THE BIZARRE phenomenon of the ‘moving statues’, which swept through 1980s Ireland will be examined in a new comic play by Kinvara playwright Gerry Connelly.
The Year of the Moving Statues opens at Johnston’s Hall, Kinvara, where it will be performed by the Rural Vernacular Company, as part of Cruinniu na mBad in Kinvara, which runs from this Sunday to Tuesday. After this it will tour south Galway in September.
The moving statues happened in 1985, a bad summer during a dreadful decade of unemployment, emigration, and economic stagnation, until something strange happened in Ballinspittal, Cork, where many believed that a statue of the Virgin Mary was actually moving. In less than two weeks the phenomena went countrywide, before suddenly stopping.
Gerry Connelly explores with scintillating humour and irreverence what might be referred to in psychological parlance as this ‘psychotic episode’ in recent Irish history. See it in Kinvara and watch out for further dates next month.
