March 2016 NUI Galway Arts in Action Grand Finale

NUI Galway’s Arts in Action 2016 Grand Finale will take place at the upper Aula Maxima on campus on Thursday, 24 March at 7pm. This event, which is entitled ‘War, Freedom, Love and Loss’, is a collaboration between the University’s discipline of English, School of Medicine, and the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance.

This Gala evening is also part of the ‘A Nation Rising/Éire á Muscailt’ programme, which is programmed and directed by NUI Galway’s Dr Mary Harris and runs throughout the academic year.

This special event will feature actors from NUI Galway Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance in a dramatised production researched and narrated by Professor Sean Ryder, Head of English, and directed by actress, writer and theatre director Caroline lynch. The music and songs are researched and directed by Carl Hession.

Over 40 medical students will perform music and song from the period 1900 – 1920 as part of the overall presentation. The NUI Galway Medical Orchestra has been in existence since 2011 and has already established itself as a very positive initiative with a number of high profile public performances. It has not only developed into a primary source of positive activity for the medical students at NUI Galway but is also a Special Study Module, a credit bearing module led by Dr Gerard Flaherty in the School of Medicine, which allows at least 20 medical students per year to have a rich and creative experience as well as fulfilling an academic rating.

This semester the Arts in Action programme has focused on a year of commemoration, looking at the 1916 Rising through the various arts forms of music, literature, theatre, and photography.

Three of the 1916 leaders were accomplished poets: Pádraic Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett. This event gives voice to the poetry of these three men, setting their work alongside other creative voices of the period. Three actors will perform selections from Pearse, MacDonagh and Plunkett, and their work will be counterpointed with representative music and song from the period 1914-1916, and with the work of other poets, such as Eva Gore-Booth, who also responded to the events of the time.

This event is free to attend and open to the public. For more information on the Arts in Action programme visit www.nuigalway.ie/artsinaction, or follow on Facebook at ArtsinActionNUIGalway.

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