Episode 11 The Arts Show

Welcome to The Arts Show, and tonight we come from an

international children's festival, featuring acts from 12 European

Countries, taking place right here in Newry.

So, we're in Newry for the Small Size Big Festival, an international

gathering of theatre and art for children featuring acts from 12

European countries. Here's what else is on tonight's show.

Brian Friel's acclaimed stage play Philadelphia, Here I Come! Turns 50.

We open our ears to the sounds around us.

She was one of our ones to watch in 2014, artist Alison Lowry.

And a church minister has his say on censorship of the arts The Small

Size Big Festival is being hosted by the Newry-based children's art

organization Sticky Fingers. Its chief executive is Grainne

Powell. This festival is to celebrate a programme where work is

produced from countries all around Europe and further afield, the best

for very young children. What is the benefit for Newry? We wanted to

bring it here because it furthers a child's rights to the arts. This was

a great way to show what we have and how we can use it. A lot of

imagination has been used to turn on usual spaces into thriving

performance areas. Over ?1 million has been invested in

the city. Over 300 international -- another 10,000 local people will

benefit from local programmes. They will flock to different events. Our

big spectacular will attract over 3,000 people per night. So what

big spectacular will attract over the endgame

big spectacular will attract over had an idea of having this project

to kick-start the arts into action again, and one of the big outcomes

has been that all the organisations have come together. We have a

vision, a plan, we are all working towards achieving the new Theatre.

But also it is looking at what is possible, sharing expertise and

experiences. Thank you. Brian Friel is rightly considered to

be one of the greatest living English-language dramatists. Rarely

a year goes by without a production of his work in theatres around the

world. The Lyric Theatre in Belfast is

currently putting on a Friel double bill, Molly Sweeney and the play

that established his reputation 50 years ago this year, Philadelphia,

Here I Come! Brian Friel was born in County

Tyrone, but his voice as a playwright has been heard around the

world. He has received the highest awards. Yet his concerns as a writer

never stray far from home, as he explores human frailty with his

trademark humour. Philadelphia, Here I Come! Was his

breakthrough. Is it daunting taking on a Brian

Friel later direct? Daunting is one way to describe it, but exciting. I

think Philadelphia, Here I Come! Is my favourite play. The most obedient

father I ever had. And now for a lesson in the English-language.

Repeat slowly after me, another day over. Another day over.

Philadelphia, Here I Come! Is the story of a shopkeeper about to

emigrate to the USA. It is a play about family and

communication, and the lack of, between this man and his son. There

is a wonderful story between this man and his son. There

first of Brian Friel's place to be set in his fictional town in County

Donegal, but he makes this one small place division of Irish society.

It is definitely a very small town, and there is a definite sense of

scrimping, they are looking to the pen is that they have. It is quite

hard on the state and the church, and in 1964 it must have been

absolutely shocking. Philadelphia, Here I Come! Is Brian

Friel's brilliant dissection of society in which he was living, but

it is also the story of an individual. It is all over.

Let us talk about that device, which is so effective and memorable, of

the private and public character. Public speaks to the audience. But

you have the inner man who bears what he really feels. It is all

over. And it is all about to begin. This is the pathos and the tragedy

and everything is going through this man, and I am really the thought

process. Just think, Gar. Just think. Up there in that jet, and you

sitting at the front, your point and Mac fingers poised over the

controls. And well -- way down below and Irish boat fishing. It is a

double act, but they are also the same person, and then you cannot

turn it into something like the odd couple. Say an act of contrition!

Gar's lost love is key to understanding how Friel brings

bloody well burst. Steady, boys, steady. Her daughters

were all be frail and silly like you.

Kate's father is a Senator, and ultimately she chooses a doctor over

the shopkeeper's son. In 1964 matches were made, people

were married off. It is that sort of squinting windows territory where

everyone knows everybody's business. But Friel never takes the easy

option, and this insight into Irish society is balanced with an insight

into Gar himself. We will need to have more security

than that. Maybe he will die, tonight, of galloping consumption.

What is troubling you? Please, this is serious. What is it.

Gar does not have the confidence, and I think he knows that. There is

one key line, which is, my fault, all my fault.

What Friel uses humour to reveal the devastating truth about a young man

who needs to grow up. It is the notion of a young man

playing in his bedroom, a John Mann having a football match up there. --

a young man. I have never seen a boy with absolute magic in his feet. He

is now in position, running up, and... !

Has it surprised you that 50 years later, it has such a resonance, it

feels as fresh intraday's Ireland as it must have felt than? --

intraday's Ireland. I suppose we are closer to what was happening in 1964

in terms of lack of opportunities and lack of employment. And that

sense of people having to leave. How far have we moved on from 1964?

sense of people having to leave. How in many ways. It is an incredible's

incredibly daring play. No obscenities, Father dear, the child

is only 25. There's a long history here of

conflict between art, politics and faith. ELO were famously banned from

Ballymena in the '90s over fears about drink, drugs, debauchery and

the devil, and BBC Northern Ireland's controversial programme

The Show drew protests from politicians and some Christians

alike. Just last month we saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company's

comedy, The Bible -The Complete Word of God (Abridged), ditched then

reinstated at The Theatre in the Mill in Newtownabbey. Plenty has

already been said about that, but we decided to ask a Christian minister

for his personal take on the controversy.

Art for me is something that challenges and confronts. I do not

want art that makes me feel comfortable, or that a firm is my

deeply held beliefs, I do not want art that norms. I do not want our

that makes me feel uncomfortable. -- I do want art. I want art that

challenges all I hold dear, that that invigorates my mind and

spirit. I want art that may be prompts me to ask the questions of

myself that I would not under normal circumstances. Because I believe

that art should do all of the above, I want to encounter art that makes

change. I cannot leave the same -- as the same individual, because

something has happened. They have been an openness on my part to enter

into a conversation, to hear a voice that is not my own, or

into a conversation, to hear a voice it and to respond. Censorship for me

is wrong, just as making a decision based on seeing a clip is wrong

because art is always meant to be seen in its wholeness. No one would

cut a square out of a da Vinci painting and on the basis of that

square decide whether they like or hate his work. Similarly no one can

watch a clip of a play in the side it is not suitable for the general

public. We elect our leadership to lead to make sure that society runs

smoothly, and we did not elect them to moral lives. In certain quarters

in the Christian consist -- constituency, there is an uneasy --

unease with how the church finds itself. In the past, nor -- not only

was the church heard in all sections of society, it was the voice that

decision-makers listened to. Now we find ourselves in a new

dispensation. The past is past and we need to find ourselves in the

present and a duck for the future, with the changing face of Ireland as

it becomes more and more diverse. -- adopt for the future. The church

finds itself becoming a voice in the conversation, but now it is an equal

voice. Maybe what we need going forward is the top is back to

cultivate a new sense of Christian tolerance, a way of saying we

believe in a God who gave up his rights to become just as one of

ours. To encounter the messiness of this world and bring a message of

hope, but not one that says I am right and you are wrong, and a

tolerance that allows me to realise that I do not have God all figured

out. And do exactly what he would not and would stand for and accept.

Or watch. Time now to profile an award-winning

glass ah Time now to profile an award-winning

watch in 2014. Time now to profile an award-winning

artist in residence position at the internationally renowned Museum of

Glass in New York City. I feel the need to create things.

The minute I started working with glass, that was it. The penny

dropped. I graduated in 2009. I was a mature

student. I started late. Even now I'm not a full-time artist. I'm also

a mother and that takes up a vast proportion of my time.

I'm quite impatient. I feel that I had this period that I wasn't doing

any art work so I'm very impatient and very driven.

Glass captures very well. A lot of my work is about loss, physical loss

of a person or a loss of part of yourself and, at the time I was

graduating, I'd just had my first two children, so this christening

robe has been in my family for well over 100 years. To me, it described

a family tree of sorts. Around this time as well, the first wearer of

the robe died so it began to encompass the fragility and delicacy

between birth and death. There's one piece for every person that had ever

worn the robe. Also, I worked with it in a different way. That's when I

started to doing the spot glass work, so the lay layers were fired

all together into a block in the kiln. I cut and

all together into a block in the more successful pieces. I found this

little baby's cap on eBay and I decided to recreate it in glass. I

moulded so it that it kind of still looks like a skull, you know. I like

working with things that reference the body, but the body is no longer

there. It was around this time that I

realised actually what I was working with was a mother's memories,

somebody had put this bonnet away very carefully and kept it and stuff

in the same way that I've kept my children's first shes. When it came

out of this kiln, this glass was broken and I sandblasted it to make

it look more heavy and more like a cap. The referencing in that piece,

hence the title, there is a darkness to childhood memories and things

like that. My mum hasn't kept any of our clothing but she was a dentist

so she kept all of our baby teeth. So it just made sense to me to put

them together. I quite like using a hard fact in a

sort of very human way. These are part of the 95% series. That relates

to the statistic that 95% of people who're here never come forward to

the police and never let on, so I'm making these people, you know, their

faces, they're nameless, they are just shadows, but they live amongst

us. To me, I've interpreted it in a variety of different ways.

Definitely a Princess orientated artist. I like working with my

hands. I like the sort of repetition of it.

I could sit and do these all day long actually.

This is a really old technique. It's glass paste. It's one of the ancient

glass techniques. These vessels, I deliberately leave the

raggedness and what happens in the kiln which is sometimes quite

unique. I've been very lucky to get this

residency in the glass museum in New York State. This is the largest

glass museum I think in the world. This residency will allow me to get

back in touch really with my practise, you know. What it was that

fired me to make the christening robe and the big pieces. So I think

that means by producing more work that has an honesty, value and

integrity to it. You can sort of expect some sort of effects, but you

can never just know 100% what you are going to get. It's interesting.

There are some nice blues going on with the creaminess of the blasts.

These pieces still have an essence of what it is that I'm trying to

achieve through my more art pieces, if you like, but they are certainly

easier for galleries to sell and easier for people to have in their

homes. The pieces that I really like

making, want to make, are probably more in the fine art side. They

don't sell well. They may eventually sell but generally take a long time

to sell. I want to market my work in the States. It's where the glass

movement started in the '60s, they understand it and collect it.

This wee piece was one of the first pieces I ever made and I won't sell

it. It probably has more of a commercial appeal than a lot of the

work I do, so maybe that one piece, but no, the rest of it is for sale.

have asked us to open our ears and listen to sounds in a brand-new way.

Our reporter went on a sonic journey to investigate the sounds of field

reportings. -- recordings. The world sounds totally different

through a microphone. Things that your brain normally

filters out suddenly come across as loud and clear and strangely

beautiful. Sounds like these are being recorded by people here at the

sonic arts research centre at Queens university.

So this is the Belfast sound map then. Talk me through this. What are

we hearing now? So I've just clicked on something here. It seems to be a

recording from the City Hall Gallery upstairs.

This is one of a multitude of websites letting you click on field

recordings from around the world and closer to home.

The great thing about the map is that you can pinpoint an exact

location and record your experience within the place and upload it to

the map so other people can listen to what it sounds like.

The development of tape recording technology in the 1940s allowed us

to hear every day sounds as if they were notes played on an instrument,

leading to different sounds being spliced together. Trains were

particular favourites. By the late '60s, technology allowed

recordings to faithfully capture complete sound scapes in great

detail. LPs like this one promised

psychologically perfect oural environments. I went in century of a

more challenging aural environment with graduate John Dahlry. --

Darcey. I guess it's about capturing something in sound and playing it

over and over again and finding different characteristics and little

details you didn't hear the first time. If you paid attention to

everything all the time, you time. If you paid attention to

of this bowling. Do you want to have a listen, see what it actually

sounds like? Yes. What kind of sounds are leaping out at you?

Anything catching your attention? It's the nice role off the ball.

It's like waves. It's all random, depending on which lane is bowling

at which time. So it's undulating waves. A wave of ten pin bowling?

Yes. How you word what what type of mike phone it is, how close you get

to the sounds. That's where a lot of the artistry and sound art comes

from. This seems more real. Stark

proximity I think. You suddenly hear all the frequencies when you are

closer and you get a lot of the really high end sounds. I felt that

one. Another artist, Isabelle Anderson,

showed me a very different kind of Belfast sound scape. What's

advantageous about recording a sound in a location like this? You get a

sense of depth because you've got things like these massive swans that

suddenly come up to us and then you get the sounds of the river banks,

so other birds in the water, and then you get the songs on the

motorway, which is very guard away. In the last year, Isobel's combined

field recordings with songs written on the guitar -- very far away. What

are you getting by doing this? You get the different contexts. Field

recordings are interpreted differently.

recordings are interpreted recording. What I wanted to do was

recordings are interpreted oppressive, lots of shout. One

negotiate walking back from a friend's house, everyone was

crawling out the pub and I recorded these guys that were really drunk.

Then around the corner somebody was starting up their motorbike. It just

sort of fitted. Is there a sense that it's another instrument for you

to play with? Absolutely, yes. Not even just another instrument, but

another world of instruments. All the different sounds have different

qualities. It's almost like you are working with an orchestra.

# Don't go there, little darling... #

We live in a time when technology allows us to record every aspect of

our daily lives. Field recordings won't take over from music, but we

are starting to appreciate the world around us in a new way.

You can see Isobel Anderson's full performance on the website. We are

back in March with a Special Report on Northern Ireland's multiaward

winning and newly emerging poetry talent. We end though with a preview

of one of the late Seamus Heaney's projects. Five fables is animations

based on the stories of the Scots poet Robert Henrison. The animations

feature his translations, Barry Douglas's score and the Voice of

Billy Connolly. For a country mouse, this stuff you have laid on makes a

spread almost good enough... Give over this place. Come where

spread almost good enough... live visitor and learn

than your Easter. My dish-lickings are more luscious than your feast.

My quarters are among the very safest of cat or trap or trip I have

no dredge...