Wild Geese Players of Seattle

posted
Apr 15, 2010

2010 Bloomsday Press Release

The Other Bloomsday 2010 - Press Release

The Wild Geese Players of Seattle will perform a staged reading of Part II of Circe, chapter 15 of James Joyce’s Ulysses, on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010, 7:00-9:15pm, at the Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Avenue N, Seattle, WA 98103 (Map). Donations towards costs of posters and props are welcome.

It is late on the night of June 16th, 1904, and Leopold Bloom has followed Stephen Dedalus into Dublin’s red-light district. Bloom has a paternal concern for Stephen’s welfare and knows that Stephen is now very drunk. In the Circe chapter of Homer’s Odyssey, the witch-goddess Circe transforms Odysseus’ crew into swine. In Joyce’s version, Bloom will have hallucinatory encounters with the denizens of Nighttown and confront some of his deepest fantasies and fears, before emerging victorious. This chapter is extraordinarily long. We performed the first half last year.

The Wild Geese have been staging readings of Ulysses and other Irish literature in Seattle since 1998. We are a diverse group of people with an interest in Irish literature, and most of us are either Irish-born or have Irish connections. More generally, Wild Geese refers to the Irish diaspora, after the original Wild Geese, exiled Irish soldiers and their descendants who served in European armies in the 16th–18th centuries.

www.WildGeeseSeattle.org