The Sigla Blog

Somewhere in the middle of Charles M. Lee’s energetic play, a character reflects: “Art is made in the freedom of the imaginationâ€?. The imagination in question, is Robert Rauschenberg, monolith of modern art whose work Lee uses to examine American life in the 20th century. From popular culture to political allusion, bobrauschenbergamerica, presented by New […]

The 2007 Dublin Theatre Festival kicked off last night, and I went to see bobrauschenbergamerica, a frenetic, kitsch examination of 20th century American life through the eyes of collagist and Abstract Expressionist, Robert Rauschenbaurg. Will post a review in a bit.
Highlights this year include James Cromwell in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, […]

The new issue of the excellent Dublin Review of Books is online. Unlike many similar publications, it’s completely free and you read the entire articles. Of particular interest this month are reviews of Michael Foot: A Life and A Lover of Unreason: The Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill about the love triangle between […]

The Marvel comics hero Captain America has been killed off. Apparently is assassinated in the current issue (out in the US yesterday) by a sniper’s bullet. The hero might return at some point accord to Marvel staffers but for now Captain America, who has been around since 1941 as a foil to Hitler, has fought […]

Last week, upon discovering that legendary comic 2000AD would be turning 30 tomorrow, I thought the occasion should be marked. Now, apart from the fact that I’ve been reading a lot of graphic novels lately and went to see Ghostrider this morning (Nicolas Cage with scary hair plugs), my knowledge of comics is very basic. […]

This post is for Omani (and his daughter Grace), who in the comments of this post brought up the mysterious absence of women writers from a very famous Irish poster. The version reproduced here is a slightly redesigned one, but it’s essentially the same as the one that used to hang in my English classroom. […]

There’s a much-held belief that Literary Criticism is on the wane, not what it used to be and a tad unfashionable. Reading Al Alvarez’ fascinating collection of esssays in his new book Risky Business: People, Pastimes, Poker and Books might help to change that view. London-born Alvarez has been writing critically for over 50 years […]

As RTE’s Arts Lives series returns tonight, Arminta Wallace asks in today’s Irish Times (subs required) if Arts programming in RTE is a victim of late night scheduling. She quotes a recent Arts Council survey that says that people’s first port of call when they get home from work is “the PC, not the TV” […]

Apparently The Vagina Monologues has had to be renamed for a production run in Florida. One of the play’s aims is to embrace the various words for vagina and encourage women not feel shame when talking about their bodies - a point lost on a local Florida woman who complained (after seeing the play’s […]

Above is the Camberwick Green-style new teaser trailer for BBC’s Life on Mars which a good place to start in terms of talking about catch-up TV. You know, when everyone you know is talking about a brilliant new series that you’ve managed to miss. This is usually hampered by the fact that I refuse to […]

Perhaps it had something to with the spirit of the new year and resolutions, but after watching RTE’s excellent Arts Lives programme, Flann O’Brien - The Lives of Brian, I ruefully remarked to the other half about how I wished my spoken Irish wasn’t so patchy. Flann, who not only wrote many of his Cruiskeen […]

The wellies have been bought, rain macks have been sourced and the house has been combed for last year’s spine-saving inflatable mattress. Oh yes, the Electric Picnic is so near you can almost smell the burger vans and spilt beer. If you live under rock, or outside of Ireland, you might not be aware that […]