Cork Midsummer Festival: The show must go on, but how?

Imagine this. You’re standing in Cork city’s Elizabeth Fort, one of 15 socially distanced people, right in the midst of Alex Petcu’s percussion sextet Bangers & Crash, buried by the raw power and immediacy of live percussion, that “immersive, visceral feeling of the music up at the fort”.

Or this: “You’re standing underneath the Port of Cork sign, facing out to the water, the quay, the city, headphones on”, listening to sounds, spoken word, electronic beats, opera, teasing out the life of Kate “Birdie” Conway. “You’ll be encouraged to dance, if you want to… or it’s perfectly acceptable to stand there. It’ll be very interactive.”

Or this: You’re at home, “standing on your personal dancefloor but you’re participating in the event so you’re right in there” at the fort, for Tobi Omoteso’s A Midsummer Celebration live, Ireland’s brightest street art and hip-hop. “Tobi has imagined his event in two ways – online at home and outdoors – but both will have the same incredible, immersive energy. He wants to grab people of all ages through the screen in the same way as they’ll experience it at the fort. It’ll all feel very immersive.”

Live performance, with a difference, both online and off. This June.

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Lorraine Maye, director of Cork Midsummer Festival, is talking about some of this year’s events. Such as Bangers & Crash’s outdoor premiere of three new percussion works by Petcu, Tom Lane and Amanda Feery. Bboy and hip-hop dancer Omoteso’s Midsummer commission. And film director-writer Oonagh Kearney’s Birdie, with composer Ellen King, about the Cork opera singer who went by the magnificent stage name Mademoiselle Delrita, and played a role in the fight for freedom, Conradh na Gaeilge, and was president of the Shandon Branch of Cumann na mBan during the Anglo-Irish Treaty. “It’s kind of jaw-dropping,” says Maye. “A lot of people don’t know anything about the woman.” Now she’s the focus of Birdie, inviting audiences to look at the Port of Cork as you might a cinema screen, a series of dynamic scenes unfolding in real time.

Much of this year’s line-up of Midsummer: Projects are very Cork. Projects draw on the strong partnerships at the core of the festival, with venues and producers developing work, as well as the Arts Council, Cork City Council, other funders and partners in the city and beyond. Midsummer is also “supporting as many artists as we can”: about 160 of them, three-quarters from Cork, along with arts workers.

This year also sows seeds for future festivals: Birdie is phase one of a larger project next year. Corcadorca’s work-in-progress Guests of the Nation – Kevin Barry, Mel Mercier and Pat Kiernan developing Frank O’Connor’s short story for large-scale outdoor performance in 2021 – will pop up at various points as a two-person theatrical horse, representing the often uneasy relationship between Ireland and England.

At the best of times, programming a festival seems a bit like juggling. But making a festival during fluctuating lockdowns, without knowing what the state of play will be when you finally open – that sounds like a whole other level of madness.

Despite projections of 80 per cent of the population being vaccinated by end of June, it’s still uncertain if they’ll be allowed controlled outdoor performances for even 15 people from mid-June. Nonetheless Maye, holding the nerve for months now, is confident. She’s just unveiled a festival of more than 40 events for Cork Midsummer Festival on June 14th-27th: “That’s it, we made it.” Formats are innovative, for the year that’s in it: online; using the city as stage, either outside at the port or Elizabeth Fort, or by bringing art to doorsteps; with city as gallery, via public art.

“At this stage, we’ve had so many different iterations of the festival,” says Maye. “The fluctuating restrictions have been very challenging. Before Christmas, a full Level 2 festival with small audiences indoors and larger audiences outdoors looked completely possible. Then January came, and it was clear very quickly that we were going to have to adapt again for higher restrictions.

“We spent January and February trying to imagine what we might be able to present in June. It’s extremely challenging for the artists , because they’re trying to develop their work in a totally different way, and deliver it in a totally different context. Not knowing what that will be, we looked at everything, including whether the festival dates should be moved. That idea didn’t hang around for long – we have Midsummer in the middle of our name! Midsummer is our time and it’s a brilliant time, with all that hope and renewal and fire in the air.”

Midsummer/Mermaid's The Art of Swimming, an intimate solo about long-distance swimming and celebrity is written and performed by Lynda Radley and directed by Tom Creed

Some projects couldn’t be manifested meaningfully in June, others moved to 2022, and new projects from artists gathered momentum. “As a result, we’ve a programme made for this time, that the artists, partners and the festival are very excited to present.”

New ways include a full programme of 18 online events. A Ghost in the Throat is Doireann Ní Ghríofa's collaboration with film-maker Tadhg O'Sullivan and composer Linda Buckley for a live literary/music/film event based on her book, written while Midsummer's artist-in-residence. She's adapted it to perform, with visuals and the music interwoven, broadcasting live from the Everyman Theatre stage. It's not a reading, "it's an other, just as the book is an other. It's going to be very special, to really bring the book beyond the page. Doireann talks about this oral tradition of female Irish literature, passed down, and one of the intentions is to return the book to the body and perform it orally."

The world premiere of Marina Carr's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, for Hatch Theatre and the Everyman, was in the works pre-pandemic, but its themes "will resonate deeply with audiences, coinciding beautifully with the situation we're in". With a large, all-star cast directed by Annabelle Comyn, "it was originally to premiere live last year, and instead the creative team is creating a digital capture of the show, to be broadcast. That is a thrill."

Landmark has another world premiere, Deirdre Kinahan's new play, The Saviour. It stars Marie Mullen on a stripped-back Everyman stage, it charts shifts in Irish life in Ireland over three decades, exploring responsibility, responses to trauma and the trickiness of forgiveness.

Midsummer/Mermaid's The Art of Swimming, an intimate solo about long-distance swimming and celebrity (inspired by Mercedes Gleitze, who swam the English Channel in 1927) is written and performed by Lynda Radley and directed by Tom Creed. And two shows with Project Arts Centre use technology interactively to reflect on topics affecting us all: Scotsman Fringe First winner Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran is a darkly comedic virtual experience, streamed live using Instagram for storytelling; Belgian show TM is one-to-one online "as a secret movement has executed a successful worldwide operation". And responding to how we've sought places of comfort close to home during restrictions, Toby Kaar, Maija Sofia and Elaine Howley, with curator Leagues O'Toole, are sharing Place of Comfort online in the lead up to Midsummer.

Midsummer plans multiple short shows for very small audiences of 15, but could scale up for more people if restrictions allow, with health-and-safety management key

Following up on Corcadorca's performances within communities last year, Maye observes "bringing art to where people are, and to their homes, as opposed to always asking them to come to us, is a really powerful idea". Art on doorsteps this year comes via Art Gifts. Using tech devised and open-sourced by Helsinki Arts Festival, audiences log on to a Cork-adapted app, put in their or a friend's address, and see if there's an art gift nearby. At the booked time, "there's a knock on the door and a performer delivering a short performance, just for them. It's a surprise what turns up," from the Lords of Strut to new Everyman theatre performances, among 20 opera music, theatre, circus spoken word Cork artists "delivering" more than 300 gifts in a couple of days (free to the recipient, as the Midsummer/Everyman project is supported by the Arts Council's June festival, Brightening Air).

Similarly, composer John O'Brien's Lullaby for the City is to bring comfort to all ages during pandemic and Midsummer, when "sleep may not come easily". A 17-strong orchestra will perform live in greens and parks, with the word spread locally, so as not to encourage social gathering. "The Cork Proms were such a huge civic event in the festival in 2019, but indoors isn't possible, so being able to bring musicians to people who may never have experienced an orchestra before is a great positive."

For live performances outdoors, artists "have imagined these events as immersive audience experiences", and Midsummer plans multiple short shows for very small audiences of 15 (they sound like hot tickets), but could scale up for more people if restrictions allow, with health-and-safety management key. Regardless, while physical audiences outdoors may be small, many will have broader reach: Birdie has video at home as well as the outdoor show; Croí Glan's live aerial circus/street/dance/song Tilt at the port will also be recorded, as will Lullaby for the City, for enjoyment beyond June.

The Day-Crossing Farm is a reflective, site-specific installation with live music and performance, video, sculpture, sound and plant life. In person and streamed online it'll examine human trafficking, modern-day slavery and drug farming in Ireland. Marie Brett, with Peter Power (sound), Sarah Jane Shiels (lighting) and film-maker Linda Curtin worked for two years with human justice advocates, scholars and those with lived experience of trafficking and forced labour, making it "a really important project for us", says Maye.

Emerging artists Abbey Blake, Jessica Leen and Cristian Cruceru showcase online, and art on the streets includes a new neon installation at the National Sculpture Factory, Glucksman/Midsummer's Bassam Al-Sabah in shop windows, installations at Crawford Art Gallery, and Pluck Projects's Fall Out art installations across the city, many by Cork artists.

“We all want to get back into venues, to feel that exchange of energy between stage and audiences again. But I also think so much has been achieved online, over the last year,” says Maye. “Theatre makers have been really successful at recreating the theatre experience through the screen. It’s also put a focus on great stage actors, and great writing. I think engagement with audiences all over Ireland, and the world, will remain beyond the pandemic.

“The way I’m looking at the festival is that while some of it’s online and some, we hope, will be live outdoors, most of this is new work – artists making, rehearsing, performing or recording work in the run-up to the festival. And that feels pretty live to me.

“There’s been so much loss and isolation. We’re embracing a process putting flexibility and care at the heart of how we move forward. Nothing moves in the same way, timelines are different, plans take unexpected leaps forward and or have to stop. The festival will probably keep evolving until the last day. Which I suppose will make it a real celebration of where we are right now.”

Cork Midsummer Festival, in the city and online, June 14th-27th, corkmidsummer.com