In celebration of UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day, the first Mother Tongues Festival will take place on the 24th of February 2018 in Dublin. This language festival will feature performances and workshops in Irish, Polish, Arabic, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Romanian and more.
Darina Gallagher and Sinead Murphy will be kicking off the festival at 5:30pm, the duo is best known for their award-winning show ‘Songs of Joyce’, a musical extravaganza drawn from the life and works of James Joyce. They have toured internationally to critical acclaim in Boston, New York, Budapest, Prague, San Sebastian and Moscow. Since 2010, they have created a number of musical performances based on Joyce’s major works – Dubliners, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Their new show, Misses Liffey, takes the audience on a riverrun journey through Dublin introducing us to many of Joyce’s engaging female characters that work, sing, laugh and live along her banks.
For the Mother Tongues festival, Sinead and Darina will explore some of the musical linguistic magic that James Joyce developed throughout his life living in various countries in Europe. His children grew up speaking at least four different languages, Joyce mixes these mother tongues into layers of word play that are both comical and poignant. Tickets are €15.
