KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL 1974 - 2023 Set piece & the Thomastown set (2009)

BY GERRY MORAN

God bless Eamon Langton. And all belonging to him. Why? For giving Kilkenny a brand-new, stateof-the-art theatre that is quite simply: a class act. I love this place. Love the look of it. e feel of it. e smell of it. ere’s an intimacy about this theatre, called the Set by the way, that lures you in and makes you want to curl up in a seat and enjoy good theatre, music or lm.

e Set rst opened its doors to an Arts Festival event: a series of lms based on the short stories of William Trevor ( e Ballroom of Romance being perhaps the most well-known)

‘William Trevor on Screen’ was introduced by Colm Tóibín who remarked that the builders were leaving through the backdoor as the audience entered through the front.

I myself took to the stage of the Set one night during our Arts Festival. Was I performing? I wish. A few of us were wending our way to the Festival Club, based in the bar of the Set, and I took the opportunity to check out the place. As I stood on the stage and looked out on that intimate (but empty) auditorium I felt a soliloquy coming on and would have delivered one but for the fact that someone shouted from the bar: “Moran, it’s your round”. And if there’s anyone out there who still harbours the notion that our Arts Festival is elitist well you should have been in the Set, the last Friday night of the festival. Groupo Fantasma, from Austin, Texas, ‘currently the hottest ticket on the US Latin scene’, according to the brochure, had the chock-a-block crowd dancing, jiving and gyrating on the oor and in the aisles.

I reckon the whole of John Street was rocking to “the US’s hardest working and funkiest band”.

Away from the madding crowds of the city I took myself out to omastown for a tour of some of the exhibitions there.

Liked Amelia Peart’s delicate etchings in the Framewell Gal- lery (and the time she gave me to explain the process); appreciated also the art; the Ordinary Lives of Children. Was intrigued by Debra Bowden’s Japanese woodblock prints and was hugely impressed with Bernadette Kiely’s, A Floating World. Almost made it to the Grennan Mill Craft School exhibition but was waylaid by an old friend who regaled me about the buzzing Red Door eatre based in the Bridgebrook Arms. I enjoyed the calmness of the Berkeley Gallery especially Gabriella Kiss’s exhibition: Peopling. Gabriella, from Hungary believes that we are all part of each other’s lives and invited visitors to the exhibition to do a little self-portrait on site. Which I did. And which she then placed, like a leaf, on her gigantic family tree, along with the many others who participated. Great fun. Great idea. Great lady. e most enjoyable exhibition of the Arts Festival, for me personally, had to be e Stour Gallery at Ballydu House just outside of omastown. is charming country house was the perfect setting for Eric Connor’s chairs, James Hake’s ceramics, Breon O’Casey’s and Jane O’Malley’s prints and paintings and Gwen Wilkinson’s marvellous life-like, hound wire sculptures which adorned the lawn. All in all - wonderful.