Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality are delighted to present a programme of artistic performances on Friday 8 July in the Hyde Room, Áras an Uachtaráin. The show is a bespoke combination of three dramatic monologue performances interlinked with music and chat promising a highly entertaining and inspiring evening.
The award-winning work of Smashing Times has been acclaimed for its extraordinary story-telling inspired by historical memory and stories of citizens and artists from across the ages. Enjoy a gathering of performance, music and song presenting re-imagined moments from the lives of citizens and artists caught up in extraordinary times, showcasing stories of Irish people from the 20th century.
Our first performance is Grace and Joe written and directed by Mary Moynihan inspired by Grace Evelyn Gifford (1888-1955) and the story of her time with Joseph Mary Plunkett, one of the leaders executed after the 1916 Easter Rising. Next is Tales From an Afterworld by Féilim James based on the life and work of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).
The show culminates with At Summer’s End by Féilim James, a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of a Jewish-Irish citizen murdered in the Holocaust. Her name was Ettie Steinberg (1914-42). We learn how at a young age her family left Eastern Europe for Dublin, before love led her away to the European mainland. This by turns tender and harrowing portrait of love, loss, and the brutality of war tells one ordinary woman’s extraordinary, and often forgotten, story. Music will be performed by Lisa McLoughlin-Gnemmi.
Attendance is by invitation only.