“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.
First Derry Presbyterian Church August 30 th 11am
Part 1
Sunlight: Geraldine Ferry (owner of the Leprechaun Bakery)
The Seed Cutters: Conor O’Kane (from a long line of Co. Derry seed cutters)
Antaeus: Paul Kennan
Belderg: TBC
Funeral Rites: James Greer and Kathleen Gillespie (from Theatre of Witness)
North: TBC
Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces: Charles Glen and Colm Clarke
The Digging Skeleton: TBC
Bone Dreams: TBC
Come to the Bower: TBC
Gasyard Centre, Bogside, Derry, August 30 th 2pm
Part 1 continued (Tumulous installation)
Bog Queen: Michelle Lake
The Grauballe Man: TBC
Punishment: Tina McPhillips (witness of tar-and-featherings)
Strange Fruit: TBC
Kinship: Pauline Deasley, Chris McIvor and Rosaline Callaghan
Ocean’s Love to Ireland: Mark Lawson (English journalist)
Aisling: Lois Tait (18 years old)
Act Of Union: TBC
The Betrothal of Cavehill: TBC
Hercules and Antaeus: Thomas
The Court House, Derry, August 31 st 11am
Part 2
The Unacknowledged Legislator’s Dream: Joe O’Leary (lawyer)
Whatever You Say Say Nothing: TBC
Freedman: Anne McMaster
Lumen Christi College, August 31 st 2pm
Part 2 contd.
Singing School: Ronan Parke (Lumen Christi school pupil)
The Ministry of Fear: Shaun Doherty (St. Columb’s College Heaney peer)
A Constable Calls: Frank Galligan
Orange Drums: Maura Johnston.
Summer 1969: TBC
Fosterage: TBC
Exposure: Dennis Bradley
Concept & Origination: DoranBrowne
Producer & Casting: Margaret Kelly
Directors: Seán Doran and Jonathan Burgess
Music Director: Maurice Kelly
AOB
Festival Director: Seán Doran
Literary Director: Liam Browne
Festival Producer: Jonathan Burgess
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
