“a community led set of 4 recitals in evocative settings of Seamus Heaney’s NORTH in words and music”
30 poems, 20+ readers, 5 instrumentalists, 4 venues, 2 days
Saturday August 30 2025
North Part 1(a): 11.00am, First Presbyterian Church Derry
North Part 1(b): 2.00pm, The Gasyard Centre, The Bogside Derry
Sunday August 31 2025
North Part 2 (a): 11.00am, Venue TBC
North Part 2 (b): 2.00pm, Lumen Christi College Derry
The 30 poems of Seamus Heaney’s once contentious but now iconic 4 th poetry
collection, North, will be read in the natural voices of individual citizens from the
Derry ~Londonderry community’s two cultural traditions. Each local voice will be
chosen through an experiential connection to one of the poems, for example Sunlight
/ an older baker woman, Funeral Rites / an undertaker, Hercules and Antaeus / a
body builder.
The readings will be interspersed with a quintet of instrumental sounds and snatches
of melody from a harp, a wooden flute, a Lambeg and bodhran drum and a fiddle.
Four evocative venues have been chosen as sites for each section of poems: the
Gasyard in Derry’s Bogside for Heaney’s bog poems of the second half of Part 1 led
by The Bog Queen and The Grauballe Man; Lumen Christi College, the building of
Heaney’s old school, for the second half closing section of Part 2 poems led by The
Ministry of Fear that name-checks his old school.
Mise En Scène: DoranBrowne
Performance Director: Seán Doran & Jonathan Burgess
Mise En Scène Producer and Event Manager: Margaret Gallagher
Literary Dramaturg: Liam Browne
Scene Setting: special tumulus installation in the Gasyard.
Cast: Citizens of Derry~Londonderry and Counties Derry & Donegal
A Coproduction with The Playhouse, Derry.
Tickets
£10 for each of the four individual North recitals.
£30 North weekend ticket for all four recitals
Special Golden Anniversary £50 Day Tickets for two. Two Volunteers
performance tickets + 2 North recital tickets on same day. Normal cost £70. Save £20
