tn2 Issue 5, 2014-15 by Trinity News

CONTENTS 04 06 07 24 26 32 34

Jumble Uppers & Downers Homegrown Photo Essay Reviews Calendar Sex

EDITORIAL TEAM Meadhbh McGrath Matthew Mulligan Lola Boorman Alice Wilson Stephen Moloney Hannah Amadeus Harte Olen Bajarias Megan Burns Ross McDonnell Daniel Scott Kathleen Girvan Kerry Brennan Eoin Moore Nicholas Kenny Elizabeth Mohen Michael Kemp Tara Joshi Eoin Lynskey Heather Keane Matthew Malone Ciara Forristal Emma Boylan Louise Curtin Sophie Murphy

COVER BY Fuchsia MacAree PRINTED BY Grehan Printers

MAPPING IT OUT Fuchsia Macaree discusses map making, Japan, moral panics and emigration with Art & Design Editor Stephen Moloney.

THREE’S A CROWD

Theatre Editor Heather Keane speaks to theatre practitioners Breffni Holahan and San Francisco’s Odyssey Works who play with tiny audiences.

ADAPTING PYNCHON

The doper-ESP relationship between Doc and Sortilège, the first-person subjective participant and the third-person objective onlooker, is not unlike the relationship between Paul Thomas Anderson and Thomas Pynchon.

TALKING SHOP

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Meadhbh McGrath talks to the owners of Indigo & Cloth, Castle & Drury and Nowhere about the contemporary menswear landscape and Dublin’s improving style consciousness.

ON THE JUICE

As vegan menus are running in some of the top restaurants around the world, Food & Drink Editor Dan Scott talks to some of Dublin’s new veganistas about the rise of clean eating.

COMPOSE YOURSELF

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Amidst the snubs and celebrations of awards season, Music Editor Tara Joshi unpacks the makings of the film scores we know and love.

BRINGING HOME THE BACON

Deputy TV Editor Emma Boylan interviews Andrea Irvine, star of new TV3 soap Red Rock, about representations of the Gardaí and the social function of soaps.

IN THE GAME: NEXT GENERATION GRINCHES

The pristine, white shop front (simply titled “Coffee”) on Manor St is home to Love Supreme, undoubtedly a cafe for coffee lovers with its cool and contemporary interior and display of home brewing equipment. Currently sourcing its coffee beans from the Cafe Sur cooperative in Tolima, Colombia, its espresso promises a rich blend of fig, blackberry and treacle notes. I order my cappuccino (€2.90) and am duly impressed by the careful weighing of the freshly ground coffee using exact measuring scales, delicately creating a finished article which is quite perfect, with its aesthetically pleasing latte art. The cappuccino itself is smooth and mild, with a subtle hint of white chocolate and soft marshmallow; to complement this I opt for the Wildflour Bakery’s white chocolate cake with toasted nuts (€3.50) a light, sweet sponge with a mixture of almonds and hazelnuts throughout. A delightful spot to escape the bustle of the city centre, Love Supreme is certainly worth a visit. Vice does it WORDS BY KATHLEEN GIRVAN thout losing its cool. This isn’t i it’much better.

FRONT SQUARE FASHION Sophie Murphy, MSc Interactive Digital Media Where did you get your clothes? Lucy’s Lounge, Ebay, Vagabond and Penney’s. Why did you choose to wear a jumpsuit? When you’re forced to wake up early, the easiest thing to do is wear a one-piece so you don’t have to think of multiple items at 7am when your brain is nebular.

WORDS BY OLEN BAJARIAS PHOTOS BY SERGEY ALIFANOV

On Christmas Day, a dedicated denial of service (DDoS) attack by a hacker group known as the Lizard Squad brought down Xbox Live for most of the day, and the Playstation Network for quite a bit longer. This occurred despite the hacker group having been supposedly been dismantled for good only a week previously, taken down not by the FBI, but by a rival group of “whitehat” (friendly) hackers Finest Squad. One has to wonder just what the motivations for such a widespread attack were. Was this a random act of dickishness? (Probably.) But maybe, just maybe, Lizard Squad were trying to remind us all — Christmas Special style — just how dependent we are on our gadgets and games, and that the true meaning of Christmas is spending time with family. One has to wonder whether this is what the average child (or 21-year old student) was contemplating as they turned on their brand new PS4 to receive an error message. The attack finally ended when Kim Dotcom, founder of the encrypted upload service MegaUpload, offered the hackers 3,000 Lifetime accounts on MegaUpload, allowing gamers everywhere to enjoy their Christmas in peace. WORDS BY NICHOLAS KENNY

VIDEODROME

COFFEE X CAKE

At the 1994 MTV Music Awards, when R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts scooped the Best Direction category, Michael Stipe’s speech was unceremoniously interrupted by one Nathaniel Hornblower. Finding it necessary to mention that he was the Swiss man who “had all the ideas for Star Wars and everything”, Hornblower lamented Spike Jonzes’ failure to win this award for his directing of the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage. In reality, Hornblower was an alias for MCA of the Brooklyn hip-hop trio and his choice to storm the stage in absurd costume was fitting with the style of the beloved 1970s cop-show spoof music video. Shot as a parody cum tribute to shows like Hawaii 5-0 and Starsky and Hutch, Sabotage is precisely what the Beastie Boys did best: pop culture references and chaos. A high octane, low budget mock trailer, complete with deliberately fluffed insertions of stock footage and rubbish props, this is a feast of schlock that any aficionado of exploitation movies will appreciate. However, the cinematography during its many nonsensical chase sequences are the real highlight as Jonzes’ skater background adds a dash of cool to the crass platter, taking us back to the halcyon days of yore when moustaches and men called Bunny were the most voluminous things on Earth. WORDS BY MICHAEL LANIGAN

NOTES ON A SCANDAL A film that will go down in history, not so much for the quality of its content, but rather due to the crisis that it provoked, The Interview has become the film with a reaction that is so bad it is actually good. The film has received every form of negative criticism under the sun; from being a shameless nationalistic version of Team America to a juvenile case of pseudopolitics strewn with racist stereotypes and dick jokes, its detractors are endless. However, to be deemed an “act of war” by North Korean officials, while also receiving the stamp of approval from activist and former DPRK citizen Yeon Mi-park is a victory despite what the West may say in terms of taste. As the late Monty Python member Graham Chapman said, this is another case of “anything but mindless good taste” and that is probably what such a cult of personality needs. In terms of twisted ideas, it is hard to top using an acoustic version of Katy Perry’s Firework as the song to accompany the Great Secretary’s onscreen death. Yes, the West may attempt to disown The Interview, but bootleg copies now sell for a hefty $50 in many DPRK black markets, so perhaps a few leaked Sony emails were worth it in end. WORDS BY MICHAEL LANIGAN

LITERARY MILESTONES January 24 will mark the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death, the unlikely recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. In part, his laureateship was in commemoration of his historical writing, but more striking is the acknowledgement of his “brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values”. Despite the obvious sentimentality driving this particular award, it still attests to the importance of political speaking in the Western world. Oratory has classically been an art form valued above the written word. Whether in the form of rousing nationalistic speeches or the tradition of oral folklore, humankind has persistently been preoccupied with its pre-linguistic past. The origin of US literature, for example, arises from the imitation of such oratory genres, with most of foundation author Ralph Waldo Emerson’s formative essays on the burgeoning American subject derived from a series of speeches given in the newly formed American Republic. In an age where politicians (and even writers) are tweeting instead of public speaking, has the the once mighty oratory fallen by the wayside? This lack of prowess in public speaking is now widespread. Churchill’s oratory is now mentioned in the same breath as Cicero and Abraham Lincoln, such was his ability to unite a nation and more against adversity. Remembering his death means remembering that fading art as well. WORDS BY MICHAEL KEMP

PUBLIC SPACE

Potentially unexplored territory to the Arts Block inclined, the extension to the Department of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering, completed in 2002 by Grafton Architects, is an often overlooked and underrated thread within the fabric of Trinity’s architecture. An awkward site wedged in a corner of campus, it has been exploited to permit maximum use, encompassing teaching and research space and a podium which serves as an important pedestrian thoroughfare connecting campus and real life. Dynamic geometries, projecting angles and overlapping massing are evidenced throughout, hallmarks for the acclaimed

architectural firm. Somehow, these bold attributes do not jar with the building’s surroundings. Its sleek lines afford the design a fast rhythm and its clinical colouring manage to interact amicably with the nearby buildings of Lincoln Place and the masonry of the original 19th Century Parsons Building. This respectful quality is taken further — a tree is preserved by being allowed to pierce the podium. This design demonstrates the possibility of dialogue between the natural and built environments, and the historical and contemporary.

WORDS AND PHOTO BY STEPHEN MOLONEY

That gum you like is going to come back in style: 25 years ago, Laura Palmer promised she would return to Twin Peaks. Now Sheryl Lee, Kyle MacLachlan and Dana Ashbrook are all confirmed for the Showtime limited series, with Sherilyn Fenn rumoured to be reprising her role as Audrey Horne.

Elastic Heart: Sia’s fellow brown paper bag enthusiast Shia LaBeouf takes on Maddie Ziegler in a mesmerising interpretive dance-off inside a giant birdcage. Mr. Murakami’s Place: Haruki Murakami wants to be your agony uncle. Last week, he launched his advice column and will accept “questions of any kind”, in a variety of languages, until January 31. In his first column, Murakami responded to a woman who shared his birth date by describing the “seafood tower” he enjoyed on his last birthday. “It was incredible,” he said. Zayn Malick’s brows: Even better than Cara’s. John Water’s Porn Classics: The cult filmmaker will host a new series on Playboy TV called Groundbreakers, in which he provides commentary on old porn films. His interest in the history of cult cinema drew him to the series. “Porn classics are another extreme element of show business,” he explains, adding that when he was young, “I pretended I owned a dirty movie theater. That’s how I played as a child.” Rory Parnell Mooney: The Irish designer’s stunning debut at MAN, featuring robe-clad hooligans, took the AW15 shows by storm.

#OscarsSoWhite: The President of the Academy Awards thinks the fact that this year’s Oscars will be the whitest since 1998 is NBD. When asked if the Oscars had a diversity problem, she responded, “Not at all. Not at all.” Bieber’s bulge for Calvin Klein: Will we ever know how big Justin’s penis is?

Google Glass: Google has finally called an end to its Glass experiment, upsetting Glassholes everywhere.

The Lego Movie’s snub: Director Phil Lord had the perfect response to being left out of the running for a best animated film Oscar — he built his own. WORDS BY MEADHBH MCGRATH

It seems a fair assertion to make that there is no equivalent in Dublin — or, indeed, in Ireland — to eight-piece Nova Collective, with their gorgeously breezy bossa nova melodies and the smooth-as-honey combined vocals of Luana Matos and Dónal Kearney. The brainchild of pianist and composer Louis Ryan, the group’s initial incarnation was back in 2013 — “I was just out of college and there was this group of musicians I knew from Trinity [...] and I suppose at that time I was listening to a lot of bossa nova,” Ryan explains. “The idea was that we’d start a project and maybe play in that sort of style, or at least be influenced by it.” The group produced several well-received video releases thanks to the combined efforts of a talented circle of college friends, but they went on a brief hiatus so that Ryan could take some time to do some writing. “I often think that writing anything — not just music — is kind of like a muscle, and you need to do it a lot in order to keep it in exercise.” The hiatus allowed for a reassessment of what exactly Nova Collective was and, on the advice of a jazz musician, Ryan realised that it was important to involve Brazilian artists given that the music he was writing has such a strong cultural identity. Thus entered the

HOM EGR OWN likes of Matos, with her delicate Portuguese vocals and her assured knowledge of said cultural identity. This is hardly to say that Ryan — or indeed the other members of the group — are in anyway ignorant of their genre, and the three members present seem to have an equal knowledge of a variety of Brazilian albums: “You would probably know a lot of Brazilian albums that I’ve never heard of,” Mato says to Ryan, but he argues that the same is true vice versa. Their sound has certainly gone down well with Dublin’s Brazilian crowd — “There were so many Brazilians dancing and singing along, it was so cool,” Kearney says of their intimate headline show at Bellobar last year. With that said, Ryan admits to a tendency to playing more upbeat sambas than lilting bossa novas in their live sets because of the incredible crowd response. “It’s all about the rhythm,” explains Kearney, “People hear the rhythm and they just feel it.” Matos is hesitant about tailoring gigs to focus on just the faster songs, however: “If you talk about Brazilian music, people are

gonna think about samba,” she says with a good-natured groan, “And it’s not just like that! Our first single New Samba, it’s a bossa nova [...] it’s not just music to dance to, it’s to enjoy! The way that [Ryan] writes is so rich.” The pianist’s writing style has changed over the years, he says, finding himself more relaxed in his scoring: “I used to score everything really heavily because that was the way I’d been taught [...] but now the more you trust the other people in the band, the music comes alive through their interpretation.” The group’s approach to lyrics is quite fascinating too, with Ryan sometimes coming up with concepts and lines in English and giving them to Matos to translate into suitably lyrical Portuguese. There is the anticipation for the next wonderfully rich composition Ryan comes up with for his two singers, whom he increasingly finds himself writing for: “For whatever reason, these two have been my biggest catalyst ever.” With their beautifully light, lilting EP on the horizon and a tour to support it, it’s a truly exciting time for Nova Collective, and everything seems fittingly like it’s going the way of the final refrain from New Samba — “sweet and loving”. WORDS BY TARA JOSHI PHOTOS BY BENEDICT SHEGOG

Luck of F the Draw Our cover illustrator speaks to Stephen Moloney about map making, Japan, moral panics and emigration. 08

uchsia MacAree, 25, is fast becoming one of Dublin’s foremost illustrators. Her work, at once charming and smart, continues to grace the covers and pages of countless publications at home and abroad. It hangs in public spaces as limited run prints and posters and it sits in private places, printed on cushions, book covers and cassette cases. Although in constant high demand she finds time to chat with tn2 about map making, Japan, moral panics and emigration. Born on the border of Tipperary and Clare, MacAree always drew as a child, “but sure everyone did. And then some people stopped drawing. And then some people don’t stop drawing.” Never stopping

brought her to NCAD, where she studied visual communication before moving to London for a master’s in illustration at Camberwell College of Arts. Asked if she would recommend formal training as an avenue for professional practice, the answer is a resounding yes: “You can make things without really thinking of the outcome — there’s nothing at stake.” Of her undergraduate career, she says, “I only started doing stuff I liked in 4th year. A lot of it was just working through a lot of bad stuff. I needed to go through that, to have someone force me to make loads of stuff and try everything out.” This process of experimentation and regression, allowing her to ultimately move forward in technique and style has served MacAree well, no doubt helping her in securing tenure as NCAD’s Designer in Residence on returning to Dublin. Of this experience she says “[it] was really great for giving me a space and structure to start out being freelance”. Indeed, having this foundation has been invaluable to her establishment today — her commissions and projects are numerous and almost unavoidable within and beyond Dublin.

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I think there’s value to a naïve sort of style which deals with a serious topic — it’s quite an open and democratic thing.

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In terms of external influences, time spent in Japan played an important role: “Colour and illustration are used interestingly there. The signage uses illustration and is really accessible looking. It’s kind of bright and loud and hectic but also calm and quiet at the same time, if that makes any sense.” A similarly dynamic but clear quality is self evident in MacAree’s own work. “I was also more considered in my composition after I came back. It definitely has had a lasting effect.” She cites Keith Haring, David Hockney, Henri Matisse and Grayson Perry as fine art influences, which makes sense — there’s a graphic and expressive quality evidenced in the work of each that isn’t too far removed from MacAree’s own approach.

That everyone from fledgling local publications to mammoth international businesses — Mercedes-Benz, for one — are drawn to MacAree and her work speaks volumes about her talent. Her style, which she describes as “quite flat, with no depth or perspective or texture, just shape and colour” seems to be key to this mass appeal. It’s not unfair to say there’s something childlike in her work and she agrees, “Maybe that’s why it works, because it’s quite open and friendly looking — it’s quite accessible. Things tend to end up looking ‘fun’ which means the briefs I get are usually to make something look fun. Which isn’t to say it’s without basis — I think there’s value to a naïve sort of style which deals with a serious topic — it’s quite an open and democratic thing”. Amongst all of these commissions, maps comprise a large part of MacAree’s oeuvre. English publication Oh Comely enlisted her for her first, “They asked me to do one of fried chicken places in London [...] It was a thing I always thought I wanted to get into. Then I did one for the Irish Times as well and it kind of all really snowballed from there”. Since then, her maps are quite literally flown all over the world, with each issue of Aer Lingus’ inflight magazine Cara containing at least one of her illustrations amongst its pages. Conveniently for MacAree, it also boasts a readership of over 1.3 million per issue, which has no doubt helped her secure high profile international commissions.

However, this doesn’t exactly guarantee a globetrotting lifestyle to research the places she is asked to depict, “One week it can be central Spain and the next it’s San Francisco which means a whole load of Google. And, if possible, I try and get some local knowledge on the area I’m doing — Dublin is easy to sneak in little in-jokes, so it’s good to have that for other cities.” Returning to Dublin, one of her more popular subjects, MacAree wonders how many more iterations of the capital she can conceive, “It does get a bit ‘Oh my God, I’ve drawn every building in Dublin!’ It gets to the point where it’s hard to make it look different — you find yourself redrawing the Four Courts a bit more wobbly this time.” Despite this, she insists that maps remain the most enjoyable projects for her. Although there is a deceptively simple and wide-eyed quality to MacAree’s work, and often within illustration at large, there is a high level of technicality behind it, “There’s more to it than just twee drawings or whatever, it’s an interesting scene with people making a lot of very intelligent work. It’s technical and logical.” Within her own practice, MacAree imbues her work with an inimitable wit and humour, which “often comes from conversations with friends -— those kind of chats where you’re layering surreal levels until you have something mad in front of you.” This inspired her zine It’s a Disgrace, Joe — a parody of RTÉ Radio One’s often ridiculous phonein show and which features surreal moral

panics like “They’re giving drugs to the ducks, Joe” and “The dogs are all on the dole, Joe”. MacAree also likes to bring this fun with friends more literally into her work, “Sneaking friends into stuff is really fun, if there’s a map or any big scene. It’s also like a slow burning form of bullying.” Otherwise, if she needs to include figures, “I’d just look over to my studio mate and be drawing them like, while having a chat with them.” She also wryly notes the current popularity of succulents in illustration, “It’s cool to draw cactuses at the moment... They’ve no idea that they’re so trendy right now!” Speaking of friends and colleagues, the topic of emigration is bound to rear its head, as so many young creatives, voluntarily or involuntarily, abandon ship for an unspecified amount of time. MacAree seems to be weathering the storm well, “I’m really really happy in Dublin. I went away to America for two weeks over Christmas and I did the whole getting emotional at Aer Lingus stewardesses’ accents thing on the way back, so I don’t think I’ll be emigrating any time soon. I think there is a really great community here - the small size means you end up knowing people who are doing all sorts of different creative pursuits, be it design or fine art or dance or writing or music. You never feel stifled. It’d be great if vacant spaces were more accessible, though.” MacAree even suggests an upside, “Since the people who would moan about Dublin or Ireland have left, everyone here can just get on with making things.” WORDS AND PHOTO BY STEPHEN MOLONEY

“Immersive” and “site-specific” were the buzzwords in theatre for 2014. Festival programmes were inundated with participatory performances following in the footsteps of industry leaders like England’s hugely successful Punchdrunk. Whole warehouses, sometimes even whole sides of town, have been taken over by these pioneering companies, hoping to engulf their audiences for the ultimate level of engagement. So much fuss has been made over these new dramatic heights, but what does all this innovation mean for the theatregoer? What happens when the spectator becomes part of the performance?

‘The Map is Not the Territory”, Aiden.L.M. Grout

In Close Quarters.

reffni Holahan is an SS Drama student who recently performed in the final play of ANU’s Monto cycle, VARDO, which took its participants through the underworld of Dublin’s north inner city. The Monto — Europe’s biggest red light district in the 1920s, nestled in around Talbot and Foley Street — is back, but we just can’t see it. This time around, it’s populated by invisible immigrants. Could you describe the scene you performed and how you prepared for it? We based what the audience experienced on our interpretations of media coverage, urban legends, and, most directly, profiles and reviews on escort-ireland. com. Firsthand accounts from ex-sex workers also helped form the basis of our “script”. I escorted (pardon the pun) the audience between Busáras and the flat on Railway Street, where Bella Cohen, the prostitute of Ulysses fame operated. In the kitchen, three sex workers waited. We ate Cornflakes, talked about the soaps, described the parties thrown in the apartment, and performed a movement

piece around the audience member — think of them sitting at a table, presented with crotch after crotch after crotch. Upon the rotation of these audience members, I brought one into a bedroom where I asked them if they recognised me and if they would recognise me if we met again. “It’s probably best if you don’t.” Phones rang, showers ran, and when the 12 minutes was up, we were out of there and onto the next snippet of the modern-day Monto. How did being around the actual community you were portraying feel for you? Were you a kind of audience yourself initially? Walking to and from rehearsals was just as much part of developing an understanding of the area as what we did in-studio or onsite. You’ve really got to have your eyes and ears peeled to spot and appreciate the workings of the area today. We moved into the flat about a week before previews. It’s strange how quickly it became our home. Everything changes when you move in. This is where the theatre becomes more “site-responsive” than “site-specific”. VARDO forced its audience to feel complicit in dark and dirty acts; how do you cope with the tension in such an intimate exchange? Did you ever feel an urge to put the audience at ease in any

Photo courtesy of ANU Productions

way? In relation to practicality, the show is timed out so exactly that we only open the floodgates when we can ensure that we have time to deal with the fall-out. Louise Lowe and Owen Boss, the founders of ANU, are incredibly skilled in managing the balance between the hyper-real and reminding the audience that they’re at and in a play. Learning this from them takes a while, but when you hit it, it’s really satisfying. It really comes into play when you have an audience member in front of you who is close to saying that they “want out”. Every audience member has a different gauge and the onus is on the performer to keep them in the in-between of ease and engagement. We recently interviewed the star of a panto and she told us that the audience’s reactions are the top priority for the show. Would you say the same of the audience’s participation in this kind of performance?

and “enjoy”, and to those who want to exercise their agency at every opportunity. Louise and Owen equip their performers with the ability to gauge and handle every shade on the spectrum. It really comes down to knowing the world you’re inhabiting right down to your bones. It’s bizarre how organically you come to know when it’s the right time to hit a mark, move on, or just be with the audience in a moment they have instigated. In fact, you know you’ve done it right when all three happen with one audience member. Did the interaction with these small groups of people leave any lasting effect on you after the show’s run? It’s funny you should ask. As my piece was based on warning them against acknowledging me with a “smile, or a nod, or a wave” if we met again, I’ve had some funny encounters of hesitant smiles and nods and waves. It’s pretty impossible to forget the face of someone you have shared something like that with.

There’s definitely a balance that needs to be struck between allowing the audience to have agency — which they’ve come to expect in work by ANU and their contemporaries — and hitting the marks of the show. The work is made to be accessible to those who want to sit back

Photo courtesy of ANU Productions

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Every audience member has a different gauge and the onus is on the performer to keep them in the in-between of ease and engagement.

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an Francisco’s Odyssey Works produce durational singleaudience works. Most recently, the company tailor-made a threemonth performance for the author Rick Moody which infiltrated all aspects his life in New York City, even flying him to Canada for one ephemeral encounter. Their other participants haven’t been famous, and their application process is open to anyone, followed by months of immersion in the successful applicant’s life for the team before any “performance” begins. Could you give us an insight into what makes the ideal participant?

There is no ideal participant. We trust that the right participant — whatever that means — will come to us. It is a complicated process, but to be brief — and secretive — our decision comes down to three factors: 1. Does it feel right? We discuss each participant in depth at our meetings. So much of the process is from the heart. How does the applicant make you feel? If they feel right, you just know it. These meetings are very funny. We get so passionate; it’s like an election! An election with too many candidates... 2. Is the applicant emotionally stable enough for us to give an Odyssey to? We get so many applications from a wide variety of people. In the realm of those applying for a life-changing experience, a percentage are very unhappy and unstable. We make it clear that we are not art-therapists, and we do not take on subjects whom we do not think we can handle. 3. Can we find someone who is very unlike our last participant? We like to change it up. If our last participant was a woman, maybe this time we’ll choose a man. If

‘The Map is Not the Territory”, Aiden.L.M. Grout

‘The Narrative Spiral”, Frederic Grasset

they were young, let’s find someone older. Rick was very different than Laura, the last participant in San Francisco, which means that the entire performance and preparation structure is different too.

it disrupts the surface of reality in their experience of the Odyssey.

How much is your work at the whim of their family and friends? I have never thought about our work being “at the whim” of family and friends, but I think you are right to use that language. We work with the family very closely, and they could blow our cover in a heartbeat if they wanted to. At the same time, we are very careful to gauge our trust with everyone involved in the project, including collaborating artists, the public, and even the participant. The process of making an Odyssey is a process of building trust, in order to produce a magical experience that appears to be working all on its own — and sometimes is! When family and friends help, the Odyssey can very quickly become a life-changing experience for one person to a lives-changing experience for everyone involved. Is there any element of postperformance support, or are the participants left to process the experience by themselves? We do a debrief between a week and a month after the performance with the participant and main creative contributors. We spend an hour, interviewing and discussing the piece and its effects with the participant and we briefly share our own responses. At the debrief, our participant is allowed to ask any questions. Sometimes this is where our literary forgeries and website hacks are revealed, but sometimes participants don’t want to know everything because

As for other post-performance support, we leave it in the participant’s hands to further pursue a relationship. While often we would love to be friends with our audience, I imagine it’s overwhelming for them to know where to begin. They have made themselves so incredibly, beautifully vulnerable to us, sharing some of their most private feelings and experiences, and yet they know next to nothing about our team. In the process of devoting ourselves so much to make this singular experience, we fall in love, but there’s a bit of imbalance in that relationship and we’ve always been a bit sad about how one-sided it is. You’ve had an actor arrested while performing, can you tell us about any other impediments like that? Oh boy, we’ve had a lot of run-ins with police. It is striking how easy it is to run afoul of the standard ways of doing things, and to stick out. We’ve never had real legal problems, thank God, though we’ve had a few annoying tickets to pay. Even at our most recent performance, part of which happened at a museum in San Francisco, the guards were very very worried about us, and tried to break us up and keep us out many times, even though we were just doing what you are supposed to be doing in a museum, though with more intensity I overheard one guard talking to another: “What are they doing?” and the other replied: “I don’t know, I think they’re looking at the art?” as if it were the weirdest thing in the world. WORDS BY HEATHER KEANE

ICE ERSA Film Editor Ross McDonnell compares the obscure world of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice and how Paul Thomas Anderson has navigated the politics and pastiche of the novel in his upcoming adaptation.

ased on Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest feature film marks the first adaptation for the screen from the literature of the infamous and reclusive postmodern American novelist. Pynchon is the author of major works (similarly considered “unadaptable”) such as the widely read, canonical The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow, a book so dense Anderson himself has admitted to never finishing it. The auteur writer-director of mostly California-set films, from Boogie Nights (1997) to The Master (2012), Anderson’s process of adapting this hippy detective story began with his optioning and securing of the rights, receiving the

manuscript from Pynchon’s publisher in advance of the novel’s public release in 2009. Anderson has since manually converted the novel of 400 pages into a screenplay of 120 pages, forming the backbone of the film audiences can see on Irish screens from January 30. Inherent Vice is recognisably the metaphysical detective narrative typical of Pynchon’s oeuvre, elliptically and distractedly trying to follow our dumbstruck doper hero “Doc” Sportello’s search for his missing ex-old lady Shasta, a plot that may or may not be (because ultimately, who knows) related to the mysterious body of something called… The Golden Fang. It’s 1970. In the wake of the Manson murders, the violence at Altamont and the Vietnam War, old ideals of love and peace are sidelined as Nixon-era neoliberalism and co-opting commercialism steadily creeps in. Paranoia is running the day and frequently blazed private investigator Doc navigates through an agitated, twitching Californian megalopolis that teems and tremors with neuroses. Inherent Vice is somewhat of a departure from Pynchon’s usual broadly metascientific approach to narrative. The underlying logic that seems to govern the universe of Inherent Vice — and its proliferating paranoia — is drug-

fuelled. This emphasis might make the postmodern condition analogous to a hangover, a rollover, or worse: like waking up in dread, on a damp sofa, with the spins, trying to fill in the ambiguous gaps and lost time. Perpetuating constant invention, the mystery is labyrinthine and with no dead-ends, just a constant onslaught of new risk-laden moments riddling out in all directions. Doc’s jagged and endless line of enquiry, from one newlyintroduced character to the next, projects the freewheeling metaphysical masterplot, a reticulate and ever-reticulating nervous network where no information is meaningless, but rather, everything has a meaning of some indeterminate, ambiguous value. When contemplating the success or fidelity of a film adaptation, there’s an essential difference to consider between the two elements that comprise a narrative: its story and its narration. While story can be freely adapted, represented and mediated in film, the novel’s narrative discourse cannot help but undergo a radical transformation as it’s adapted into a different mode of representation, moving uncomfortably and unwillingly from one medium into another. Arguably, it is Pynchon’s writing which gives his novel much of its power, Inherent Vice not being a case of style-over-substance,

but one where style really is substance. The novel is narrated omnisciently, prose littered with pop culture references and proper nouns and polysemous puns, all of which gather together in a new cultural significance, the vibration, or “vibe” it elicits being greater than the sum of its signifiers. This descriptive language lost in film, its shots, scenes, and sequences all narrated by an objective camera, is potentially recovered in Anderson’s mise-en-scène, Joaquin Phoenix’s mumbling interpretation of Doc, and Jonny Greenwood’s intra- and extra-diegetic music. Though Anderson’s execution is impeccable, watching his Inherent Vice is still not the same as reading Pynchon’s. It’s a different experience watching the film — like Roadrunner Pynchon’s impossible sentences outpace even the wiliest of readers, but they can nonetheless be read and re-read enough times until one can begin to figure it out, whereas a film watched in a theatre, for the sake of your fellow members of the audience, really shouldn’t be rewound. This helpless feeling of forward momentum and transience is both convincing and fitting of Inherent Vice — where Pynchon writes: “Yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever.” Remarkably, this quotation written in Pynchon’s authorial voice still appears in Anderson’s film. It’s spoken, aloud, by Sortilège, a marginal character (of which there are many) in the novel whose role has been expanded substantially for the film, which, curiously, she narrates. Sortilège is played by celebrated musician Joanna Newsom, who lends to the film her unique, distinctly Californian vocal fry. Sortilège, the vibe-sensitive storyteller and amateur astrologer, is foregrounded early in the film, having broken the fourth-wall within its first thirty seconds. Described by Anderson as a “surfer girl Jiminy Cricket”, Sortilège acts as neither a providential guiding (or sleight of ) hand in the film; she’s simply a friend of Doc’s. When the gumshoe unknowingly grapples with things that are beyond him, Sortilège articulates the answers she conjures, her unique position on the threshold and edges of the story’s frame allowing her to insightfully interpret and sort the chaos of the mystery when Doc cannot. Sortilège deciphers the lawlessness of Pynchon’s setting, standing in fantastic contrast to the misogynistic tropes of the classic hard-boiled detective genre Pynchon and Anderson actively deconstruct. Our narrator sometimes suggestively nudges

and orients Doc in the right direction — helpfully advising him to consult ouija boards, to change his hairstyle, to devote a written dedication on the skin of a joint “to Shasta’s safety” — but remains mostly hands-off, there to chart the events as if a one-woman Greek chorus, to narrate the story but never really participate in it. It’s said that when one reads they are in a constant process of adaptation, subjectively interpreting the text given, constructing and reconstructing their impression of its meaning. Thus, seeing someone else’s interpretation of a beloved novel on-screen is likely going to underwhelm or outrage. Anderson’s burden, his thankless task of adaptation, may have been doomed to this fate, and though his necessary fixing of an image — burning it to 35mm celluloid film — may seem to betray the source material, Anderson’s handling of Pynchon’s novel is still, somehow, a success. Pynchon’s novel embraces the inherent vice of how knowledge and evidence is mediated

and how information is dispersed, and Anderson’s challenging film triumphantly manages to resonate in a similar way. The doper-ESP relationship between Doc and Sortilège, the first-person subjective participant and the thirdperson objective onlooker, is not unlike the relationship between Anderson and Pynchon. A die-hard romantic, Anderson as well emphasises the warmth of what might otherwise be considered cold and cerebral material, the too-human sorrow in Newsom’s narrating voice heightening the tragedy the paranoid faces, his projecting of a subjective world rather than trying to live and survive, somehow, in the objective one, the tragedy of existence as the firstperson in the third-person. Inherent Vice is a profound tragicomic pastiche, a frustrating film-going experience, a dizzying trampolining from the cosmic to the comic, from lofty existential pathos to low slapstick humour. WORDS BY ROSS MCDONNELL

MEN of the CLOTH tn2 Editor Meadhbh McGrath rips the Irish menswear market apart at the seams, speaking to shopkeepers and aficionados about the slow movement of high-fashion menswear into the mainstream.

challenge any of you to pick up the weekly paper and see menswear in it. You won’t see it in the Sunday Independent, you just see tits. Menswear don’t have tits unfortunately so we can’t feature in the Sunday Independent.” According to Indigo & Cloth’s Garrett Pitcher, the representation of menswear in Irish media is “shite, exclamation mark!”. It’s unquestionable that menswear rarely gets a look in in Ireland’s weekly papers, apart from the occasional “menswear special”. “There’s no one person who represents menswear in this country, no one,” Pitcher insists. He mentions Darren Kennedy and Brendan Courtney, both of whom he admires, but explains that their role “is not menswear, it’s generally womenswear”. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed that menswear has abandoned its safety net. In 2015, you can now find streetwear, traditional tailoring and experimental designs playing off each other on the street and on the runway. Womenswear rapidly courses through RTW, resort and couture seasons each year, hungrily engulfing and spitting out trend after trend, to such an extent that pieces are now considered utterly disposable — a shift that designers

have shown themselves to be aware of, most notably in Jeremy Scott’s “fast fashions” for Moschino. “Womenswear ate itself, it covered every trend under the sun every season and finally it had its day. It’s not dead, but it is dying,” Pitcher argues. Menswear, on the other hand, operates at a different pace: “Menswear is far outgrowing womenswear. It went through a heritage stage, and now it will go through a reinvention stage, so you’re gonna have new fabrics, new brands. We’ve gone beyond trends.” While contemporary menswear may be underrepresented in Irish media, Dublin’s independent stores are breaking new ground. Indigo & Cloth opened in 2007 and, Pitcher notes, “We were the only menswear independent for years, which is ridiculous.” In the past year, Indigo was joined by both Nowhere, a fashion-oriented boutique on Aungier St founded by Brian Teeling and David Erixon, and Castle & Drury, a highend store specialising in streetwear, owned and curated by Conor Rhatigan. Teeling describes the emergence of new menswear shopping experiences: “It’s an injection of youth and of fresh ideas, because fashion in general in Dublin is quite stale. People live and breathe Brown Thomas and the high street, and not everyone is like that.” Rhatigan says his decision to open a store came as a result of seeing the success of Indigo & Cloth, “seeing that it can work if it’s done right, that the market is here for it.” The increasing popularity of the menswear market outside of Ireland has led to customers wanting to be more creative with their everyday clothing. “Menswear in general is more popular, around the world,” Pitcher explains. “Between ourselves, Nowhere, and Castle & Drury, there’s no real crossover, but it allows for the average guy, or the guy into fashion in Dublin, to pick and choose little bits of where he sits in the market place. It’s like a continuum. I think there’s enough now in Dublin […] that you can get what you want without having to leave the shores.” When asked whether there was such thing as a “Dublin” style of dressing, Teeling responds, “Big time! Same way that womenswear in Dublin is Penney’s. If I was to generalise, it would be the guy in the ‘thoughtless outfit’. They don’t put any thought into it, or their wives or girlfriends or boyfriends shop for them, and it’s what they think they should be wearing.” Pitcher argues, “I think Irish men and Dublin men can get a bit of a bad name and I don’t think it’s justified now. I think over the years it has been — your classic bootcut and hoodie and untucked shirt and all that kind of stuff.” He is quick to point out that Dublin men “do not dress as well as lots of cities in the rest of the world and never, ever will”: “It’s one of those questions you get asked all the time, but we are not New York,

we are not Paris, we are not London. All those cities are international cities. It’s a melting pot of trends, and it’s actually the birth of trends. Dublin will never create a trend, and it will always be a follower. There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s just geography.” Teeling maintains that it’s not possible for menswear designers to succeed by staying in Dublin: “You need to go to London, to go to Paris, to go to New York. The reason that we don’t have as many Irish designers is because there aren’t that many, unfortunately. The consciousness of Nowhere is that we want to be supportive, we want to help, we want to promote.” Unlike Teeling, who attributes the stagnation of menswear to the high street, Pitcher thinks it is the high street, not the work of the independent stores, which has led to men dressing better. Independent shops do this by providing different shopping experiences, and “[introducing] exclusive new designers, a lot of them young. We say contemporary because most of the brands that we stock have all been set up in the last ten years.” Pitcher has been at the forefront of this: “One of our niches is that we stock a decent selection of Irish. We work as a studio but also as a store as much with Irish craftmakers as possible.” He also points out that the high street isn’t as strong for menswear: “I don’t think any guy aspires to shop in H&M and Topshop. With independent stores, I think you can put your look together a little bit more and have more influence on it. That’s why I think menswear is kind of shining through more.” All three agree that men in Dublin are “definitely becoming more aware” of fashion. Teeling observes that “it’s being more and more viewed as a masculine trait to look well. I’m not a fan of how he dresses, but I think [UFC fighter] Conor McGregor is kind of a leader in that respect. He’s wearing Prada, and Gucci, and beautiful tailoring, he has his hair in a bun, he looks after himself, and that’s kind of redefining what the classic masculine viewpoint is, rather than thinking that fashion is ‘gay’.” According to Teeling, “Men have always dressed for other men, always. Straight, gay, it doesn’t matter, they don’t dress for their [partners], they dress for other men.” Pitcher disagrees, “I would say that most of the guys who shop in here dress

primarily for themselves. They will have girlfriends who just don’t get it, but they’ll buy in here irregardless, which I admire. That’s a strong person, a strong guy, which is great [...] they don’t actually give a shit what anyone else thinks of them.” Menswear has never been more exciting than it is right now. As men are becoming less conservative in how they dress, Dublin’s independent shops are rewriting contemporary perceptions of menswear and reflecting the dynamic state of menswear in 2015. Indigo & Cloth will present the first instalment of the Blueprint Talks, as part of the Year of Irish Design, on January 29 at 7pm.

WORDS BY MEADHBH MCGRATH PHOTOS BY MATTHEW MULLIGAN AND COURTESY REBECCA MCNAMEE

YO LE A U N R A UP C T

Food & Drink Editor Dan Scott looks at the rise of veganism, its reported health benefits, celebrity followers and growing popularity in Dublin.

‘Tis the month of New Year’s resolutions — insanity workouts, bulletproof coffee and alcohol abstinence ahoy. Although it might be known to you and I as January, a new term has vied to rename the month — Veganuary. #cleaneating, #eatclean and other variants have dominated the Instagram and Twitter feeds of carnivores and herbivores alike with coldpressed juices, raw chocolate and sassy salads. In 1995, the Simpsons episode “Lisa the Vegetarian” aired starring Paul and Linda McCartney, revealing that the lovable shopkeeper, Apu, was a vegan. The concept may have seemed almost impossible to comprehend when society was still dishing out abuse to vegetarians, but twenty years on, things have changed. Vegan menus are running in some of the top restaurants around the world, babies are declaring “paleo” as their first word and heck, quinoa’s cropping up (geddit) as a popular mutual interest on Tinder.

While we’ve screamed over the complexity of Weight Watchers’ points and the Dukan while inducing a coronary on the Atkins, the vegan diet offers something straight forward and substantial. Beyoncé ditched the maple syrup diet for something a little more balanced, and emerged positively glowing after her 22 day (research has shown it takes 21 days to break a habit, so they decided to go for (n+1) days) vegan diet. Jay also joined in on the beetroot banter looking just as fresh and svelte. Although Bey was papped going into a vegan restaurant in fox fur (yes, fox, not faux), her #22Days Challenge led to the explosion of veganism, with a reported increase in energy levels, defined muscle tone and clearer skin. But the vegan diet isn’t purely advantageous to vanity. The “China Study” (from Cornell University) is still one of the best-selling publications on health, following one of the largest epidemiological studies conducted in the world. Increased cholesterol levels were discovered in dairy consumers compared to their counterparts, as well as a reduction in the amount of disease such as cancer, diabetes and other autoimmune diseases between those following at least a vegetarian diet compared to meat eaters. It’s also argued throughout the piece that neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s could even be prevented through diet. Although it seems like a huge undertaking, fret not — there’s more to veganism than almond milk and alfalfa sprouts. On a PETA site and a dedicated Tumblr account of “Accidentally Vegan Foods”, Oreos as well as some of the McVitie’s and Doritos range are thankfully in the clear for a treat. If you need to ease yourself into it, kale will still get you the crucial “instalikes” paired with salmon (grilled, grilled is key). The offering of vegan produce, resources and eateries has also expanded greatly — amongst the Web Summit and startup craze, clean eating has never been so easy or enticing in Dublin. Food pioneer and Irish Times columnist Domini Kemp’s latest venture, Alchemy, offers the best of detox delights on the first floor of BT2 along with her business partner and sister, Peaches. While she jokes that the name for the ever popular Itsa Bagel was conceived drunkenly in a New York Bar, Alchemy has more of a deeper, personal meaning to it. Two years ago, Domini was diagnosed with breast cancer. Along with traditional treatments, she used diet and exercise to successfully combat it and has subsequently decided to open an outlet which offered light, healthy meals and drinks. Kemp feels that the healthy food market is now parallel to the traditional food industry, as “people are getting sick of pulled pork and are looking for something cleaner and lighter”. The venture offers juices, of which the vegetable offerings seem more popular than the “gateway” product with more fruit in it, as well as soups, salads and sweet treats — all raw, sugar-free, and packed with superfoods from turmeric to goji berries. A juicing detox program has recently been launched at Alchemy, but a daily meal such as a salad or soup is advocated along with the program, to prevent the “binge juice, binge eat” cycle that Domini describes goes along with the severity of some programmes.

healthy versions” and after their family spotted a talent, they encouraged her to start blogging just over a year ago. Indy has noticed a definite difference in Dublin with respect to how people are eating, as “so many people have a genuine interest in eating well and making sure they know what goes into their food, and even those that don’t have an appreciation for it that I don’t think existed before”. A huge improvement in the breakfast and lunch market has been spotted by her, with a remaining gap for dinner and takeaway.

“Although it seems like a huge undertaking, fret not — there’s more to veganism than almond milk and alfalfa sprouts.” Ending on a sweet note, nobó has taken the market by storm in 2014, being crowned Lovin Dublin’s Food Start Up of the Year, not to mention scooping a myriad of Great Taste Awards with the world’s first dairy-free ice cream based on avocado and almonds. Brian and Rachel Nolan, directors as well as husband and wife’s newest flavours consist of mango and passionfruit as well as Irish salted caramel, the latter of which appears to be Brian’s biggest achievement, which he admits to eating a whole tub in one go. The innocuous base of avocado, coconut, honey and almonds allows for a quasicreamier texture which goes a delight with their amazing flavours, from fresh lemon to chocolate and toasted almond. Originally taking flight from New York to Italy to follow their food dreams, Rachel and Brian are confident that their business will be making an appearance on the Big Apple’s shelves in years to come, with plans to expand the brand and supply to overseas stockists such as Whole Foods. Meat-Free Mondays during the recession and Gillian McKeith’s dictatorship on faeces evaluations may have been a fad, but clean eating and veganism look like they’re here to stay. And it’s never tasted nor felt so good. WORDS BY DAN SCOTT PHOTOS BY AOIBHEANN SCHWARTZ, INDY POWER

Trinity is home to Indy Power, a successful vegan blogger who hopes to make clean eating easy, quick and fabulous respectively. Her blog, The Little Green Spoon, now boasts nearly 9,000 Facebook likes, as well as being one of the predicted stars of 2015 in a recent Irish Independent article. Indy set out with an aim to “transform classic dishes into

EVEN THE SCORE Film scoring is a balancing act. Music Editor Tara Joshi considers how scores can complement or crush the success of a film. Heart-wrenching, suspenseful or just plain annoying, what makes a good score tick?

F 20

or most people, awards season is a time to discuss things like Amal Clooney’s white gloves, Benedict’s Cumber-baby and whether or not Emma Stone is really as down to earth as she seems. Spare a thought, though, for drummer-composer Antonio Sanchez, who won’t be enjoying Oscar-time frivolity after his widely-lauded, Golden Globe-nominated score for Birdman was disqualified by the Academy. This was due to the intermittent use of preexisting classical music that interspersed Sanchez’s own compositions, seen in the Academy’s eyes as undermining his original, captivating percussive work. This

raises a lot of questions about the nature of music composed for a soundtrack and whether the film industry needs to re-think its somewhat archaic rules surrounding such scores. “I feel like if there is original music composed for a film then that composer should be eligible for a best original score nomination,” says Dublin-based musician Simon Bird, who has previously composed the wonderfully surreal electronic score for Distance From The Event, a play by the Collapsing Horse Theatre Company, “Even if the score also utilises or rearranges pre-existing music or recordings, the re-arrangement is still scoring.” For musician Flann McMorrow too (whose fantastic score work was most recently seen in noir-y short film Ringsend, a Wonderfulgood presents: A Little Prince production) the notion that using preexisting music in a score should make you ineligible for recognition is a ridiculous one: “I think you should take whatever you can, from anywhere, and use it however you like [...] You can’t rightly own an abstract sound, therefore you can’t own a collection of abstract sounds. Of course,” he concedes, “Legally you can, but that’s

stupid, and its also a different discussion.” Films such as Foxcatcher gained a thrilling resonance in their lack of sound, creating tension through minimalism and silence. With the Birdman score, however, Sanchez’s drums gave the film a vitality and heartbeat, and one has to wonder if the film would have been quite the same without it. The same sentiment is true of McMorrow’s Ringsend score, though he doesn’t admit to that himself: “The cinematography and script were so well executed in Ringsend it could have stood without any audio,” says McMorrow. “This created a lot of anxiety for me. Do not overshadow, do not fail the mood, do not underwhelm!” Perhaps it could have stood on its own, but it is the score that elucidates perfectly the dark, twisted beauty of the film with exquisitely jarring string samples from cellist Anna Clifford. Trinity student Max Rosenthal McGrath, who composed the score for the winning film in the recent Fourwalls housing short film competition at the London Short Film Festival, too felt it necessary to create something that evocatively added to what was being depicted on-screen. “The first half of the footage was already shot before

the music or poems were recorded and it was in black and white and had quite melancholic panning shots of the city […] so it was an obvious decision to match this [score] with the contemplative, emotional words and music.” As a film about housing in London, a musical accompaniment was, again, arguably unnecessary, but McGrath’s piano part serves to emphasise the spoken word and the shots of buildings — he notes bringing in richer sounds to highlight a particularly optimistic part of the poem. In this instance, the music seems to serve as an emotional guide to the film. Anthropologists will often discuss the idea of a sensorium — the sum of an organism’s perception — and a sensory hierarchy, which is interesting to apply in the context of scores for works that we ultimately understand as being visual. When people talk about films or plays they tend to talk about the acting and the script, but it is undeniable that sounds inform our perceptions of what we see. “Obviously there are iconic movie sounds that everyone is aware of, like the theme to Jaws or the lightsaber sound effects in Star Wars,” says Bird, “But there’s a lot more going on in the sound design and music for films that I think most people are unaware of, all of which contributes greatly to directing the audience towards the desired emotional response. You

could argue that silent films, and their effectiveness in the absence of sound might indicate that sound is not as vital to creating atmosphere as visuals, but I would think anyone who claims that has probably never seen a silent film with a really crap musical accompaniment.” “Why are sounds so affecting?” asks McMorrow. “Who the hell knows. But contrast the same image with two different pieces of music over it and your mask comes off. A child’s laughing face with The Beatles’ Here Comes The Sun vs. a child’s laughing face with the sounds of rutting foxes, screaming, and screeching violins. And everything in between.” In light of this intrinsic linking between imagery and sound, a score is quite different to a normal piece of music compositionally – both Bird and McMorrow note having to remind themselves that they were composing for specific niches: “I would go in for rehearsals and make notes, and then go home and work on the music — bringing it back in the following day and seeing what worked and what needed to be changed […] when I was working on the music at home it often felt like I was just recording a piece of music like I normally would, so I would have to keep reminding myself that the music had to fit the scenes of the play and couldn’t just move in any direction I saw fit or diverge off into weird tangents like a lot of my music does.”

“You could argue that silent films indicate that sound is not as vital to creating atmosphere as visuals, but I would think anyone who claims that has probably never seen a silent film with a really crap musical accompaniment.” Sanchez’s Birdman score might not get the Academy acclaim it deserves, but the soundtrack could well become a popular recording in its own right. Scores detached from their intended visual counterpart can sometimes be just as effective — Bird notes a fondness for the works of the likes of Ennio Morricone in spite of not having seen the films that the music was composed for. For Sanchez, one can hope longevity and respect for his ingenuity will outweigh an Oscars snub.

WORDS BY TARA JOSHI ILLUSTRATION BY ALICE WILSON

TOP OF THE ROCK

Are we entering a golden age of Irish television? tn2 speaks to Andrea Irvine, star of TV3’s new soap Red Rock about representing the Gardaí and stealing the limelight from Love/Hate.

ompetition is in the air. Fair City can no longer claim to be Ireland’s sole soap drama, as its potential rival Red Rock, launched by TV3, hit TV screens in early January. The show focuses on a Garda Station in Dublin, following the lives of the Gardaí as well as two feuding families, the Kielys and the Hennessys. Cast member Andrea Irvine, who has appeared in dramas such as BBC Two’s Line of Duty, describes how creating and acting in this type of drama is a departure from the norm. “It’s quite a new experience for me […] We started off and we had eight scripts maximum and a very very general outline of potentially where our

Irvine’s character is Angela Tyrell, a Garda Sergeant who indeed seems to have quite a journey ahead of her. “[Tyrell’s] the longest serving member of the station,” Irvine explains. “So she would have a very good authority in the station, very responsible, very capable, very committed to her work [...] She’s one of the ones that you’d like to have around if anything went wrong. She knows her job and she does it well. But her commitment to it is causing conflict at home.” Her character will be part of what Irvine hopes is a more nuanced portrayal of Gardaí in Irish television. “I suppose the portrait of the Gardaí would aim to be a complex one. It’s that complexity that will be interesting and strong rather than painting an overly positive picture or making them look like eejits, which quite a lot of Irish dramas have done.” Not all the Gardaí featured in the show will be as upstanding as Tyrell, however, although Irvine adds that while the issue of Garda corruption will be present, “I don’t think [corruption] is ever going to be explored under the title of that, if you know what I mean. It’s going to come up through people’s personal lives and how they interact rather than being a statement theme.” Red Rock, like Fair City, is also set in a fictional part of Dublin. The intention in doing so was to make the setting relatable without making it accessible only to Dubliners. “It’s a fictional context but one that can be easily related to a potentially real situation. But it’s not naming anywhere because nor do you want to make it about that. You don’t want that level of […] literally lifting it from the streets. You want to create the kind of place that makes people go, ‘oh yeah, that resonates with me’, or ‘my local Garda station’.” The issue of relatability can often be left to one side in soaps, considering the tendency to create sensational or catastrophic plotlines. But Irvine asserts that the show should try to stay relevant its audience. “I think in terms of making the context believable, you’ve got to have that recognisable factor that people might encounter in their own lives.” This idea of real life but not quite real life is interesting in considering just why soaps are so appealing. Their ongoing popularity certainly can’t be denied with no end in sight for most established soaps – they

“

I don’t think [corruption] is ever going to be explored under the title of that, if you know what I mean. It’s going to come up through people’s personal lives and how they interact rather than being a statement theme.

“

story was going to head. So you just have to jump in and you don’t really know what’s coming up until you receive the script. You’re sort of finding out about your character all the time. It’s initially quite daunting but actually really exciting… you’ve just got to go on the journey, see what happens.”

still make up huge chunks of television schedules, particularly daytime TV, they regularly take in huge audience shares and are broadcast with greater frequency than many other types of drama. Perhaps it is this blending of reality with unreality that has helped build up today’s soap opera culture. Soaps allow you to watch something that purports to be real but in actuality, it’s the over the top storytelling, complete with cliffhangers and devious characters, that urges you to see what’s next. Before Red Rock aired, however, there was some questions over how closely it would resemble another Dublin based drama: Love/Hate. Such musings were further fueled by the casting of actress Denise McCormack in both shows. Irvine thinks, however, that the focuses of the two are quite distinct. “There’s a lot more of the domestic aspect of what goes on in life and those kinds of stories rather than the extremes of gangland life,” she explains. “[Red Rock] actually takes you into people’s homes... It’s not a big exploration of one aspect. It’s looking at all the different types of people who might go through a Garda station. They aren’t all hardened criminals, in fact many of them aren’t […] You kind of see that all humanity passes through. And some of it is a bit absurd, a bit funny, a bit silly. And some of it’s very difficult and challenging and problematic.” Two seasons of Red Rock have already been commissioned, and this year will see two episodes broadcast a week over 40 weeks. Enormous sums of money have also been invested in the show (an estimated €7 million), suggesting that TV3 is anticipating a big response. The expense aside, embarking on this project has not been without serious risks however; Red Rock will now have to rival Emmerdale, which has moved from TV3 to UTV, as well as Coronation Street in the ratings battle. In light of this, does Irvine see the show becoming a staple of Irish television? “That would be the desire. But we’ll just have to see. Everyone seems apprehensive – optimistic, but taking nothing for granted in terms of how Irish audiences are going to respond to it. We’re all hoping desperately that they like it and they’ll tune in. I don’t think there’s anything like it on Irish television at all. I hope that we’re doing it well enough for them to invest in it and keep coming back to it.” With Red Rock still in its opening weeks, we’ll have to wait and see. Red Rock airs on TV3 on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8:30 pm. WORDS BY EMMA BOYLAN

Name: Caoilainn Scouler Camera: Canon 700D Place: Lake Atilรกn, Guatemala

EVIEWS

INHERENT VICE

Paul Thomas Anderson With There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012), and finally Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson has crafted the most unlikely of cinematic trilogies. From the rise of Daniel Plainview and American capitalism at the birth of the century, through to the post-war uncertainty and discomfort personified in Freddie Quell and finally, the death of the swinging 60s as seen through Doc Sportello’s bloodshot eyes, Anderson’s meditation on 20th century America is complete. While the first two entries are more immediately accessible, it is Vice that will hold pride of place in many DVD collections for years to come, if only to work out what actually happened.

It is 1970 in sunny Southern California. Film-brat Anderson can’t help but immediately smack us with a number of classic noir tropes. Our ramshackle stoner PI, Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), is approached by his femme fatale of an ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay (a breakout Katherine Waterston) and asked to investigate a plot involving the potential kidnapping of her millionaire land developer boyfriend (Eric Roberts) by his wife, and her boyfriend. Oftentimes helped, but mostly hindered by Josh Brolin’s civil-rights violating Detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (with whom he shares a symbiotic relationship whose depths only become clear in

the final reel), Doc encounters Black Panther militants, drug lords, the FBI and Nazi bikers on his quest to make sense of it all. For most of the running time, the film is a nostalgic, fun, trippy expedition through a time when the free loving 60s gave way to disillusionment in the aftermath of the Manson murders. Helped by Robert Elswit’s glorious work on 35mm, and the finest of Jonny Greenwood’s scores, Anderson in the final halfhour elevates Vice from merely Chinatown via Cheech & Chong to something deeply profound and movingly romantic. WORDS BY EOIN MCCAGUE

AGENT CARTER ABC Marvel’s first major project with a woman at the helm has finally arrived, and Agent Carter can join the franchise with its head held high. Although Captain America’s legacy lives on in the post-war American consciousness, the purpose of the series is to examine how life continued for Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). The forces of evil are still at work as Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) has been framed for selling weapons to America’s enemies. Because Peggy’s talents are wasting away amidst her chauvinistic colleagues, she is determined to prove Stark’s innocence. She is aided in this quest by Stark’s sheltered but delightful butler Edwin Jarvis (James D’Arcy), while she simultaneously navigates her new life in the post-war world.

The show conveys a tremendous sense of fun, but is still a great drama with a brilliant balance between nostalgia and a more critical look at the past. The opening episodes are filled with energetic swing music and glamorous costumes, creating a slick and appealing ambience. But a major theme is how Peggy thwarts the men who see her as inferior, and in doing so she isn’t confined to a stereotype. She can win a fistfight atop of a moving van, but she can also manipulate how men see her to get what she wants. Peggy never feels like a trope but rather a fullyfleshed woman, which is equally empowering and entertaining. A clever, self-aware show with fantastic acting, each episode is a wellrounded romp of entertainment. WORDS BY EMMA BOYLAN

WHIPLASH Damien Chazelle Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is an aspiring jazz drummer, determined to become “one of the greats”, who is plucked to join the top jazz ensemble in college by revered instructor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). Fletcher is a brutal perfectionist, who pits his students against one another, silences them with the clench of a fist, and barks insults like, “That is not your boyfriend’s dick. Do not come early.” He tells Andrew to show up at 6am, when the rehearsal doesn’t start until nine. As Andrew struggles not to cry, Fletcher demands, “Oh my god, are you one of those single tear people?”. He hurls a chair at Andrew’s head, taunts him in front of the rest of the band, and makes him play until his hands blister and bleed. Although Andrew may struggle to keep up with Fletcher’s tempo, Teller’s brilliant, insular performance masterfully keeps up with Simmons’ more showy, yet utterly thrilling, one. It is problematic to find a historically

black art form reappropriated as a site for interpersonal drama between a couple of white guys, and Andrew’s fanatical obsession with Buddy Rich, a white musician, further serves to obscure its roots. Whiplash may fail as a “jazz film”, but beneath the extraordinarily taut and stylish surface, it’s a film more about power than jazz. Whiplash demolishes the sentimental clichés of the “inspirational mentor” genre, as we see Fletcher vacillate between warm and savage. Fletcher sweetly chats to a little girl, before blasting into a room and greeting his band “Listen up, cocksuckers!”. In another scene, he tells Andrew, “the key is to

just relax” and asks after his father, only to use his answers against him a moment later, humiliating Andrew in front of the ensemble by mocking his father’s masculinity.

to achieve any sense of connection, physically or emotionally. Indeed, it is the platonic friendship of Tina and Alex, both considered socially and emotionally inept for their respective positions in life, which acts both as a buffer and a foil to this disconnection.

More importantly, it debunks the myth that forty-somethings are more in control of their lives their than younger counterparts whose selforientated shows have produced some of the highest ratings on television in recent years.

From the mesmerising opening tracking shot, through the excruciating “rushing or dragging” scene, to the breathtaking finale, Whiplash pushes the audience’s response from initial curiosity to open-mouthed awe. The final standoff provides the most exhilarating climax you’ll likely see all year. Absolutely electric. WORDS BY MEADHBH MCGRATH

TOGETHERNESS Sky Atlantic With mumblecore television reaching its zenith in recent years, with successes such as Girls, Jay and Mark Duplass’ debut foray into television aims to strike gold with a comedy series depicting the trials and tribulations of two couples, circling forty and living under the same roof. The seemingly picture perfect married life of Brett (Mark Duplass) and Michelle (Melanie Lynskey) is disrupted by the dysfunctional chaos brought about by the arrival of Brett’s friend, out-of-work actor Alex (Steve Zissis) and Michelle’s sister, Tina (Amanda Peet), who is plagued by bad relationship choices. As the title suggests, the show portrays the struggles of maintaining intimacy within a marriage, and of maintaining friendship and familial ties in the midst of personal and professional success and failure. Whilst Brett and Michelle represent the normative expectation for their age group — a middle-class marriage with two children — the image is far from ideal, with the couple failing

Whilst the concept is well-worn — the show has even been considered a comical version of American Beauty — it is rescued by the innate likeability of the cast.

Togetherness airs on Sky Atlantic Mondays at 10.35pm.

WORDS BY CIARA FORRISTAL

Murakami probably likes his readers to feel slightly unsure when they finish his books. His best work lingers in the mind, its enduringly permutable meanings and associations a natural extension of the sense of melancholy irresolution that plagues his characters. However, the inscrutability and randomness of some of his fiction can often be more frustrating than pleasing. This is particularly the case with his shorter prose works, of which The Strange Library is a special case.

THE STRANGE LIBRARY Haruki Murakami

The book centres on a youngish boy, unnamed in the tradition of Murakami protagonists, who, on a whim, heads to his local library to satisfy a curiosity about Ottoman tax collection, where he is then imprisoned by a malevolent old man. The book is very short, sumptuously illustrated (indeed, the illustrations certainly account for the majority of the book), and written in an innocent and

naive style — which would lead the reader to suspect that it is a children’s book. But it has not been marketed as one and Murakami often adopts a sort of ingenuous narrative voice in his writing, particularly in the shorter stories. Perhaps with its Murakami tropes — a sheep man, an ethereal and beautiful female, a deep and dark space — it could serve as a primer for younger readers. Murakami’s less successful novels tend to fail because they don’t ground their fantasy in a realist mode. Without a wisecracking narrator who faces down the absurd happenings by cooking delicious meals, consuming western culture, and blithely contemplating the unyielding ennui of life under postmodern late capitalism, adult readers will no doubt be left unsatisfied.

WORDS BY WILLIAM FOLEY

NIAMH O’MALLEY Douglas Hyde Gallery

The modulation between clarity and obscurity is a defining feature of Niamh O’Malley’s work. Representations that at once appear crystalline are soon undermined and contradicted. Confounding ambiguities and disturbances are recurring, forcing pause and contemplation — time seems to slow around O’Malley’s work. This makes sense given much of the Mayo born artist’s work is concerned with the construction of time. Meticulous investigation is essential in unravelling her ideas. The explicit cannot be wholly relied upon, face value is not enough.

Nephin is a landscape piece, and a transportive and engaging treatment of a genre which often appears staid to contemporary eyes. In a looped video, the camera circumnavigates an imposing mountain near the artist’s home. Although constantly aware of its presence, high hedgerows, tall trees and overhead power lines all interfere with the view. A permanent blot on the lens agitates one’s focus. Traveling along winding boreens, the camera shudders and jolts, upsetting both composition

and concentration. In Glasshouse, jagged remnants of brick and glass impede a clear vista, the work itself is fragmented across two screens. Complexity is also found in O’Malley’s object-based work. Glass sheets are laid on the ground in Double Glass Floor, their transparency subverted, marred by rough daubs of black paint. In Untitled, a triptych of frames holds contents that look like slides viewed under a microscope. Exceptionally, Standing Stone seems literal to the extent of incongruity when viewed alongside other pieces.

O’Malley’s work is the outcome of the visible grappling with the invisible, each piece seemingly emerging as a product of this antithesis. A new way of looking is found amongst the difference between the seen and the unseen. Concluding with an admittedly abysmal cliché, all is not as it seems in O’Malley’s work. Time and effort spent carefully looking at this demanding show can lead to revelation. And that is time well spent. The exhibition runs until February 25 at the Douglas Hyde Gallery. WORDS BY STEPHEN MOLONEY

10:04 by Ben Lerner is a fragmented narrative of its own creation, one that dismantles its place within literature as it claims it. It forces readers to step back and re-evaluate time and space. For this reason, it demands to be approached on its own terms.

10:04

Ben Lerner

fail to live up to their hype. “What happens only kind of happened” is a theme beaten into the novel, emphasized by the ability of shards of information to alter the past. The status of reality starts to feel rather dubious. Focused on what has not happened, 10:04 is not a breakneck read. Humorous but inescapably academic, our narrator settles easily into literary pretension. Neither the characters nor the plot are emotionally compelling. That isn’t the point.

An attempt at extracting a plot might read like this: our narrator is an overtly veiled version of the author himself. While fretting about his recent diagnosis of a maybe-there, maybe-not cardiac condition that maybe-will, maybewon’t prove fatal, he receives a hefty advance for a novel he has not written. Meanwhile, he attempts to impregnate his best friend via artificial insemination, a process that falters due to his abnormal but nonetheless viable sperm. The novel begins and ends with hurricanes which create an uncanny atmosphere that dissipates when the storms

In a revealing scene, Ben describes receiving a life-changing email in the bathroom of Crate and Barrel, the sensation of “the world rearranging itself around me while I processed words from a liquidcrystal display.” With 10:04, Lerner achieves a similar effect. WORDS BY ELIZABETH MOHEN

NEVER ALONE PC

Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa) is a puzzle-adventure game from Upper One Games. Based on the folk tales of the Iñupiaq, an indigenous Alaskan people, the story follows a girl and her arctic fox as they journey across a mythical Alaskan landscape. The game achieves a nice tonal balance between light and dark, capturing the beautiful but perilous world across which the protagonists travel. 3D graphics are blended with traditional Iñupiaq artwork representing the benevolent and malicious spirits that inhabit the mystical world. For the simplicity of its graphical capabilities, the game offers some delightful imagery: particularly in the case of the fox and girl, whose subtle animations convey a great amount of character. Seeing one of the pair cry out in horror whenever the other is injured is a consistently heart-wrenching experience. Gameplay-wise there isn’t much to talk about. It centres primarily around swapping between the two characters to solve rudimentary puzzles, such as manipulating platforms and avoiding environmental hazards. There’s nothing

here you haven’t seen a thousand times before, and the hit-and-miss platforming mechanics can make repeated attempts at certain sections a bit of a pain. The game was developed in conjunction with the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, a nonprofit organisation hoping preserve and support indigenous Alaskan culture. This aim is made clear by the documentary segments which appear throughout the game, giving snippets of Iñupiaq history

and traditions. The majestic landscapes and charming storytelling make this an enjoyable way of learning about a littleknown world in a less-than traditional manner, even if it is somewhat lacking as a gameplay experience. Reviewed on PC. Also released on PS4 and Xbox One.

WORDS BY EOIN MOORE

SREMMLIFE Rae Sremmurd

SremmLife is the debut of duo Rae Sremmurd (pronounced Ray-Shrim-er), but it doesn’t feel like a first album. In fact, quite the opposite; it sounds like a victory lap by brothers Swae Lee and Slim Jimmy. This feels like a Mike WiLL record, released via his label and with 9 out of 11 production credits to his name. And it works — from the sparse No Type to the creepy xylophone of Throw Sum Mo, the album is a pleasure to listen to. As the production is similar throughout, the songs can blend together, but at 45 minutes, the album doesn’t outstay its welcome and is easily heard in one sitting. The brothers flow well on the beats, alternating between the singsong of Future and the brutal repetitive delivery

PANDA BEAR MEETS THE GRIM REAPER

For the most part, however, the artist approaches this preoccupation in a

The rise of the gastropub continues with Dublin’s newest offering, The Workshop, replacing J Kennedy’s next door to Tara St station on George’s Quay. A slick and polished exterior entices the hungry lunch-seeker inside on a bitterly cold afternoon to discover a quiet, relaxed and welcoming bar, charmingly decorated. The entire menu is appealing, making the choice rather agonizing, but in the end I settle for the Reuben Sandwich – a well-constructed combination of corned beef, smoked ham, coleslaw and Dijon mustard on lightly toasted granary bread, with a little pot of fresh pickles on the side — served on the ubiquitous wooden board that is the staple of eateries everywhere. The tender beef and homemade coleslaw are delicious, but unfortunately the overly sharp mustard is just a tad overpowering.

The lyrical content and rapping skills, however, fail to impress. They are not technical rappers, but luckily they keep to simple rhyming schemes that they know they can deliver. Sadly, the writing is the low point of the album. The rehash of tired themes of material wealth and misogyny offers nothing new to the listener. For fans of Rae Sremmurd, the simple rhymes and sub-par writing will not be a problem. The beats sound good, the rapping is fun and catchy, and sometimes that’s all that matters. WORDS BY LEONIDAS CONSTANTANIDES

what is often quite dark lyrical content. This can at times seem to jar against the music itself.

Panda Bear

It seems almost unnecessary to point out that Panda Bear’s new LP, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, is an album wherein he attempts to confront death. This sense is apparent in a number of places, from the title itself to the funeral organ with which the album opener Sequential Circuits is carried along by.

of Migos. They deliver their ad-libs or mottos with such verve that they become truly infectious. Their simple choruses are great for sing-alongs.

remarkably sunny fashion. To describe the albums sound, imagine The Beach Boys making an album that went sampleheavy on Mario Kart: glorious pop melodies are drenched in a glistening digital squelch and grit. He drenches his vocals in reverb, and in this he disguises

THE WORKSHOP George’s Quay

The album closes on an ecstatic note with the song Acid Wash. By this point it does feel as if Panda Bear has confronted the titular Grim Reaper, and judging by this closing track their conversation ends amicably. By this stage the listener is brought to a realisation that, in this album, death is a metaphor for renewal rather than being an entity of finality. Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper is a fantastic piece of contemporary psychedelia, and the artist sets a high bar for everyone else to follow this year. WORDS BYFINNAN TOBIN

For an extra €2.50 I added the soup of the day; the Leek and Carrot offering is wonderfully flavoured and filling, with subtle hints of coriander, and a lovely drizzle of olive oil on top. The Workshop Quayside burger (€12) succeeds in tempting one of my lunch companions — an impressive mound of beef and pork on a brioche bun with cheddar, lettuce and tomato, accompanied by excellent twice-cooked chips — while the other opted for the fishboard daily special; a neatly presented selection of cod tempura, crispy fishcake and smoked salmon with tartare sauce for €16. Service is incredibly friendly and attentive, and for an establishment little over a month old, the experience would certainly encourage a return visit. WORDS BY KATHLEEN GIRVAN

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER Abbey Theatre Old habits die hard. The Abbey Theatre has run She Stoops to Conquer countless times — some would say too many. While the comedy plays it safe on many levels — there’s nothing to offend in the performance, aside from the three-hour run time — the play remains surprisingly funny. Marty Rea and Rory Nolan play Marlow and Hastings, two upper-class gentlemen looking for women’s hearts to break. However, Marlow’s inability to talk to upper-class women proves problematic, and cleverly satirises the proper British gentleman by playing him as incredibly awkward, despite his bravado. Goldsmith’s comedy makes use of the audience, a strategy which is followed to a T by the actors. At best, it engages a viewer that otherwise would struggle with the play’s length, something that is rare enough in 2015. At worst, it’s mere steps away from nudge-wink pantomime. While it’s endearing to begin with, it feels tedious by the play’s ending. At times, too, She Stoops to

Conquer is downright bizarre. The half-dozen sub-plots confuse more than entertain. Small faults, yes, but over the lengthy performance they become more grating. None of this, however, is the fault of the cast. Boasting plenty of big names — Caroline “Off The Rails” Morahan and Jon “Not Pat Shortt” Kenny to name but two — the comic timing of this ensemble is impeccable. Rea’s performance as the Englishman Marlow is one of the standouts. He is by turns bumbling, kow-towing, arrogant and charming. Nolan pales beside Rea, unfortunately, and his side-plot falls

a bit flat. Kenny’s role as “innkeeper” Mr. Hardcastle is at times a touch too shouty, but it’s a forgivable flaw. The set, a gorgeous 18th-century mansion, is used and abused as characters sing, dance, love, and fight in all its nooks and crannies. Liam Doona’s design is commendable, and looks superb from every angle, as do the colourful, dramatic costumes. She Stoops to Conquer is light and fluffy, a definite post-essay treat. She Stoops to Conquer runs at The Abbey until January 31. WORDS BY AINE O’CONNELL

THE WALWORTH FARCE The Olympia A father and his two sons share a crumbling flat on London’s Walworth Road. Without any kind of lead-in, the threesome start to perform a play — not for us, but for each other. The playwithin-a-play involves a marvellous variety of wigs, Monopoly money, cans of Harp, a pair of cardboard coffins, and, for the two sons, frequent and frantic changes of character and costume. These changes, sometimes seamless and sometimes hilariously clumsy, demonstrate Domhnall and Brian Gleeson’s flawless comic timing. Sean Foley’s exuberant production tells the story of Dinny (Brendan Gleeson), a one-play playwright who forces his sons Blake and Sean to obsessively repeat these performances as a way of rewriting their family history and explaining why they have been living in exile from their native Cork for twenty years.

Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce inhabits a no-man’s-land between farce and tragedy that grows larger and larger as the play goes on. The arrival of a Tesco checkout girl, Hayley (Leona Allen), forcefully disrupts their carefully protected ritual and uncovers the latent tension between the brothers and their father. Hayley’s position as outsider is amplified by her overt racial difference. Dinny forces Hayley into whiteface to play his absent wife, and the play ends with Sean in blackface playing Hayley. The racial issues and images that emerge

after Hayley’s appearance address the conflict between the Ireland Dinny and his sons left twenty years ago and its contemporary state. The Walworth Farce, like all postmodern art, runs the risk of seeming distant or detached from humanity, but the actors turn in such human and engaging performances that it avoids falling into this trap. The Walworth Farce runs at The Olympia until February 8. WORDS BY MEADHBH MCGRATH

WORDS BY CIARA FORRISTAL

Wolf Hall can be seen on January 21 on BBC 2 at 9 pm.

The wait is finally over for the eagerly anticipated BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-Winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), the series chronicles the rise of Cromwell from the son of a humble blacksmith to King Henry VIII’s chief minister and confidante during the turbulent Tudor period. The series depicts Cromwell’s negotiation and handling of the Reformation and its aftermath as well as Henry VIII’s (Damian Lewis) volatile relationship with Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy) and her eventual execution. With an all-star cast showing the best of British talent, this period drama aims to be historically precise and stylishly substantive.

WOLF HALL

WORDS BY EOIN MOORE

It’s that time of year again. Pack a wooly hat, a scarf, and an absurdly large collection of dice: Warpcon is on the horizon. Taking place over three days in University College Cork, Warpcon is Ireland’s largest student-run gaming convention. New to traditional gaming? Here’s a perfect opportunity to try it out for yourself. A veteran of the convention scene? I’m guessing you already have a ticket. Aside from the RPGs, CCGs, and Wargames, there’ll also be numerous panels, the world-renowned Diana Jones Award winning Charity Auction (warning: attendance may result in impulsive spending), and special guest Tabletop and Role-Playing game designer James Wallis. Come down and kick off 2015 with an intensely nerdy bang.

WARPCON

JANUARY 21 JANUARY 23-25

WORDS BY EMMA BOYLAN

Fortitude begins Janurary 29, on Sky Atlantic at 9 pm.

Sky Atlantic’s latest big budget production is intended to bring bleakness and intrigue to television screens at the close of January. Set against an Arctic backdrop, Fortitude is a twelve-part series that, on the surface, seems not unlike Broadchurch. Fortitude is a fictional town labelled the safest place on earth, but a murder shatters this illusion. An outsider in the form of a DCI then enters the close-knit community to investigate and further drama unfolds. The show is rounded off by a highly impressive cast, including Stanley Tucci as the DCI, Michael Gambon as a terminally ill photographer, and Sofie Grabol as the town’s Mayor in one of her first major roles since The Killing.

FORTITUDE

WORDS BY TARA JOSHI

Tickets €15 (incl. booking fee) from ticketmaster.ie.

2015 is already shaping up to be quite the year for Dublin’s very own postpunk outfit Girl Band, recently signed to Rough Trade Records and having made countless “ones to watch” lists earlier this month. Home to play a late night headline show at Twisted Pepper with their own choice of support from the shoegaze-y rock of Princess and the glitchy techno of duo Peaks, this looks set to be a sell-out. Famed for an exhilaratingly intense live show, this is quite possibly the last chance you’ll have to catch the four piece in such an intimate setting for a good while. If you like noise, this is for you. Ear plugs may be advisable.

GIRL BAND

JANUARY 29 JANUARY 31

JANUARY 21-24

WORDS BY HEATHER KEANEY

€12 a night for theatre, €10 a night for music.

Theatreclub are occupying the Project Arts Centre for the fourth volume of their mini-festival. For a meagre price, they’re offering four scratch shows a night from the best in new Irish theatre, along with explorations in the musical genres of punk, trad, and electronic, as well as a one-off aural experiment they’re calling Sonic Whispers. Hop between fresh work from DU Players alumni — My Lovely Rose by three recent grads offers a “cheeky peek” into the Rose of Tralee — over to Emmet Condon MCing an hour of electro-folk radiance with Dublin’s own Carriages.

THE THEATRE MACHINE TURNS YOU ON

WORDS BY SARAH LENNON GALAVAN

Tickets for Beyond Clueless are €7.50 and are available at lighthousecinema. ie. Tickets for 90s Prom are €6/€7 nonmembers will be on sale in the Arts Block 11am-2pm January 21-23.

Teen movies of the 90s and 00s — fun, nostalgic... deep? That’s the premise of the documentary, Beyond Clueless, which has its Irish premiere at the Lighthouse on January 25 (4pm). Director Charlie Lyne, who will also be hosting a Q&A session, embarks on an expansive survey of over 200 teen films made between 1995 and 2004, including genre favorites 10 Things I Hate About You, Scream and Mean Girls. If that leaves you craving an authentic high school experience, DU Film and DUPA are on hand with Trinity’s very own 90s Prom on January 27 at the Sugar Club — expect the best 90s music, authentic prom photos and a chance to be voted Prom King or Queen.

BEYOND CLUELESS Q&A

JANUARY 25

WORDS BY MICHAEL KEMP

Irish Writers Centre, Dublin, 7pm. Admission: Suggested donation €5.

When will you start to let your own overflowing notebooks and manuscripts be heard? Might it be through the Open Mic Night at the Irish Writers Centre on Parnell Street come January 30? For the suggested donation of €5, poets, prose writers, songwriters, musicians, comedians or anyone in between can take the stage to try out their material in front of a welcoming and friendly audience. Book your slot in advance at writerscentre.ie.

OPEN MIC NIGHT

JANUARY 30

WORDS BY LOLA BOORMAN

The exhibition runs until March 29.

Discussing his first major solo exhibition in Dublin, conceptual artist and 2014 Turner Prize winner Duncan Campbell will elucidate his most recent film work in conversation with Dr. Maeve Connolly (IADT). Campbell’s new installation focuses on the breakdown of narrative and storytelling in the depiction of major historical events, and how they pervade the present day. The exhibition includes Bernadette (2008), Arbeit (2011), and It for Others (2013) which secured Campbell his prestigious Turner accolade. The film is a writing back to Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’ 1953 film Statues Also Die and, like its precursor, contemplates the disconnected value of cultural objects when removed from their historical context.

DUNCAN CAMPBELL IN CONVERSATION

TONGUE IN CHEEK 2014 was the year straight people discovered anal sex. Even if you weren’t doing it, you were hearing about it. Unless you’re a keen rimming enthusiast with your head already stuck up someone’s asshole, you’ve probably noticed that last year was a pretty good year for discussions of anal play in western popular culture. The top-rated new drama How to Get Away with Murder featured an ass-eating scene, and Mindy Kaling devoted a whole episode of The Mindy Project to anal sex. Pitchfork declared 2014 “the year we reached Peak Ass”, as booty was ubiquitous in both lyrics and choreography: Nicki Minaj sang about a lover who “tossed [her] salad like his name Romaine”, Meghan Trainor claimed to “bring booty back”, and J.Lo and Iggy Azalea awkwardly rubbed their butts together in the video for Booty. To top it off, on last week’s season premiere of Girls, Marnie had her ass eaten out and fucking loved it. What was great about the Girls scene was that it was totally NBD — who doesn’t get their ass eaten in the kitchen in the middle of the day? The past year has broken barriers when it comes to discussions and representations of progressive sex on television. Does this mean that straight people have finally realised that they too have assholes that can be sites for sexual pleasure? As we bust through the door of hetero ass play culture, it’s worth noting that for some gay men, a finger up the butt is first date material, and most of my gay friends regard rimming as relatively vanilla. One friend remarked that Queer as Folk had a rimming scene in its very first episode fifteen years ago, and confirmed that rimming wasn’t something that he’s ever shied away from or given much of a second thought to. “That’s just where I instinctively go during sex, so to see rimming having a moment right now and being discovered by straight people is kind of funny. It’s so intimate and the fact that it’s something which before now wasn’t really seen in the mainstream made it seem that much more hot and illicit!” The more popular media talks about and showcases sex acts that go against traditional heteronormative sex, the more we encourage and normalise them. For years, anal play was characterised by stereotypes, mainly that it was only for gay men. The male ass is often read as an exclusively “gay” playground, and few straight guys will admit to having, or wanting to have,

their asses eaten. Plenty of people have dabbled in ass play, but I learned while writing this piece that few things will shut up a room full of straight guys like asking if they enjoy getting their salad tossed. Even when asked privately, they were firm about not willing to discuss it, with one even telling me, “I don’t appreciate being asked about that kind of thing.”

“That’s just where I

instinctively go during sex, so to see rimming having a moment right now and being discovered by straight people is kind of funny.” The fact that rimming is fenced off and excluded from what is considered acceptable conversation indicates that even as ass eating is becoming less taboo, merely talking about it is still a line straight guys are hesitant to cross. It seems obvious to link male fear or unwillingness to admit an interest in anal play to issues of anxious masculinity and masculine desire for control, concerned with the implications about their sexuality. In my experience, straights girls just don’t talk about it, or if they do they express concerns that if they try ass play once, it’ll be all their man wants to do. “What’s wrong with normal fingering? If people want to do it they can, but I’m happy with it in front.” One girl confessed to receiving it and loving it, but immediately shut down any possibility of reciprocating. It seems that getting it is okay, but giving? Not so much. It’s 2015 and ass play for straight people may be on the menu, but the lack of conversation about the topic in Ireland makes it seem more likely to be à la carte. WORDS BY MEADHBH MCGRATH ILLUSTRATION BY GRAHAM HAUGHT WWW.GRAHAMHAUGHT.COM

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