Kilkenny Open Coffee July – Change Of Venue

While we normally reside in the inner sanctum of the Kilkenny Cafe at Market Cross, this month’s Open Coffee meetup in Kilkenny will take place at the Rivercourt Hotel on John Street in Kilkenny. The hotel is located on the John Street side of John’s Bridge, looking onto Kilkenny Castle.

With London supposedly entering into a heatwave and the temperatures here over the past week, and again this morning, indicating the possibility of sunny weather this Wednesday, we’re aiming to meet up in the outdoor area of the hotel with plenty of seating available overlooking the river.

I’m not sure myself whether wi-fi access will extend to the outdoor seating but no doubt there’ll be a few laptops and mobile broadband connections available if you’re truly stuck. Kick-off is 11:30am as always.

KilkennyOpenCoffee.com is currently in development and will be used for announcements like this in the future along with providing information on those who attend, where to find us etc.

My Dear Rosencrantz

My evenings have been occupied this past week with rehearsals for two stage productions. Next month I’ll be stepping onto the Watergate stage in Kilkenny as Eddy in Willy Russell’s Stags And Hens. This weekend, however, is in complete contrast as I, along with some of my fellow deviants, stage a performance called Shakespeare In Bits as part of the Shakespeare In The House festival in Kilkenny.

The festival, now in its second year, sees Dreamstuff Youth Theatre (the theatre wing of Young Irish Film Makers) perform abridged versions of Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Comedy Of Errors. Cartoon Saloon will be on hand to provide a Shakespearean animation workshop, there’s a 60-second Shakespeare film competition and then there’s our programme, which certain deviates from the norm.

As part of Shakespeare In Bits were bringing performances from The Tempest, extracts from The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a monologue or two from Hamlet, The New Yorker’s take on the recent Christian Bale rant (transformed to Shakespearean times), Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (above), culminating in a sonnet-off akin to the rap battles of 8-Mile.

Each day starts around 11am (this Saturday and Sunday) and it all takes place in Rothe House on Parliament Street, Kilkenny. Admission is free.

For the moment, however, the sun seems to have vacated Kilkenny completely, but hopefully the rain will disappear to make way for the sun once more.

Win A Copy Of The Lions Mane ‘Strands’ By Commenting

The Lions Mane, one of Kilkenny’s rising progressive rock acts, released their debut album ‘Strands‘ online last Friday. The 12-track album is available to buy here for just €10. If you like what you hear in the preview above you might also like to hear that I’ve got two copies of the album, digitally, to give away.

To win, all you’ve got to do is leave a comment here tell me you want a copy of the album.

Simple as that.

Competition closes 4pm on Friday and winners will be announced shortly afterwards and sent their copies of the album (at 320kb MP3).

The Adventure of The Hidden Microfilm

Saturday night was spent in the company of the Vultures cast and crew in Kilkenny as a select bunch of us hit one of Kilkenny’s taverns for the premiere of the latest installment of the Vultures webcom, The Adventure of The Hidden Microfilm. Watch it above via Blip.tv or check out VulturesPI.com.

The Pinkertons are closing in on the increasingly frazzled and paranoid detectives of V.P.I. when a mysterious fugitive shows up on their door. The fugitive has stolen a microfilm from the Pinkertons. This fugitive is in possession of a secret microfilm belonging to the rival Pinkerton agency. Except he doesn’t know exactly where he put it. Although he suspects it might be inside him. And it could be a floppy disk or a USB key either. He’s really not sure. Can V.P.I. strike a blow to the Pinkertons before they’ve even opened? How do they get the microfilm from the fugitive? And really, who is this Natalie Blaise we keep hearing about?

Vultures, written & directed by John Morton & Paddy Dunne, is the story of three private detectives who run a small scale private investigation agency in small town Ireland. The moderately successful business is called Vulture Private Investigations and specialises in dealing with divorce cases, fraud, missing persons, animals and plants and occasionally, just occasionally, they’ll be served up something that approximates a mystery.

Ross, as director, has more here.

Dopplehammer Trailer

This one was screened before the Vultures Episode 5 premiere last night in Kilkenny… it can only mean one thing – the next installment of Vultures hits the web later today. Keep an eye on VulturesPI.com for the release of what is quite possibly the funniest episode to date. Bless that Noah Hennessy.

Kilkenny Open Coffee For June, Today

photo credit: Mykl Roventine

The next Kilkenny Open Coffee takes place in Kilkenny City today at 11:30am at the rear of the Kilkenny Cafe, Market Cross Shopping Centre, Kilkenny. Unless a super cool open-air coffee venue appears on the map between now and 11:30am, that’s where we’ll be (the weather in Kilkenny has been hitting 26/27 degrees).

Maybe we could change it to Open Picnic instead?

For more on dates, maps and to find out who’ll be there, you can check the Open Coffee Ning group here, or by visit IGOpeople.com.