by Saoirse Anton

The sun has come out, town is swarming with students in uniform, and I have an insatiable desire to buy new stationery…it must be September!

With September comes a new school year and, while I reckon it’s a while since you or I were pulling on an itchy jumper and knee high socks that frustratingly slid and bunched at our ankles, I think it’s time we got our timetable for the term.

Don’t worry, I’m not dragging you back to Leaving Cert stress dreams and drilling French verbs. This timetable is a lot more fun!

English

Let’s kick off with an English class and explore some classic literature and mythology. You can keep it close to home with the Abbey Theatre’s production of Lady Augusta Gregory’s Grania, a reimagining of the classic Irish legend of Diarmuid and Grainne. Or you can visit a Greek classic via the creative, insightful pen of Sarah Ruhl with Eurydice at the Everyman Theatre. Telling the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice through a new lens, Ruhl’s play follows Eurydice into the underworld as she rediscovers her personal identity.

Grania runs at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin from the 21st Sept to 26th Oct

Eurydice runs at the Everyman Theatre, Cork from the 11th to 14th Sept

History

Brush up on your history in a surreal look at the past with Shane Casey as he undertakes a magic-realist time travel journey through time and space in The Man Who Talks To Statues at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival.

The Man Who Talks To Statues runs at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght from the 5th to 11th Sept

Music

Forget your scales, let’s skip to the fun part and step back to the jazz scene of 1970s New York and spend an evening at the monthly GMT Jazz Club in Bestseller Café. Or hear Theatre Lovett’s story of a beleaguered once-celebrated orchestra conductor, the Maestro, who is tortured by the visitations of a hungry mosquito in The Maestro and the Mosquita.

GMT Jazz Club happens monthly at the Bestseller Café. Next on 26th Sept

The Maestro and the Mosquita runs at Project Arts Centre from the 12-15th Sept

Lunchtime!

I dunno about you, but at this point in the day my mind is beginning to drift towards the lunchbox in my bag, visions of sandwiches dance in front of me, distracting from any learning that might be happening.

That can only mean one thing, a trip to Bewley’s Café Theatre for a lunchtime treat! You can’t beat the combination of a short play and a bowl of soup at Bewleys in the middle of the day. Currently on their stage is Headcase, followed by a Dublin Fringe Festival takeover with a variety of shows taking to the stage over the two weeks of the festival.

Headcase runs at Bewleys Café Theatre until 7th September.

Dublin Fringe Festival will be taking over Bewleys Café Theatre from the 9th to 22nd September

GeograPHY/SCIENCE

Okay, yes we are squishing two subjects into one here, but really, climate change should be at the forefront of the curriculum on many fronts!

A trio of upcoming shows caught my eye for their approaches to nature, the environment, and our relationship to it. Luke Casserly’s Distillation speaks to a landscape that is very dear to my heart, Ireland’s peat bogs. With the recent shifts from peat harvesting to conservation, Casserly seeks to reacquaint us with the landscape and experience it in new ways in this collaboration with perfume-maker, Joan Woods.

At Dublin Fringe Festival a feast of fantastic artists have come together to create Earth SONNET, a song cycle composed by Mel Mercier based on poems by Jane Clarke, John FitzGerald, Kayssie K, Aifric Mac Aodha, Paul Muldoon, Gerry Murphy and Simon Ó Faoláin.

Later in the autumn, Manchan Magan invites us to explore the rising connection Irish people are having with the spirit and lore of the land of Ireland in his talk Rewilding the Mind.

Distillation tours Ireland from the 7th to 25th Sept

Earth SONNET runs at the Dublin Insitute for Advanced Studies on the 13th and 14th Sept

Rewilding the Mind tours Ireland in Nov and Dec

P.E.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to stand in a miasma of lynx and sweat and change in to your P.E. kit. for this one. Step into Grace’s disjointed life in an abandoned handball alley in Enda Walsh and Anna Mullarkey’s Safe House, or take a lighter look at sport in Ham Sandwiches and Discipline, a dance show at in which wackiness, passion and intensity come together in encapsulating the beautiful madness of the GAA.

Safe House runs at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin from the 3rd Oct to 9th Nov

Ham Sandwiches and Discipline is at Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray on 6th Sept and then runs from 8th-11th Sept at the Lir Academy, Dublin as part of Dublin Fringe Festival

Homework

Ah the inescapable trial chowed down on by many an imaginary dog…

This look at homework is a little more enjoyable though, enjoy some of the plays that recent MFA Playwriting graduates at the Lir Academy wrote as part of their course in Scripted at Dublin Fringe Festival. And even seasoned artists need to do their homework; get your red pen ready for annotations and catch Ardal O’Hanlon and Neil Delamere’s latest works-in-progress at the Viking Theatre.

Scripted is at the Lir Academy, Dublin on the 7th Sept.

Ardal O’Hanlon presents a work in progress at the Viking Theatre, Clontarf from the 18th to 21st Sept

Neil Delamare presents a work in progress at the Viking Theatre, Clontarf on the 15th Sept

What will you be writing in your theatrical timetable this September?