“It’s about creating and growing it and making it bigger and stronger, which is what we are doing, and it’s very exciting.” Limerick native Noel Staunton heads up the Brisbane Festival.

Irishman Noel Staunton has enjoyed a stellar international career in opera production, and is looking forward to his fourth year at the helm of the Brisbane Festival.

Staunton is the artistic director of the popular arts event and he enjoys bringing in groups from around the world to the city.

“Brisbane asked me would I be interested in running a festival and I thought, ‘I’ve done everything else except a festival so why not’,” he said.

“The great thing about festivals is that because I love the theatre, dance and music, I can work with all those genres.

“It’s about creating an environment where we stimulate the whole arts scene in a city, and encourage local arts. It’s a really fantastic time putting all these groups and people together for the city to have fun.

“It’s about creating and growing it and making it bigger and stronger, which is what we are doing, and it’s very exciting.”

Staunton grew up in Limerick and after leaving Crescent College he left Ireland to study at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

After a six-month stint in the Abbey Theatre he worked in London for two decades behind the scenes in the opera world and was invited by Opera Australia to work in Sydney in 1987.

He worked with the company for 10 years as technical director and was then approached by Great Gatsby director Baz Luhrmann to become the executive producer of his theatrical company. He worked on an award-winning production of La Boheme on Broadway and afterwards he became the executive producer of the $15 million sell-out production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle for the State Opera of South Australia.

“It was fun to do a Broadway show and it was really exciting that a group of people from Australia could work for three years and have a big opening on Broadway and have great reviews. It was a fantastic experience,” he said.

“I’ve known Baz since he was at college. He and I are very close friends … Baz of course is known in America for his movies but not his theatre work.”

Staunton was then asked to join the Brisbane Festival and has been contracted for five festivals after initially signing up for three.

His ambition is to bring Ireland’s Druid and The Gate theatre companies to the festival and this year is bringing the ground-breaking dance company Fabulous Beast.

“It’s important to bring the best of Ireland and, of course, Australia has very strong Irish connections,” he said.

“We constantly keep working on Druid but we’ve never been successful and The Gate Theatre are amazing. We are always in negotiations with Druid and The Gate but we will get there somehow. They are very important theatre companies worldwide, so they are sought-after all over the world”.

Staunton’s sister lives in Perth and he returns home to Ireland every two years, where his two brothers and another sister live. He believes the Galway Theatre Festival is one of the best events in the world.

“There’s some nice festivals in Ireland. The Galway festival is one of the most important theatre festivals in the world. The Dublin one is also extremely good,” he said.

Brisbane Festival runs from September 7 – 28.

The startling 'Terminus' is on at the Opera House until July 9.

Terminus is a play that demands to be seen but prepare to be challenged, provoked and, perhaps even offended.

Audiences might not be enticed to go along to a play that involves descriptions of a robust sexual encounter with a demon made of worms or an apparent forced late-term abortion but then Terminus is not for the faint-hearted.

This is hard-core theatre and distinctly R-rated.

But it is also a tour de force and may be the most original piece of theatre you will see this year.

Author Mark O’Rowe — probably best known as the script-writer for the movie Intermission — presents us with a virtuoso piece of writing delivered, astonishingly, in rhythmic rhyme, not unlike rap but not unlike Shakespeare.

It’s like James Joyce in the hands of Eminem.

“… we go, see the slo-mo ebb and flow; the mill, the babble, the rabble of wobbling waywards, exiled and aimless, unlike us as, purposeful and double-file, like kids on a dare, we head who the hell knows where.”

The play follows what is becoming a familiar format for modern Irish theatre starting, perhaps, with Brian Friel’s Faith Healer.

Three characters tell us their stories, delivered in monologue, which interconnect in ways that are not apparent at the outset.

When the connection becomes apparent, the effect is startling.

This style of theatre – not for everyone – has also been used by Conor McPherson (The Weir) and, most recently, in Little Gem (Elaine Murphy).

In Terminus, the three actors stand and deliver their lines. They do not interact. The chilling drama is created by the compelling and disturbing stories they tell us. It’s an urban tale of love, betrayal and loneliness with an unexpected supernatural underbelly.

The three characters are all dealing with personal demons: guilt, low self esteem, regret. Real demons are not far away.

‘A’ (Olwyn Fouéré) is a middle-aged woman who volunteers for a suicide help line and gets sucked into a particularly horrible case involving a heavily pregnant young woman, with tragic consequences.

‘B’ (Catherine Walker) is A’s estranged daughter, a twentysomething single woman whose spontaneous decision to abandon her midweek home-alone routine of microwave dinners leads her into a deathly experience on top of a crane and an encounter with a real demon.

‘C’ (Declan Conlon) is a shy middle-aged man who, we discover, has sold his soul to the devil in return for a good singing voice. He casually reflects on his murderous exploits as he realises that the devil has betrayed him.

O’Rowe takes us on an extraordinary journey with the three characters into Dublin’s dark side and beyond. The humour, and there is much of it, is black as night and delivered with aplomb.

Terminus certainly elevates Mark O’Rowe’s status as one of Ireland’s outstanding stage writers. His is a rare talent.

On the back of last year’s Druid Theatre production of Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce, we are indeed lucky to have another memorable play from the cutting edge of modern Irish theatre on stage in Sydney.

Terminus is thrilling, terrifying theatre at its best. Haunting and provocative, it is shockingly good and should not be missed.

Our rating : 4/5

The man himself. Or is it?

The Abbey Theatre will lead Bloomsday celebrations in Australia this year, with the cast of Terminus gathering at the State Library of New South Wales on Wednesday to deliver lines from James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Bloomsday, Wednesday June 16, is the date that celebrates Leopold Bloom’s adventures in Joyce’s Ulysses, a novel set entirely on that date in 1904.

A number of events are being held throughout the country to celebrate Bloom’s meandering journey around Dublin.

Terminus, produced by the Abbey Theatre, is currently showing at the Opera House.

Two of the three cast members, Declan Conlon and Olwen Fouéré, are set to give readings from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake on the steps of the Mitchell Library. The event has been organised by the Consulate of Ireland.

“We are delighted to partner with the NSW State Library on this new event, and even more pleased that the cast of the Abbey Theatre’s Terminus have agreed to take part,” said Consul General Caitríona Ingoldsby.

“Bloomsday is now an international event and presents an ideal opportunity to showcase across the globe Ireland’s strong achievements in literature and the arts more generally.

“That actors from the critically acclaimed Abbey Theatre production of Terminus are taking part clearly demonstrates that Ireland’s strength in culture and the arts is not just a historical phenomenon but a national asset that continues to flourish and to develop.”

It has specifically been arranged for lunchtime so that CBD office workers can hear Ulysses being read by stage actors. The event is free and open to all.

Elsewhere in Sydney, the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies at the University of New South Wales and the Consulate General of Ireland have partnered to present an evening event at the Gaelic Club in Sydney.

The community venue will host readings from Ulysses, Dubliners and Finnegans Wake this Wednesday, June 16.

Irish actors Maeliosa Stafford, John-Paul Hussey, Romy Farrelly, Zoe Norton Lodge, Paul Armstrong and Michael Terry will participate.  Longford-born writer John Connell will join them.

:: Celebrations around Australia

Meanwhile, at the Irish Club in Perth, Colm O’Doherty will present an exploration of gender issues depicted in Ulysses’ comedic but hallucinatory night town brothel chapter, Circe.

Editor Sean Byrne will deliver a parliamentary investigation into the Dáil with a proposed recommendation to resurrect James Joyce to save the Irish Economy.

Drawing-room music will celebrate Joyce as a tenor.

The Shadow Minister for Culture and the Arts John Hyde will join Gerry Gannon, Ingle Knight, Damien O’Doherty, Diana Warnock, Marian Byrne and Tony Bray. Soprano Fiona Mariah, Soprano and baritone Barry Preece will also sing.

Brisbane’s Irish Club will host the Bloomsday celebrations for Queenslanders. A night of readings and music kicks off from 7:00pm Wednesday at their Elizabeth Street venue.

Meanwhile Joyce enthusiasts in Melbourne can attend a seminar at the University of Melbourne’s Open Stage Theatre.

The 2011 Bloomsday seminar – ‘Joyce and the Nationalists’ – investigates the author’s engagement with political movements and his fascination with Ireland’s archaic literary tradition.

The Open Stage Theatre will also interpret the Cyclops chapter of Ulysses with a stage adaption.

The adaption, An Irishman And A Jew Go Into A Pub, is directed by Brenda Addie and set in Barney Kiernan’s pub, a location “lousy with Fenians, victims and anti-Semites, high on Guinness, poitín, and outrage”.

The Abbey Theatre will bring Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus to the Sydney Opera House following on from its success at the Melbourne International Arts Festival last year. O’Rowe’s previous plays include Howie The Rookie and Crestfall. Terminus is set in O’Rowe’s Dublin and is centred on three main characters.

The Tallaght native is best known for his smash-hit dark comedy, Intermission, which starred Colm Meaney, Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy. That screenplay won an Irish Film and Television Award (IFTA) in 2003. Terminus has run twice at the Abbey Theatre and at New York’s Public Theatre, as well as at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in Melbourne.

The Irish Echo has five double passes to give away to the preview performance on Wednesday, June 1 at 8pm.

Answer the question and complete the form below. (Entries close on May 17 at 5pm.)

Sorry. This form is no longer available.

Terms & Conditions:

This competition is open to Australian residents only.
Employees of The Irish Echo and their immediate families are ineligible to enter.
Entrants automatically become part of the Irish Echo database.
Entries close on May 17 at 5pm.
The winner will be drawn randomly at the Irish Echo office and contacted by email only, using the email registered by the winner.