Search Results for 'George Bernard Shaw'

Described as “one of the most imaginative literary novelists writing in the English language today,” John Banville will open The Lady Gregory - Yeats Autumn Gathering in September.

One of Ireland’s most renowned actors and performers, Des Keogh, is to perform his sparkling new one-man show My Fair Ladies at the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar on Wednesday next (June 24) at 8pm.

THE INIMITABLE Des Keogh comes to the Town Hall next week with My Fair Ladies, a new play which he has written and performs about the many women in the extraordinary life of George Bernard Shaw.

Celebrating his 80th year in 2015, one of Ireland’s most renowned actors and performers, Des Keogh, gets to fulfil a lifelong ambition to play legendary Irish man of letters George Bernard Shaw when he takes to the stage at the Roscommon Arts Centre on Saturday May 23. 

You might think that those at the core of the Irish literary renaissance at the beginning of the 20th century, were one big happy family beavering away in their rooms at Lady Gregory's home at Coole, Co Galway. In those early days it was a house full of voices and sounds. Sometimes you heard WB Yeats humming the rhythm of a poem he was cobbling together; or the click-clacking of Lady Gregory's typewriter as she worked on another play for the Abbey. There was the sound of the Gregory grandchildren playing in the garden; the booming voice of George Bernard Shaw, as he complains that he is only allowed to have either butter or jam on his bread, but not both to comply with war rations (He cheated by the way. He put butter on one side of his bread, and when he thought no one was looking, piled jam on the other!); or the voices of the artist Jack Yeats and JM Synge returning from a day messing about on a boat calling out to a shy Sean O'Casey to come out of the library for God's sake and enjoy the summer afternoon.

The sinking of the Lusitania on May 7 1915, off the Cork coast, by a German submarine electrified Ireland, Britain and America. In Ireland, the fact that German submarines were lurking so close to the Irish shore, added fuel to the propaganda that Germany was planning to invade the country. It spurred recruitment into the armed forces. In Britain, the shameful practice of using passenger liners to carry munitions across the Atlantic without telling the passengers they were in effect travelling on a British war ship, was to come to an end.

Annie Kelly was just 19 when all her dreams appeared to be coming true. Annie was one of 11 children living with her widowed mother at Newgrove, Mountbellew, Co Galway. Her boyfriend, William Murphy, and her brother Thomas had earlier emigrated to Boston. Annie and William were pledged to be married just as soon as Annie got the money to follow him there. Full of excitement the young woman later sailed from Liverpool on the Cunard liner the Lusitania arriving in New York on April 24 1915.

THE TOWN Hall Theatre has just unveiled details of its programme for the first few months of 2015 and there is no shortage of exciting theatre shows to look forward to, from both local and visiting companies.

The highly successful Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering celebrates its 20th birthday in Coole Park, Gort, from Friday to Sunday, September 26 to 28.

HUNTER S Thompson, Johnny Cash, George Bernard Shaw, and half of Angelina Jolie’s head all appear in the new exhibition by former graffiti artist Luke McMullan.