Inspired by the spirit of George Bernard Shaw, the Shaw Festival creates unforgettable theatrical encounters. The Shaw Festival, home to Two-Way Theatre, is a place where people who are curious about the world gather to share the unique experience of live theatre. The 2018 Season, Artistic Director Tim Carroll’s (TC) second season, features 14 productions, including Stephen Fry’s Mythos: A Trilogy – Gods. Heroes. Men., two musicals, three plays about the centenary of the end of the Great War and more Secret Theatre.

A few weeks ago we chatted with Katrina Costello about her documentary, A Silver Branch.
An uplifting and emotional celebration of people and place, which captures the delicacy of the natural world; the heart and soul of a farmer-poet, Patrick McCormack; and the ancient rural spirit of Ireland which stands behind him. The Story is centred around Patrick and the land, The Burren, Western Ireland. A wild place where Mesolithic tombs, famine villages and present day small rocky fields are like jewels telling of our long human story on these hills. Patrick longs to farm in the quite pace his ascendants did. But his life gains a different momentum when he’s called to Battle in the Supreme courts to decide on the fate of this iconic wilderness

In the opening line of his novel The Go Between the writer L.P. Hartley famously quipped ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’. For me history is about attempting to visit this foreign country L.P. Hartley talked about and seeing what life was like.
In this podcast I have trawled through eye witness accounts of travelers to early 19th century Ireland to give you a sense of what life was like in a past where they did things very differently.
From bare-knuckle boxing to prostitution, from public transport to what people did for fun, this show takes you on the trip to the foreign country that was Ireland in the 1820s.