Workshop

16 October 2024 at 1pm

Following on from the success of their tour around James Joyce’s Ulysses, Janet Moran and Ronan Guilfoyle joined forces again, this time to explore the intricacies of Joyce’s final novel Finnegan’s Wake, via ‘Earwicker’s Dream’ — an entertaining and fascinating journey through this classic book via jazz and spoken word on Wednesday, 16 October 2024 at 1pm. Janet is an award-winning actor and playwright, and Ronan is one of Ireland’s best-known jazz musicians, with an international career spanning more than forty years. Earwicker’s Dream was a concert piece that unites spoken word, jazz composition and improvisation, and explores the central characters in the book.

In Earwicker’s Dream Workshop, Janet and Ronan discussed how they put the project together, how they made the choices on choosing text, how the music interacts with the spoken word, and how the improvisation contained in the music allows for real-time interaction between Joyce’s prose and creative music. The workshop included live demonstrations of how the text and music work together.

The full concert piece will be performed at the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, County Wicklow, on Thursday 24th of October.

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.