Today is Bloomsday, with festivities worldwide celebrating Leopold Bloom's day-long journey around Dublin in Ulysses and the life and work of James Joyce. You can check out the James Joyce Centre for news from Ireland and beyond. Here are a few more choice Bloomsday tidbits:Shakespeare & Company, Paris: "And we're off! #Bloomsday2016 Ulysses Marathon."
In San Francisco, "you may choose from three Bloomsday events," including a reading by Thomas Lynch from Episode Eight of the novel, hosted by Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley; and the San Francisco Public Library’s staged performance of Ulysses excerpts, with musical accompaniment by harpist Diana Rowan," SFGate reported.
Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C., tweeted: "Y'all ready for this? #Bloomsday is almost here. Join us 6/16 4 p.m. for a (short) marathon reading of #Ulysses."
Untapped Cities featured a guide to "where to Celebrate Bloomsday 2016 for James Joyce in NYC and Dublin."
Upshur Street Books, Washington, D.C.: "For the second year running, Upshur Street Books and Petworth Citizen "are proud to pair up for BLOOMSDAY, a celebration of the author James Joyce. We'll be doing a marathon reading of ULYSSES starting at 5 p.m. Wednesday the 15th and finishing up around 12 a.m. Thursday."
Philadelphia Free Library: "Our literary Christmas is almost upon us: Philadelphia’s favorite bookish holiday--Bloomsday--arrives on Thursday, June 16, and we couldn’t be more excited!
Auckland’s annual Bloomsday celebration took place last night at the Thirsty Dog on Karangahape Road, a three-hour show with a four-piece band and a theatrical line-up that made it the hottest item in town.
ReplyDeleteAppearing again this year were international performers Lucy Lawless and Michael Hurst from the epic sandals & skirts TV soap Xena, Warrior Princess.
They were joined by Geraldine Brophy, one of NZ’s foremost TV and movie stars, and Bruce Hopkins – Gamling in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Lucy Lawless played Gerty MacDowell, lonely seaside siren of Sandymount Rocks.
Michael Hurst turned the broody, abstract Stephen Dedalus into a song & dance man.
Geraldine Brophy was absolutely sensational reading the really unrestrained parts of Molly Bloom’s unrestrained soliloquy.
Bruce Hopkins appeared once more as the fearful and fearsome transvestite dominatrix Bella Cohen, transmogrifying this year into Helen of Mt Albert, imperious Queen of the World, the face that lunched a thousand countries.
As always the place was full as a bull, all come to witness Auckland’s most famous literary cabaret.
Japanese mezzo-soprano Yuko Takahashi sang from Mozart, aided by Balmoral’s Farrell Cleary.
Dublin actor Brian Keegan read excerpts from Ulysses.
Unite Union organiser Joe Carolan was the one-eyed Cyclops of the public bar, while tenor and political commentator Chris Trotter sang of Irish socialist and revolutionary James Connolly. And sang The Foggy Dew.
Linn Lorkin and the Jews Brothers’ Band, augmented by Jean McAllister, provided a fabulous range of music: Motown, Mozart, ABBA, The Doors, klezmer, Edith Piaf, Marian hymns, Broadway musicals…
And, as always, Leopold Bloom, sad, cuckolded, melancholic was played by well-known Grey Lynn/Brooklyn musical impresario and man-about-town Hershal Herscher.