90 four years earlier that I had felt that sudden surge - call it patriotism, call it a sense of belonging, call it pride in our heritage - that fills a room to the brim with something I can only describe as heartsoar. We embraced and emoted as we had at the end of the game a few hours earlier. I think there might even have been an eruption of the dreaded Oles. It was a slightly self-conscious way of trying to mask the fact that we were all on the verge of sobbing. It really was that powerful. There we were, a group whose preferred music ranged from The Jam to Bowie to Ska to The Stones, incontinent with emotion because of something we might have scoffed at ten minutes earlier. We were in our native city, yet for some reason the lyric that best describes how I felt in that moment comes from U2's A Sort of Homecoming. "For tonight, at last/I am coming home/I am coming home." So many of those Eurovision interval slots tend to be twee and insecure, but here was an exhibition of rip-roaring Irish self-confidence. A visual, aural, comfortable-in-its-skin feast of excellence. A year later, Riverdance went on the road, and it is that 30th anniversary landmark that was celebrated this week at The Gaiety and at various afterparties that ran long into the night. A confession: I have never been to the full show and never felt an urgent need. In some perverse way, I find the vast global ATM - churning out dollars and yen and all the currencies of the world - into which it has transformed, slightly off-putting. But, we'll always have O'Dwyer's. The emotions awakened by that seismic seven minute rumble in 1994 were sufficiently pure to last a hundred lifetimes. Its innocence; the bone-shaking delight of Flatley hot-footing across the floor with manic, charismatic glee; Butler's effortless elegance and natural-born class; the blur of feet; the way the music hit you beneath the rib cage; the astonishment as we observed the birth of something magical and, the way it made us all all remains gloriously evocative. Ireland would win the Eurovision that night - back then, as invincible as a team co-managed by Jim Gavin and John Kiely, we almost always won - courtesy of Charlie McGettigan and Paul Harrington performing Rock 'n' Roll Kids. Harrington watched the interval act from backstage and still recalls how the arena convulsed. "That night," he says, "felt like the beginning of the roar of the Celtic Tiger and I was right at the epicentre." Riverdance became a synonym for excellence, for a slightly mythical Irish form of self-expression, a way of articulating a cultural moment that triggered a wash of reverence. Liam Griffin, the messianic and erudite Wexford manager who led the county to a first All-Ireland title for 28 years in 1996, lovingly depicted hurling as the "Riverdance of sport." His poetic description was both arresting and apt. Here were two uniquely Irish forms of cultural expression, both dances, one using feet, the other a sliotar and a wand of ash, each seeming to eloquently express a powerful sense of Irishness. In their liquid movement, their natural flow, Cian Lynch or Patrick Horgan or TJ Reid might well be riverdancing. A great hurling match is both a spectacle and a feeling. It finds your gut. It lifts you to a place of brighter light, this tumultuous choir of stick and ball and galloping athletes. At its best, it dresses itself in a cloak of myth. As Flatley and Butler did all those years ago. On Anna Livia's banks, they danced their dance and the ancient river was not alone in nodding its damp, splashing head in approval, in understanding it had witnessed the shifting of Irish art to the highest ground.
The Irish Sun
41 minutes ago
- The Irish Sun
Jockey Jake Coen rushed to hospital and racing delayed after parade ring incident
JOCKEY Jake Coen has been rushed to hospital after a terrifying parade ring incident. Racing at Punchestown was delayed while the jumps jockey was attended to. Advertisement 1 Jake Coen was said to be fully conscious as he was rushed to hospital as a precautionary measure Credit: Alamy A post from IHRB Stewards on X confirmed a delay while a message posted on Irish Racing's page read: "Delay to the first race at Punchestown as Jake Coen is receiving medical attention following his fall from Arch Empire in the chute leaving the parade ring." Racing TV presenter Kevin O'Ryan said: "Jake is moving everything and he is talking and fully conscious, which he has been from the word go. "He has been taken to Tallaght Hospital as a precautionary measure. "But he is fully conscious and moving everything after that nasty incident." Advertisement The incident came before the first race at Irish track Punchestown on Epsom Derby day. The medical crew on-track were able to get to Coen quickly meaning the start time was knocked back by just under ten minutes. Coen had been due to ride the Gordon Elliott-trained Arch Empire in the 2m contest. But the horse was withdrawn after unseating the young jockey and getting loose. Advertisement Most read in Horse Racing Coen had been booked for two more rides on Saturday but they will go elsewhere as he is checked out by doctors. He was booked for a further four rides on Sunday but it will be down to the doctors whether he is well enough to take them. FREE BETS - GET THE BEST SIGN UP DEALS AND RACING OFFERS Commercial content notice: Taking one of the offers featured in this article may result in a payment to The Sun. You should be aware brands pay fees to appear in the highest placements on the page. 18+. T&Cs apply. . Remember to gamble responsibly A responsible gambler is someone who: Establishes time and monetary limits before playing Only gambles with money they can afford to lose Never chases their losses Doesn't gamble if they're upset, angry or depressed Gamcare – Gamble Aware – Find our detailed guide on responsible gambling practices here. Advertisement
Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
Beyond the Pale festival cancelled just days before kickoff at Glendalough Estate
One of Ireland's most popular music festivals, Beyond the Pale, has been cancelled just days before it was due to begin next weekend. Crews had been working on-site for weeks, setting up stages and preparing the grounds at Glendalough Estate, Co Wicklow. The festival was scheduled to run this Friday to Sunday, June 13–15. However, the main stage was being dismantled today. A funfair, large marquees, tents, toilets, and security fencing had already been erected across the scenic site, which is backed by woodland and bordered by both a river and a lake. Suppliers began removing infrastructure today after being told by organisers that the festival could no longer proceed. The industry was slammed by the Covid pandemic and never fully recovered, a supplier at the festival said. Independent festivals, in particular, are still struggling. 'It seems to be the state of affairs at the moment that Irish festivals are going bust," someone working at the festival said. 'So many of them are gone. 'I think it's an overhang from covid. Insurance premiums going up. A lot of suppliers went bust over covid, suppliers that were left were trying to make up the money they lost so they raised their prices putting pressure on festivals again. It's like a vicious circle. 'Then the cost of living and everything else, there's not as much money around as there was before so they're probably struggling with ticket sales. 'There's pressure coming from everywhere. 'Last year Forever Young went, Indiependence in Cork, Sea Sessions in Donegal." Headliners for this year's Beyond the Pale included Jon Hopkins, Róisín Murphy, TV on the Radio, Boney M, and Jeff Mills. As recently as Saturday morning, tickets were still available on the festival's website — €268.95 for a three-day camping pass and €126.90 for a single-day ticket. Beyond the Pale won Best Small Festival at last year's Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) awards. It launched in 2022 with fewer than 5,000 attendees but grew rapidly — doubling to 10,000 by 2024 with 15 stages. This year, it was set to host 12,000 people. Read More Robert Pether's family to hear of restrictions put on engineer next week
