The National Library of Ireland hosts a wide variety of events including public lectures, poetry and music recitals, theatre, children’s storytelling, creative workshops, and much more.
Events taking place during the month of April include lectures, a play and a number of Wildean themed talks in conjunction with Dublin: One City One Book which this year focuses on Wilde’s book The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Wednesday 14 April at 1.00pm
Lunchtime lecture: Liam O’Leary.
In conjunction with the current Library Late series, Writing for Stage and Screen, film historian Bob Monks will give a special lunchtime talk to mark the centenary of the birth of film archivist Liam O’Leary (1910-1992).
Admission is free; booking is not required.
Monday 19 April at 6.00pm sharp.
Dublin Lyric Players present Within the Gates by Sean O’Casey. Admission: €6
Within the Gates by Sean O’Casey is an intriguing, experimental and expressionist play, written during the late 1920s. The title comes from the location of the action – around Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park – during the four Seasons of the year.
The life of a Young Woman is gradually unfolded through her interactions with the visitors to the Park, and as she stumbles through the seasons of her own life. O’Casey paints the broadest of human canvases in bold colours. What he portrays is the bitter, but fulsome life of a feisty, impressionable and vulnerable girl who becomes transformed during the Seasons from a girl to a woman, later to re-emerge as an archetypal representative of humanity.
Tuesday 20 April at 7.00pm.
Lecture: The contradictions of Oscar Wilde, Prof. Terry Eagleton.
Professor Terry Eagleton, renowned literary theorist and author of the play Saint Oscar, will lecture on The contradictions of Oscar Wilde in the National Library’s Seminar Room. This event is part of the Dublin: One City One Book series of events which this year focuses on Wilde’s book The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Admission is free; booking not required although places are limited.
Monday 26 April at 8.00pm
Library Late: Writer and director Paul Mercier in conversation.
In the third event in the current series of Library Late, Writing for Stage and Screen, broadcaster John Kelly will interview writer and director, Paul Mercier. Mercier’s twelve plays include Studs, We Ourselves and Spacers in addition to Homeland and Down The Line for The Abbey. Among other work, he has also written and directed three short films including Before I Sleep, Lipservice and Tupperware.
Admission is free but booking is essential, call 01 603 0317 to reserve your place. Booking for this event will open on Thurday 25 March. Call (01) 6030317 to reserve up to two places.
Tuesday 27 April at 7.00pm
Lecture: Portraying George Yeats – the medium and the message
In the final event of this popular series Professor Ann Saddlemyer, Visiting Professor, University of Victoria and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, will deliver a lecture entitled Portraying George Yeats – the medium and the message. The lecture is connected to the Yeats exhibition’s object of the month for April, Edmund Dulac’s portrait of George Yeats (below).
Professor Saddlemyer has had a long and distinguished career in the field of Irish literary studies. In addition to WB and George Yeats, she has published widely on JM Synge, Lady Gregory, and on the Abbey Theatre. She has received fellowships from the Canada Council and the Guggenheim Foundation, and has lectured at the W.B. Yeats International Summer School in Sligo, the University of Toronto Irish Studies Seminar, and for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Professor Saddlemyer is the author of the definitive biography of George Yeats, Becoming George: The Life of Mrs WB Yeats.
Admission is free; booking is not necessary.
Wednesday 28 April at 7.00pm
Lecture: Dorian and Melmoth: Brothers of the Black Bargain, Dr Albert Power.
Dr. Power, writer and gothic literature expert, will lecture on the connections between Oscar Wilde’s Dorian and Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth in the Library’s Seminar Room on Wednesday 28 April at 7.00pm. This lecture is taking place as part of the Dublin: One City One Book series of events, which this year focuses on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Admissions is free; booking is not necessary although places are limited.
