"FINNEGANS WAKE" 5pm Sat 23 March & Irish Radio interviews

TWO IRISH RADIO INTERVIEWS

Malachy McCourt

(1) REMEMBERING MALACHY McCOURT, WBAI RADIO NY

The exceptional Malachy McCourt (1931-2024), "Actor, Memoirist and Gadabout," died this month.

(2) IRISH RADIO CANADA SAINT PATRICK'S DAY INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD HARTE

Listen to Austin Comerton's interview with Richard Harte about "Finnegans Wake, Chapter 2" on Irish Radio Canada.

JOIN US FOR CHAPTER 2 OF JOYCE’S “FINNEGANS WAKE”

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS OR CALL 416.599.2033

Adam Seelig (piano) & Richard Harte, "Finnegans Wake, Chapter 2"

Join us at 5pm, Saturday, March 23 when the Toronto Irish Film Festival (TIRFF) screens excerpts from One Little Goat’s new release, “Finnegans Wake, Chapter 2”, followed by a new documentary on musician John Murry, “The Graceless Age” at TIFF Lightbox.

Three ways to purchase:

  1. Phone the TIFF box office: 416.599.2033 (10am-5pm)

  2. In person at TIFF: 350 King St W, Toronto (Tue-Sun)

  3. Online: https://am.ticketmaster.com/tiff/2024TIRFF (24 hours)

PLEASE NOTE: The event name is “The Graceless Age”

With support from the Emigrant Support Programme from the Government of Ireland and Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company.

Join us! WAKE at TIFF for TIRFF (March 23, 2024)

JOIN US FOR CHAPTER 2 OF JOYCE’S “FINNEGANS WAKE”

Join us at 5pm, Saturday, March 23 when the Toronto Irish Film Festival (TIRFF) screens excerpts from One Little Goat’s new release, “Finnegans Wake, Chapter 2”, followed by a new documentary on musician John Murry, “The Graceless Age” at TIFF Lightbox.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS OR CALL 416.599.2033

Richard Harte, "Finnegans Wake, Chapter 2"

“FINNEGANS WAKE, CHAPTER 2” (excerpts)
followed by “THE GRACELESS AGE”

5pm Saturday 23 March 2024

Select "The Graceless Age" Sat 23 March 2024

Three ways to purchase:

  1. Phone the TIFF box office: 416.599.2033 (10am-5pm)

  2. In person at TIFF: 350 King St W, Toronto (Tue-Sun)

  3. Online: https://am.ticketmaster.com/tiff/2024TIRFF (24 hours)

¡¡ PLEASE NOTE: The event name is
“The Graceless Age” !!

Adam Seelig (piano) & Richard Harte, "Finnegans Wake, Chapter 2"

Come see-and-hear Richard Harte’s virtuosic, filmed reading of James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, “Finnegans Wake, Chapter 2”, directed by Adam Seelig. Filmed live at Noonan's Irish Pub in Toronto, this screening excerpt will feature the novel's main song, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” in all its bawdy glory.
For more please visit onelittlegoat.org/finneganswake.

Hope to see you on March 23!

With support from the Emigrant Support Programme from the Government of Ireland and Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company.

Goat in ’23 & ’24, Nobel Prize

Thanks to your support, One Little Goat has great news from the year behind and for the one ahead. Read and see all about it below, and if you can, please support One Little Goat's programming with a tax-deductible donation. As a registered charity, we depend on individual donations to realize productions, and we want to thank you for helping us make them happen. See you in 2024! In the meantime, wishing happy holidays, a healthy new year, and peace, —Adam Seelig, Artistic Director

OUR BIGGEST PROJECT TO DATE…

…filming all 17 chapters of James Joyce’s monumental final novel, Finnegans Wake, in a first-of-its-kind filmed audio book, is well under way and gaining momentum.

Chapter 1 is complete and screened to enthusiastic audiences at the Toronto Irish Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox, Bloomsday Film Festival Dublin & European Union Film Festival

l-r: Joyce Centre Director Darina Gallagher, Harte, Lord Mayor of Dublin Caroline Conroy

“Finnegans Wake” at EU Film Festival

Richard Harte & Adam Seelig, Toronto Irish Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox

Praising the Dublin premiere, noted culture critic for The Irish Voice, Cahir O’Doherty, writes: “Actor Richard Harte has found a way to crack the private code and maintain the original voltage… of one of the most funny and challenging novels of the 20th century, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.”

RTE Irish National Television featured the film, and numerous media warmly welcomed our debut, including the Irish Echo, WBAI New York (Malachy McCourt), CIUT Toronto (donna g), Pa Sheehan, Irish Radio Canada and more.

Thanks to a travel grant from the Ontario Arts Council, Harte and Director Adam Seelig attended the film’s Irish premiere at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

Following the success of Chapter 1, the Emigrant Support Programme from the Government of Ireland has renewed and increased their funding for our forthcoming films of Chapters 2-4.

Shot with a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto on 26 June, Chapter 2 is in the final stages of editing. Chapter 3 has wrapped, with editing to begin in January; and Chapter 4 is slated to shoot in early 2024.

Save the date(ish) for March 2024, when One Little Goat returns to the Toronto Irish Film Festival to screen “Finnegans Wake, Chapter 2.” We will share details with you soon.

CLAUDE GAUVREAU'S VAMPIRE ONLINE

Asymptote, the leading site for world literature in translation, recently published scenes from Ray Ellenwood’s translation of Claude Gauvreau’s radical 1949 libretto The Vampire and the Nymphomaniac (commissioned and published by One Little Goat in 2023). Visit Asymptote to read the excerpts for free as well as Adam Seelig’s introduction and the original French as read by Thierry Bissonnette.

And the 2023 Nobel goes to…

l-r: Michael Blake, Dwight McFee & Stacie Steadman, "Someone is Going to Come"

…Norwegian poet and playwright Jon Fosse! Those who have been following and attending One Little Goat’s productions will remember our 2009 English Canadian Premiere of Fosse’s best known play, Someone is Going to Come, in a new English translation by Harry Lane and Adam Seelig (hailed in the Globe & Mail as “21st-century Beckett”).

For those interested in the script of the translation, please email us: onelittlegoattc@gmail.com. For Fosse’s Nobel Lecture, click here.

PLEASE SUPPORT ONE LITTLE GOAT THEATRE COMPANY

As an official charity, One Little Goat, North America’s only company dedicated to poetic theatre, depends on individual donations to make productions possible. Your financial support is tax-deductible and greatly appreciated! Our office is volunteer-run, so 100% of your donation goes directly to programming.

How to donate:

  1. Online through Canada Helps

  2. E-transfer to onelittlegoattc@gmail.com

  3. Cheque to One Little Goat Theatre Company, 422 Brunswick Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5R 2Z4, CANADA

THANK YOU!

FINNEGANS WAKE at EU Film Fest (Nov 26)

Join us Sunday 26 November at 8:30pm when the Toronto European Union Film Festival will screen excerpts from One Little Goat’s debut film of James Joyce's “Finnegans Wake Chapter 1” at Alliance Française (24 Spadina Road, Bloor/Spadina). The excerpts will be followed by a new, feature-length film from Ireland, Double Blind.

TICKETS

Appropriately for the EU Festival, our Wake excerpts will feature the “Museyroom” episode, a wild recounting of Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo by European coalition forces.

Praise for One Little Goat's Finnegans Wake: “Actor Richard Harte has found a way to crack the private code and maintain the original voltage… of one of the most funny and challenging novels of the 20th century, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.” —Cahir O'Doherty, The Irish Voice

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN AT 100!

One Little Goat congratulates a favourite artist (and audience-member), Françoise Sullivan, the last living member of Montreal’s radical Automatistes (Claude Gauvreau, Jean-Paul Riopelle et al), on her new exhibit — “I let rhythms flow” — at Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal in celebration of her 100th birthday.

Brenda & Ray Ellenwood, Françoise Sullivan, Adam Seelig on the set of The Charge of the Expormidable Moose (One Little Goat 2013)

When the Museum initially approached Françoise years ago about a retrospective for her centennial, she wondered why they were looking back when she had so much new work ahead of her! And indeed, the remarkable exhibit features mostly canvases from 2023.

Félicitations, Françoise, and thank you for your art: old, new and still-to-come.

One Little Goat is an artist-driven, registered charitable organization. For more and to donate, visit http://onelittlegoat.org/contact.

WAKE in Dublin (June 16) & Trailer

WAKE in Dublin (June 16) & Trailer

Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 Trailer

On Friday 16 June, the Bloomsday Film Festival will screen One Little Goat’s debut film, “Finnegans Wake Chapter 1” at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin at 11:15 am & 2:45 pm as part of the 69th annual Bloomsday Festival's celebration of James Joyce. Admission is free — join us!

(The Bloomsday Festival will also screen excerpts of the film for its “Joycean Shorts” program at 4pm on Thursday 15 June at the James Joyce Centre. Tickets go on sale next week.)

FINNEGANS WAKE IN THE NEWS

One Little Goat gratefully acknowledges the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) for supporting the company's travel to Ireland.

FILMING NEXT: FINNEGANS WAKE CHAPTER 2

On 26 June, One Little Goat will shoot Finnegans Wake, Chapter 2 before a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto. Rehearsals are underway!

GAUVREAU READING IN TORONTO (JUNE 4)

Translator Ray Ellenwood and Adam Seelig will read from One Little Goat’s recent publication of Claude Gauvreau’s The Vampire and the Nymphomaniac at Free Times Cafe in Toronto on Sunday 4 June at 7:30pm for the Surrealism edition of “Here is Elsewhere” featuring readings and performances by Montreal author Peter Dubé, Recordists Sherri L Higgins & William Davison, and poet Beatriz Hausner.

ARE YOU IN TORONTO ON BLOOMSDAY (JUNE 16)?

Join our friends at Anna Livia Productions for the 38th annual Toronto Bloomsday celebrating Joyce's great novel Ulysses!

Stage Manager OPPORTUNITY

Position: Stage Manager
Date: Monday 26 June 2023
Time: 9am-5pm
Location: Noonan’s, 141 Danforth Ave, Toronto
Fee: $300 (+ hst if applicable) 

One Little Goat Theatre Company is seeking a STAGE MANAGER for our one-day filmed live reading of James Joyce’s FINNEGANS WAKE, Chapter 2, on Mon 26 June at Noonan’s pub in Toronto.

The STAGE MANAGER will be responsible for “PROOF READING” the actor’s performance of the text, noting any errors the actor may make. Top-notch proof-reading skills are essential.

For more information on the project, please visit: https://www.onelittlegoat.org/finneganswake

Interested applicants, please email your résumé to One Little Goat at: chadgadya [at] gmail.com

Join us! WAKE at TIFF for TIRFF (March 25)

FINNEGANS WAKE EXCERPTS!

Great news: at 8pm on Saturday, March 25, the Toronto Irish Film Festival (TIRFF) will screen the trailer for One Little Goat’s debut film, Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 for the festival’s “Celebration of Joyce” at TIFF Lightbox.

Join us and be among the first to see-and-hear Richard Harte’s magnificent, filmed reading of James Joyce’s last novel. Tickets go on sale soon. For details, visit TIRFF and One Little Goat’s new Finnegans Wake website.

Richard Harte with the author (photo: Tim Leyes)

Joyce, Gauvreau & One Little Goat in 2023

Thanks to your support and the determination of our artists in the face pandemic challenges, One Little Goat has great news to share from 2022 and for the year ahead. Read all about it (and enjoy photos) below, and if you can, please support One Little Goat's programming with a tax-deductible donation — as a registered charity, we depend on individual donations to realize productions, and we want to thank you for helping us make them happen. See you in 2023! In the meantime, wishing happy holidays and a healthy new year, —Adam Seelig, Artistic Director

ONE LITTLE GOAT'S DEBUT MOVIE
FINNEGANS WAKE BY JAMES JOYCE

Stein (Picasso 1906)

“Joyce is good. He is a good writer. People like him because he is incomprehensible and anybody can understand him.”

Ogre reads Joyce (Baalbuddy 2021)

Grudging though her admiration may have been, Gertrude Stein was right: Finnegans Wake (1939) is that very incomprehensibility that anyone can understand because Joyce’s notoriously gnarly dream-novel is oddly, absurdly, obsessively funny. It is, in short, a comedy — a comedy that, in Joyce’s words: “is all so simple. If anyone doesn’t understand a passage, all [they] need do is read it aloud.”

Joyce (Irish currency)

On August 31, 2022, One Little Goat Artistic Director Adam Seelig and theatre artist Andrew Moodie worked with video producer MXL Media, sound recordist William Bembridge and production designer Jackie Chau to capture Dublin-born actor Richard Harte reading Chapter 1 of the Wake for an intimate, live (masked) audience in Toronto. Harte’s performance is awesome, and we can’t wait to share it with you.

90 minutes long, Finnegans Wake, Chapter 1 is now in postproduction. In addition to Harte’s magnificent reading, the film includes Irish-Canadian singer Kevin Kennedy’s superb rendition of the “Finnegan’s Wake” folk song that inspired Joyce’s title, plus several montages echoing themes in the novel.

Poster for Mary Ellen Bute's 1996 film adaptation

One Little Goat’s production marks the first ever audio-video book of this extraordinary novel, boasting numerous aspects that will make it a golden resource for current and future audiences of Joyce’s incomparable work. Our Wake:
—> will be freely available online from inception.
—> is filmed in front of a live audience, enhancing the novel’s comedy — there’s a reason standup comedians aren’t recorded in studio.
—> by virtue of being a video (in addition to audio) recording, allows audiences to see (in addition to hear) the reader’s tongue-twisting virtuosity.
—> includes subtitles and page numbers, enabling readers to ‘flip’ to their desired spot in the novel (page and line numbers are standardized in all editions of Finnegans Wake).

Above all, our Finnegans Wake is a serious pleasure. Thank you to the Embassy of Ireland in Canada for supporting production of Chapter 1. With 16 more chapters to shoot, our work has only begun!

THE VAMPIRE AND THE NYMPHOMANIAC

Book Cover: The Vampire and the Nymphomaniac / Le vampire et la nymphomane

Years in the making, Ray Ellenwood’s “expormidable” translation of Le vampire et la nymphomane (1949) by revolutionary Montreal poet-playwright Claude Gauvreau (1925-71) is finally out in a bilingual, French-English, tête-bêche (flip book) edition published by One Little Goat with Nouvelles Éditions de Feu-Antonin. Augmented by photos and essays, the book is a beauty.

>> Order the book!

Read the review by David Olds in WholeNote Magazine p.48 Dec 2022-Jan 2023 issue

Listen to interviews by CIUT Radio’s donna g with:
* Adam Seelig (Nov 13) — online podcast, Spotify
* Ray Ellenwood (Nov 20) — online podcast, Spotify

Toronto launch: Ray Ellenwood, author Beatriz Hausner, Steve McCaffery, editors Adam Seelig & Thierry Bissonnette

Launched this November to full (masked) houses in Toronto and Montreal, Gauvreau’s wild libretto is now reaching English audiences for the first time. world, Steve McCaffery (of legendary Four Horsemen fame), for joining us from NY for the Toronto launch to perform his tour de force rendition of Gauvreau’s final suite of sound poems (Jappements à la lune) and thanks to the Bureau du Québec à Toronto and Canada Council for the Arts for their support.

Françoise Sullivan (right) with Ray Ellenwood & Adam Seelig (Montreal)

For our Montreal launch we are grateful to renowned artists Janine Carreau (sister-in-law of Claude) and Françoise Sullivan (Order of Canada, signatory to the Refus global manifesto of 1948) and opera singer Pauline Vaillancourt for joining us, and to director Lorraine Pintal (of Canada’s leading French-language theatre Théâtre du Nouveau Monde) for lauding the publication. And thanks to you for engaging with and supporting this rare, exceptional work.

Janine Carreau (2nd from right) with Thierry Bissonnette, Adam Seelig & Ray Ellenwood (Montreal)

Coincidentally…! In November, Canada Post issued a stamp of actor Monique Mercure, who played The Vampire’s Mother in the 1996 production of The Vampire and the Nymphomaniac.

PLEASE SUPPORT ONE LITTLE GOAT

Student response to One Little Goat's PLAY: A Mini History of Theatre for Kids (Fall 2021). On the flip side, Molly writes: "Thank you for acting in the Play today. My favourite part was when Mavis actid out the cat."

As an official charity, One Little Goat, North America’s only company dedicated to poetic theatre, depends on individual donations to make productions possible. Your financial support is tax-deductible and greatly appreciated! Our office is volunteer-run, so 100% of your donation goes directly to programming.

How to donate:

1. Online through Canada Helps
2. E-transfer to onelittlegoattc@gmail.com
3. Cheque to One Little Goat Theatre Company, 422 Brunswick Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5R 2Z4, CANADA

THANK YOU!
WISHING HAPPY HOLIDAYS & A HEALTHY 2023