Radio
Deirdre’s BAI-funded feature radio documentary about Lucia Joyce’s modern dance career, starring Evanna Lynch, Olwen Fouéré, and featuring biographer Carol Loeb Shloss, among others, was first broadcast on RTE Lyric FM in 2019 to coincide with Lucia’s July 26th birthday. It previewed in Pula in June 2019 at Bloomsday Croatia where Deirdre was an invited speaker, and featured in Dublin’s Bloomsday Festival 2020. Listen back here. This documentary has had wide impact, including, most recently inspiring musician Joe Chester’s wonderful new acoustic album ‘Lucia’. “Coosheen’s Forgotten Seanchai and Son”, which involved translating Clare Irish recordings and manuscripts from the National Folklore Collection at UCD (funded by BAI Sound and Vision Scheme), was first broadcast on Newstalk in December 2018. Excerpts from the documentary previewed at Kilkee’s Cultúrlann Sweeney as part of Deirdre’s Nov/ Dec 2018 exhibition “Mother Tongue”, and featured at UCD Festival 2020.
“Surrender on Grand Canal Street”, about Eamon De Valera’s alleged 1916 surrender on her Lower Grand Canal Street windowsill, premiered on Newstalk 106 – 108 fm on Saint Patrick’s Day, 2017. Narrated by Deirdre, it featured Lower Grand Canal Street residents The Kilbane Family; historian, and author of “De Valera, Long Fellow, Long Shadow”, Tim Pat Coogan; Una Kavanagh as Elizabeth O’Farrell; Lower Grand Canal Street business owner and nephew of Elizabeth O’Farrell, Ian Kelly; Lower Grand Canal Street Coffee Shop Owner, Colin Harmon; and grandson of Eamon De Valera, Ruairi O Cuiv. Sound supervision was by Neil Kavanagh.
To peruse Deirdre’s many radio documentaries so far, visit her mixcloud page.
“Georgie’s Vision”, the first ever documentary about the fascinating but little-known Mrs WB Yeats was first broadcast on RTE Lyric FM in September 2016. A visual version of the documentary subsequently featured at the first International Yeats Society Conference at the New School, New York in October 2016, and has subsequently been screened several times at Dublin’s National Library of Ireland. “Georgie’s Vision” was funded by BAI and features Olwen Fouéré channeling the voices of George Yeats; Pat Laffan as WB Yeats; Ingrid Craigie and David Heap, intertwined with exclusive interviews with poet John Montague; Caitriona Yeats; Biographer Ann Saddlemyer; Professor Margaret Mills Harper and former Abbot of Glenstal Abbey, Mark Patrick Hederman. Sound supervision was by Brendan Rehill.
We all know about Maud Gonne, but have you ever heard of George, aka Mrs WB Yeats? Lend your ear to “Georgie’s Vision” to learn more about this extraordinary but self-effacing genius who was the catalyst for her husband’s greatest poetry, yet said “thank-you for leaving me out”.
“Instructions” for the optimum listening experience: Put some violets around the room, light some incense, pour yourself a glass of whatever you fancy and tune in…
So far, Deirdre has produced and researched 5 BAI-funded feature radio documentaries relating to WB Yeats which premiered on RTE Lyric FM, including “Doreen – Telling the Dancer from the Dance”, (2011), about the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet; and the 2 part series “WB Yeats – Words for Music Perhaps” (2013), which among other things featured an exciting collaboration with DIT Conservatory of Music who performed original scores for WB Yeats’s Plays for Dancers, composed by Walter Morse Rummel and Edmond Dulac.