Cork Midsummer Festival underway and there's so much to see and do

To look up and down the programme of Cork Midsummer Festival 2024, running today until Sunday June 23, is to realise that this city’s arts and cultural life has undergone a sea change in the space of a generation: bold and vibrant new music sits alongside a summer-solstice céilí; theatre and community performances broach everything from the workings of on-stage intimacy to our own relationships to the people and environment around us; while our city’s historic venues and civil facilities play host to romantic visions and outré sonic experiences.

Midsummer is tasked annually with bringing the world to its doorstep, and has long been a pillar of community engagement with the arts in the city - an involved and year-round process says director Lorraine Maye. “These festivals are planned years in advance, so while some of the work would have been programmed and chosen [a year or two ago], some of it would come later down the line. It's constantly evolving, especially when you're working with lots of new work and artists who are making work on a year to year basis. 'Home Sweet Home', which we have this year at the Granary Theatre, is a disability-led production that's been in the works for about two years.”

“We're in constant communication with the different venues and promoters in the city, everyone that's involved in the programme this year,” adds acting director Rose-Anne Kidney. “We're talking to them all the time, seeing what the ideas are, what's out there, and it's more like a partnership, there's so many different partners involved in each show.

“With 'Theatre for One', for example, we have to deal with the local authority in relation to using Emmet Place; the Cork Opera House are involved and they're helping out in the ways that they can; and with Landmark very closely, the producers of the show, on all production, all tech requirements, and also the callout, which had over 500 young writers submit text for the six emerging writers that are being presented this year.

“We all got involved in the panel of reading through all the submissions, which is so important to the artist, that they can get some feedback, and so that's an example of one where you're working together, and we've been in conversation about that since autumn of last year.”

‘Theatre for One’ is a personal beast indeed, inviting theatre-goers one-by-one into a tiny, two-person structure to experience a one-handed, five-minute play at close range. One of the event’s playwrights, Joy Nesbitt, discusses the implications of circumstance and medium on writing a one-person show.

“There's something in my own practice, where I'm really interested in ritual theatre, and the fact that something has to shift or change. 'Theatre for One' is perfect [in that respect, because it] feels like it's about one person feeling empathy for another person, to whatever their story is, and understanding something new about themselves, or about the world. The idea that you'd be sitting with someone in that way is almost as if you were realising something about the human experience, which I think is great.

“My piece is about microaggressions, and how they amount to macroaggressions for Black people. I had an expectation that most of the people that were going to watch this show are going to be White, and for that reason, I really was excited about the idea that there will be a Black woman who was telling her story and her experiences. We would have to sit in that discomfort of actively having those conversations one on one, rather than saying them in general terms, or going to a forum or something... there's something, it's not out of malice, but from a very generous place, inviting people 'in', rather than calling 'out'.”

From the directly interpersonal, to engaging wider communities, Midsummer this year provides a spotlight for ‘New Blood’, a weekend showcase of the city’s emergent generation of bands and musicians at venues around the St Luke’s Cross area, ranging from singers and songwriters like Rua Rí and Luke O’Neill, to outfits like I Dreamed I Dream and Pebbledash, placing them at the centre of the summer festival’s action.

Cormac Donovan O’Neill of Pebbledash speaks about the opportunity that ‘New Blood' presents: “I think myself and everybody else in the other bands that I've spoken to are all buzzing for it, like. Especially with a venue like Live at St. Luke's, I think a lot of people, certainly in my generation, and myself specifically, would have a lot of memories of fantastic gigs tied to that venue, seeing The Altered Hours and John Francis Flynn, some of the finest gigs I've ever been to.

“You do see so many great strands of Cork music and young Cork acts represented, not just the evening that we're playing with the Love Buzz and the Cliffords, but it really spans an array of genres from, the more experimental side, post-punk, bit of shoegaze, to almost approaching, I suppose, the more poppy direction, but it very much speaks to just the sheer array of music that's come out of Cork, especially in the wake of Covid, that there's just been such an explosion among young people - and it's a bill that reaches out to all corners of our generation.”

On a similar note, the ‘SUNSET 9.57’ gigs at the Triskel (lineup info in panel), part of the Arts Council’s lineup of late-night events in cultural spaces, sees Cork curators Ellen King, aka ELLLL, and Sample-Studios’ Emer Yip, welcoming artists from the fringes of experimental and electronic music into the long-established arts centre.

“Midsummer is one of the tentpole festivals of the city, in that it has a really broad reach. It's multidisciplinary, which is its real strength in terms of bringing together all kinds of different artists and artforms. So in that respect, I think its audience are typically up for new experiences, in that they might book a ticket to see a theatre performance, but then they find themselves possibly joining in a céilí up in Elizabeth Fort, y'know, by the nature of its programming, it opens peoples' minds up to the possibility of taking a punt on something, or trying something out that they wouldn't necessarily typically go for.”

That ethos expands also to invitations to engage with the arts and culture in ways that people perhaps haven’t considered prior, like Radio Solstice, a live online radio station broadcasting from Coal Quay’s TEST SITE, with a lineup of programming and DJs taken from an open call-out in advance.

"I was really interested that it wasn't just musicians or just DJs," says Radio Solstice's Elinor Donovan. "Y'know, I wanted people who maybe had never even touched a controller before to feel like they could come into the booth and do something, so from the open call, we've got loads of brilliant stuff, I was really blown away by the amount of really fun ideas, and actually, not just from Cork either. People who are up in Dublin, are in Galway, sending in ideas, doing pre-recorded shows, emerging artists that want a certain space on the radio to do something interesting. For example, there's a collective called Spooky Beour, they're doing a radio play called 'Rave at the Temple of the Sun', they're based in Dublin, in Galway, we have the DJ collective Ar Ais Arís coming down, [R na G's] Cian Ó Cíobháin doing a one-hour guest mix."

With the festival now underway, and a massive lineup of events, installations and other initiatives either in last-minute production or ongoing, there’s little else to be done but to get out to everything, and be among the revellers, performers and facilitators bringing Cork Midsummer Festival to life.

“We're in it now. We're in production, we've got all of our crews in The Pav for [romantic play] ‘Tempesta’, we've got the Marina Market in full production at the moment… It's about taking a chance on something that you wouldn't normally go to. oh gosh, A lot of the shows are quite short, an hour long. It's not a huge investment in time. The art is amazing, it's worth giving it a chance. Have a look at the programme, make a decision based on something that you would never really go to see, and give it a go.”

“I'm feeling really excited,” adds Lorraine Maye. “The festival has been evolving and taking shape in the last number of years, and we're working towards creating an 'unmissable' festival, where audiences can really discover world-class experiences that they wouldn't get anywhere else. There's some work that you'll see that you literally won't see anywhere else in Ireland.

“You can point to some of the international work there, like [visual artist] Tino Sehgal, [street theatre troupe] Kamchatka, and [dance company] Lost Dog, they're going to be amazing. We work to platform Cork artists, and this year, we have ELLLL as our artist in residence, and working in collaboration with Emer, we have this new late night event, and also seeing some of those community events come to fruition that, like, I say, are years in the making. It's very exciting, and we can't wait for it.”

Cork Midsummer Festival is currently underway at venues around the city, and runs until Sunday, June 23. For more information and tickets, go to corkmidsummer.com.

Radio Solstice broadcasts this weekend and next, launching today at radiosolstice.com.