Can you believe it? Europe’s biggest pop awards ceremony, the MTV European Music Awards, will be held in Belfast this year. November 6 2011 will see “unprecedented performances and appearances,” according to MTV, from music’s most impressive celebrities inside the Odyssey Arena.
Members of Belfast City Council agreed last night to contribute £320,000 with further funding to be drawn from a number of Stormont departments, reported the Belfast Telegraph.
Other cities in the running included Paris and Istanbul. Belfast was deemed the ‘edgiest’ choice.
Last year’s show was hosted by Eva Longoria and included appearances by such high profile guests as Rihanna, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Shakira and Miley Cyrus.
Belfast could see the economic return on its investment: The telegraph reports that the return on investment was £11.9 for every £1 when the show was held in Edinburgh in 2003, and in Copenhagen in 2006 the return was £8.13 for each pound.
When it was revealed that production of King Lear had been cancelled in Wales at the weekend as a result of Sir Derek Jacobi’s sore throat, the folks at Belfast’s Grand Opera House grew concerned.
Not to fear: The show at GOP, running Tuesday to Saturday, will go ahead as schedule, with Jacobi at the helm.
“The Grand Opera House is delighted to confirm that this week’s sell-out performances of King Lear, starring Derek Jacobi, will proceed as scheduled,” representatives said in a statement to BBC.
“The production team arrived this morning, and the curtain will go up to a full house on Tuesday at 7.30pm as planned.”
Jacobi, knighted in 1994, has enjoyed a highly successful stage career. He received a Tony Award for his performance in Much Ado About Nothing and an Emmy for mocking his Shakespearean performances in Frasier. His stage work also includes playing notable historical figures such as Edward II, Octavius Caesar, Richard III of England, and Cyrano de Bergerac.
Gina McKee will play King Lear’s daughter Goneril in the production.
Best Production: The Rehearsal: Playing the Dane , Pan Pan Theatre’s deconstruction of Hamlet, directed by Gavin Quinn
Best Actor: Marty Rea as the procrastinating prince in Second Age Theatre’s Hamlet , directed by Alan Stanford
Best Actress: Olwen Fouere as the woman in her translation of Laurent Gaudé’s Sodome, My Love , directed by Lynne Parker.
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The Dublin Culture Trail, a new interactive website and iPhone app, has now become available, the Irish Times reports . The program allows visitors to Dublin city to virtually tour historic building, galleries and museums and view video footage, interviews and photographs related to the venues.
Some of the venues included are the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Trinity College Dublin, Project arts centre and the James Joyce centre.
The Times quotes Senator David Norris, speaking at the launch, saying: “The trail is fantastic because it combines creativity, imagination and new technology which together brings collections alive to everyone.”
The project is an initiative of the Temple Bar Cultural Trust.
A painting of John F. Kennedy Jr. by Cork-born artist Patrick Hennessy has risen in value to almost $100,000, after it was bought for $600 at an auction in 2003, the Irish Times reports. It’s for sale at a gallery in New Orleans.
The image depicts the U.S. president boarding air force one at Shannon in 1963. That would be the last time he would set foot in Ireland. He was assassinated later that year.
Time reporter Michael Parsons writes: “In 2003, the painting appeared at a small rural auction in the United States and was spotted by a collector in Dublin who bought it for $600. He brought it back to Ireland and, a year later, consigned it to auction at Whyte’s in Molesworth Street who estimated its value at €8,000-€10,000.”
The painting is believed to have been returned to the U.S. by a London dealer, who purchased the painting for $20,000 in 2004.
Irish Artists including Stephen Rea, Robert Ballagh, Felim Egan, Guggi and Pat Harris have put their support behind a campaign to send an Irish aid ship to Gaza as part of an international flotilla in late May.
The mission will take place exactly one year after the tragically failed “Freedom Flotilla” mission last year in which aid workers clashed with Israeli blockade enforcement officers.
A fundraiser entitled “Irish Art For Gaza” took place in Dublin, yesterday.
Guggi told Irish Independent reporters: “My heart is with the children of Gaza who are suffering at this time. I want to take part purely for humanitarian reasons. This is not about making a political statement of any kind.”
The building that has housed the Irish Cultural Centre in London since 1995 will be sold off at the hands of a Tory-controlled council. Hammersmith and Fulham Council has recently embarked on a massive cost-saving initiative to combat debt that is costing them almost £400,000 per month in interest, Mark Hennessy of the Irish Times reports.
The council may allow an interim, however, in which the centre could raise sufficient funds to purchase the building, which is valued at around £2 million.
The centre received a £175,000 government subsidy until 2007, when conservatives took control of the council.
The Irish Times quotes cultural chairman Jim O’Hara’s impassioned appeal to the council to act respectfully, saying: “If you are determined to go ahead and sell the centre at least give us an extension to the lease, so that we may have the time to raise the funds. If you do that, we both win. The council gets the funds that it says that it needs, we raise the funds, buy the building and continue the educational, welfare and welfare activities that we are involved in. I am appealing to you in this to be reasonable, to be fair and, above all, to use an old-fashioned word, to be honourable.”
Dublin’s Peacock Theatre will now have wheelchair access, Peter Crawley, of Irish Theatre Magazine, reports.
Forty-five years after its opening, the theatre has finally undergone an 80.000 euro refurbishment, including the installation of an elevator at street level. The building now meets Dublin City Council regulations.
“It’s more than forty years coming, frankly,” Abbey Director Fiach Mac Conghail, told Irish Theatre Magazine . The development corrects a situation he considered “a great source of moral embarrassment”.
Last year, Mac Conghail picketed his own theatre in promotion of disability rights.
Fiach Mac Conghail, director of Dublin’s Abbey theatre, is on a mission to find financial support for his theatre abroad, Boston.com reports.
Faced with serious budget shortfall, he has teamed up with ArtsEmerson to Bring Mark O’Rowe’s “Terminus” to Boston, in an effort to generate interest in Irish cultural exchange, and perhaps a few donations. The production is part of “Imagine Ireland”, an Irish government initiative that will see over 40 arts events produced in the United States in 2011.
The Abbey relies heavily on government subsidy, receiving half of its required 14 million Euro operation costs from state sources. The rest of the budget is made up of ticket sales and fundraising.
“The Abbey wouldn’t have survived its first 25 years without’’ the United States, Mac Conghail told boston.com reporters. “The diaspora funded the Abbey at the start, before there was a functioning government that could step in.”
www.imagineireland.ie
James Hickey, a media lawyer, will be the new CEO of the Irish Film Board, according to reports from the Irish Times. He will replace Simon Perry, who previously served a five-year term.
“Mr Hickey brings a wealth of experience to the role,” writes Times correspondent Donald Clarke. “As head of the media and entertainment law group of Matheson Ormsby Prentice, Ireland’s largest law firm, he has long represented leading actors, writers, directors and production companies.”
Hickey made a statement to press, saying: “I hope, in taking up this position, that I will be able to make a contribution to the promotion of the culture of film making and the development of the industry of film production in Ireland in my new position.”
He has previously worked on movies such as “Breakfast on Pluto” and “In the Name of the Father,” and international TV shows like “The Tudors”.
