Julie Kelleher

Can a theatre critic make a living in Ireland in 2026? Theatre critics are essentially hobbyists, criticism something to be squeezed between the demands of other work

GREAT piece from Sara Keating today

Can a theatre critic make a living in Ireland in 2026?

www.irishtimes.com/culture/2026...

Oh! I’m sorry to hear this. I worked for one of his concessions in BT in the early noughties, and though he had a rep for dissing Irish women, I always found him super charming and interested when the few times I met him. RIP.

Have a ticket for Kae Tempest next week in Vicar St - Thu 13 Nov - for sale at face value. Gutted not to be able to go :( but would love if someone else could! #ticketfairy

Vote the bejaysus out of them

Vote, vote, vote #connolly4president #aras2025 #speirgorm

Stunning

Malachy Clerkin: The Jim Gavin fiasco was a long overdue humbling for GAA exceptionalism Micheál Martin had his head turned by Gavin’s football success, forgetting it’s just a sport, no better or worse than the rest

Ooh this is a *zinger* from Malachy Clerkin!

Malachy Clerkin: The Jim Gavin fiasco was a long overdue humbling for GAA exceptionalism

www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic...

Other columnists categorised Catherine Connolly’s Morning Ireland as a “bruising encounter”. It only reaffirmed for me that she has my vote - @catherinegalway.bsky.social

Meanwhile, Justine McCarthy actually nails it (as ever!) here:

To be a person of consequence is to matter. If you matter, you have rights, and your words serve those rights and give you the power to bear witness, make agreements, set boundaries. If you have consequence, your words possess the authority to determine what does and does not happen to you, the power that underlies the concept of consent as part of equality and ­ self-​­ determination. Even legally women’s words have lacked consequence: in only a few scattered places on earth could women vote before the twenti- eth century, and not so many decades ago, women rarely became lawyers and judges; I met a Texas woman whose mother was among the first women in their region to serve on a jury, and I was an adult when the first woman was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until a few decades ago, wives throughout much of the world, including the United States, lacked the right to make con- tracts and financial decisions or even to exercise jurisdiction over their own bodies that overrode their husbands’ ability to do so; in some parts of the world, a wife is still property under the law, and others choose her husband. To be a person of no consequence, to speak without power, is a bewilderingly awful condition, as though you were a ghost, a beast, as though words died in your mouth, as though sound no longer traveled. It is almost worse to say some- thing and have it not matter than to be silent.

To be a person of no consequence, to speak without power, is a bewilderingly awful condition, as though you were a ghost, a beast, as though words died in your mouth, as though sound no longer traveled. It is almost worse to say something and have it not matter than to be silent.

This is a great read, unlike, seemingly, the subject of its review.

Fintan gets to dead-arm you instead of firing - nerds always win!! 🏆

The jock, the nerd, the rebel, the princess and the freak: What kind of teenager were you? From Ferris Bueller to Beverly Hills 90210 and The OC, teen dramas have helped turn us all back into adolescents

Shocked and appalled at the glaring omission of Dawson’s Creek from this taxonomy of teenage representation by @patrickfreyne.bsky.social, which is a kind of culchie Skins-meets-TheOC, imo.

(Also have never read a better analysis of Hamlet)

www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-r...

Fintan O'Toole: Ireland in the 1980s was bloody awful, but there was at least one good reason not to emigrate Galway’s Druid theatre company had a superb, stubborn belief that a basket case of a nation could also be a Moses basket

Lovely piece. I wonder if in 50 years time we'll have a great theatre critic who has been following the oeuvre of any theatre artist, with the longevity and credibilty to write about it, let alone the idea of theatre artists who could manage to make a 50 year career. Seems so implausible.

An image of five performers on stage at the Clore Ballroom at the Southbank Centre are washed with blue lights. We can see young people watching the show at the foreground of the image. The performer in the middle of the image spins a hula hoop over their chest with one arm up. Four other performers, two either side of the hula hoop artist, have their arms in the air. All performers are wearing colourful clothes. Text in the back of the image reads "Prancer the Dancer" on a screen. The "Marlborough Productions logo is overlaid up top and below the text reads "We're Hiring! We're inviting applications for six roles in our company, and we'd love for you to join our brilliant team."

We’re inviting applications for 6 roles in our company. We’d love for you to join our brilliant team. This is an opportunity to be part of a bold, collaborative organisation committed to pushing boundaries and platforming underrepresented voices.

bit.ly/mpwearehiring

@queerinbrighton.bsky.social

Tareq Baconi · Short Cuts: Gaza under Siege Humanitarian aid has long served as cover for Israeli crimes. Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying force is...

‘The response to this genocide shouldn’t be to allow more food into Gaza so that Palestinians can be saved from starving but killed by Israeli bombing. Rather, it should be to undo the system of control and killing.’

Tareq Baconi on Gaza: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

*really* pleased, and possibly even relieved, to hear this news.

Mussolini was shot and then his corpse was attacked and hung. Pinochet died under house arrest, while facing criminal charges in Europe and in Chile. Idi Amin died in exile. The Shah of Iran died in exile. Pol Pot died under house arrest. Mobutu died in exile. Ceausescu and his wife were executed by firing squad. Saddam Hussein was hung. The Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo was assassinated. The last Somoza dictator was assassinated in exile after being overthrown. Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, Colombia's Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, and Marcos Pérez Jiménez all died in exile. Argentina's Jorge Rafael Videla died while serving a fifty-year sentence. Ferdinand Marcos died in exile, and Duterte is currently in the Hague for crimes against humanity. Slobodan Milošević died in the Hague while on trial for war crimes. Hashim Thaçi, former p.m. of Kosovo, is still being held in the Hague. The Khmer Rouge's Khieu Samphan is serving a life sentence in Cambodia. Charles Taylor of Liberia is serving a 50-year sentence in the UK. Chad's Hissene Habre went into exile in Senegal, where he was tried on charges of crimes against humanity and given a life sentence; he died in prison. Only last winter Assad fled Syria; only last summer Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh. That hasn't been the fate of all dictators but for many of them the chapters after their power crumbled were not what they would have written. Nor is this reassurance that justice or democracy always wins or dismissal of the damage each of them did. I was just thinking and then decided to compile a list.

Oops, left a few names off:

I was roaring here too 😂 what a last 10 mins!

🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

First ever Cork v Tipp all Ireland hurling final, wowza!

Maureen telling it like it is.

Kneecap is not the story.
Genocide in Gaza is.

Justine McCarthy: What gives Ursula von der Leyen the right to egg Binyamin Netanyahu on with his killing crusades? Von der Leyen is living proof against the foolish notion that women don’t tolerate warfare

Righteous column from Justine McCarthy this morning 🔥

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Irish writer Donal Ryan wins prestigious Orwell Prize Irish writer Donal Ryan has been announced as the winner of the prestigious Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for his novel 'Heart, Be At Peace' this evening in London.

Irish writer Donal Ryan has been announced as the winner of the prestigious Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for his novel 'Heart, Be At Peace' this evening in London

This is what happens when you coddle manbabies and don't hold them accountable for their lies; it's clearly very bad for their character development.

p.s. Fun to see Grok spank Elon. But.

Read this last night and still feeling *very* cross about it.

This lad 🤦🏻‍♀️ whose letter to Arts Council NI a few months ago, set out his expectation that, even as an Arm’s Length body, ACNI should “align with lines taken by me and my Department and do not go beyond them”. Boy oh boy does he have the wrong portfolio 🥴

artscouncil-ni.org/news/letter-...

Balsam Karam joins us at WCLF on 14 July along with her translator Saskia Vogel. Their visit is part of the Stories From Sweden programme, supported by Swedish Arts Council & Swedish Embassy, UK @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social
🎟️ www.westcorkmusic.ie/events/2025/...
📻 open.spotify.com/episode/4MBh...

If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.

🎥: Time, 💬 Greta Thunberg

“A 2010 study that analyzed 40 years of protest coverage in five major newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, found that the papers depicted protests — even peaceful ones — as nuisances rather than as necessary functions of democracy.”