What’s on April/May and beyond

This entry was posted on April 10, 2025 by , in ancestry, Celtic Club, Christmas Celebrations, Clan Gathering, diaspora, Festival, Irish Australian History, Irish Band, Irish Culture, Irish Dance, Irish Families, Irish language, Irish Language Summer School, Irish Studies, Live Music, News, Of interest to children, Of Irish Language interest, Of Musical interest. Bookmark the permalink.

What’s On at the Celtic Club Melbourne

The Celtic Club is an organization that celebrates and supports pride in Irish heritage and culture, as well as the broader Celtic community. We provide opportunities for our members and guests to benefit from, learn about, and enjoy Gaelic language, Irish music, art, culture, and more.

For further information please visit us here:https://www.celticclub.com.au/whats-on

Ceoltóirí Naarm

This group of very young and very talented musicians are worth supporting.

Irish Films Coming in April to Australian Cinemas

https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/four-letters-of-love-review-irish-eyes-aromancing-in-heartfelt-adaptation/5202276.article

‘Small Things Like These’ finally hits Australian cinemas

Cinema lovers around Australia have impatiently been waiting for Cillian Murphy’s new film ‘Small Things Like These’ to make it’s way into our cinemas. The great news is that it will hit cinemas April 10! Check out your local cinema for showtimes as many have advance screenings, some cinemas have already started their screenings. The film is based on the prize winning novella by Claire Keegan. The story follows Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, in the weeks leading up to Christmas in 1985. Furlong faces his busiest season and as he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him – and encounters the complicit silences of a small community controlled by the Church.

Thanks to the Irish Film Festival, Enda Murray and team, for these notices.

Comhaltas Set Dance Workshop Weekend – 16th -18th May 

Queenscliff will no sooner be over when our Set Dance Workshop Weekend will be upon us! We’re so excited to welcome internationally-renowned dance master Pat Murphy to lead the workshops. This jam-packed weekend of workshops and live music ceilis is all happening at St.Martin de Porres Parish Hall in Avondale Heights. Do as much or as little as you’d like, with pricing from $20 for just the Sunday afternoon ceili to $95 for the full weekend.

Online booking preferred: https://forms.gle/5gsfdU4Vm67XJhUB9

For more details, e-mail: comhaltasmelbournedance@gmail.com or contact Mary at 94354435.

Marian Keyes and Colm Tóibín attending Sydney Writers Festival

Irish authors will be in attendance at this years Sydney Writers Festival (19-27 May). Tóibín, known for writing Brooklyn will be at his own event and participating in the panel ‘Making a Writer‘. Keyes will be unpacking her latest novel My Favourite Mistake in her own event.
Their visit is supported by the Irish Consulate and Culture Ireland.
Keep an eye out on socials for news of any side gigs that the writers might do while in Sydney as this has happened in the past.
swf.org.au/

National Celtic Festival, Portarlington – 6th-9th June

Tickets are now on sale for the National Celtic Festival, running from 6 – 9 June in Portarlington.

See their website for more details: https://www.nationalcelticfestival.com

Irish Language School Sydney Daonscoil at Stanmore House, Stanmore, NSW, June 6-9 details to follow

BLOOMSDAY in MELBOURNE 2025

THREE EVENTS:

CIRCE’S CARNIVAL OF VICE, DIRECTED BY WAYNE PEARN at fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane

This original adaptation for the stage of James Joyce’s infamous Circe episode of Ulysses will take you deep into Nighttown, the red-light district of Dublin. It’s a foray into the most down-at-heel and the most heavily surveiled quarter of Dublin, eradicated by the new Free State exactly 100 years ago this past March. Meet the Madames and the working girls, who were reputed to have done more damage to the British Army than the Rebels.

It is wild and surreal journey into the darker sexual energies of Bloom who is aware he has been cruelly cuckolded by his dominatrix wife, Molly, that very afternoon and is struggling to know how to behave towards her and her seducer Blazes Boylan. It’s a rambunctious roller-coaster for Bloom as his fears, neuroses and anxieties are displayed to a cast of thousands who love and revile him equally.

Joyce uses the episode to explore sexual censorship and the rise of the New Sexology and to interrogate the authority the medical authorities were asserting against the Church moralists. Does this writer know no limits? How does he turn pathologies into comic performances?

For more information about the play, and as well the annual Bloomsday Seminar and Lunch, this year being held on 14 June from 10.30 am – 2.15 pm, see the website:

Booking information for 3 events: http://www.bloomsdayinmelbourne.org.au

CALLING CLAN O’SULLIVAN

L to R: The Crests of O’Sullivan -Beare and O’Sullivan Mór (reproduced from the Clan website with permission)

Jim O’Sullivan advises that all O’Sullivans are welcome to join a clan gathering.

This is a unique opportunity for Sullivans and O’Sullivans all over the world to visit their ancestral home in one celebration of the clan’s heritage. 
They are hosting a World Record event on the Beara peninsula, in the Cork/Kerry area, from 30th May to 2nd June 2026. 
The event will be hosted by the Chieftain of the O’Sullivan Clan, Kelly Sullivan, who was presented with the chain of office by the Cork and Kerry County Mayors on the steps of City Hall in Boston in 2023. 
This is a family event, and we hope you can fill in the Google form (see website below) so we can book you in for the event.

Email Jim at: clanossullivan1602@gmail.com

Website for more information: https://osullivanclan.org