BLOOMSDAY IN MELBOURNE
A PICTORIAL HISTORY
FOR ALMOST 30 YEARS, BLOOMSDAY IN MELBOURNE HAS CELEBRATED THE WORK OF JAMES JOYCE. THEIR UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION IS TO CREATE NEW THEATRICAL EVENTS INSPIRED BY JOYCE'S LIFE AND WORKS ANNUALLY SINCE 1994, ALMOST ALWAYS IN A THEATRE AND WITH PROFESSIONAL THESPIANS.
Image credits (unless otherwise stated): Bernard Peasley
Two men vie for the love of Bertha
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An admirer of Richard in anxious conversation with him.
L to R: Soren Jensen and Doug Lyons
Clarifying 'freedom to love'
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Some (dubious) marital advice from an old retainer.
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A mother is always a mother
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2023 EXILES BY JAMES JOYCE
Director: Carl Whiteside
fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Designer & Costume Designer: Bridie Turner
Photography by Jody Jane Stitt
In Exiles, James Joyce's only play (which Bloomsday believes to have been unjustlyneglected), Joyce investigates the kind of open marriage that does not seek to control either partner. He expounds a theory of free love, demonstrating its costs, and additionally raising the question of homosocial desire both male and female). A dark, gripping comedy, it is a tightly structured psychological drama.
Written in 1914 and first staged in 1919, it found its audience slowly because of its radical approach to gender politics.
Poster for Love's Bitter Mystery
Toby Miller as the young James Joyce
Jacqui Whiting played Nora Barnacle and Eveline
Three Mollys - in 1922,1886, 1904.
Molly Bloom imagined as a silent movie star, 1922
Carly Wilding as Feis Ceoil contestant
Blazes woos Molly musically with La Ci Darem
The Tatty Tenors as Vaudevillians
2022 ULYSSES 100 - FILM, PLAY AND CONCERT
The feature film: Love's Bitter Mystery: The Year that made James Joyce, directed by Carly Wilding, Film-maker Jak Scanlon. Filmed on location at Villa Alba, Kew. Premiered 4 June at the Rivoli Cinema and 12 June at the James Joyce Centre, Dublin.
*The play: yes I will Yes! A free adaptation of Penelope (episode 18 of Ulysses). Directed by Carl Whiteside, The MC Showcase, Prahran, Melbourne, 14-25 June 2022.
The Concert: Love's Old Sweet Songs: Music from the James Joyce Songbook with Mary O'Driscoll (Musical Director) and Tref Gare (Theatre Director) at Hawthorn Arts Centre, 8 October, 2022.
Photos by Chelsea Neate for Love's Bitter Mystery and by Jody Jane Stitt and Mark Harper for the play, yes I will Yes! and the concert, Love's Old Sweet Songs.
All events were supported by the Irish Embassy in Canberra and the Irish Government. We thank them for this.
More about Bloomsday's three original productions for the centenary year of Ulysses
BLOOMSDAY 2021 - A ZOOM CELEBRATION
Bloomsday in the Second Year of Plague
MOLLY ON THE TRAMTRACKS - A HISTORY OF THE (MIS)ADVENTURES OF BLOOMSDAY IN MELBOURNE - FRANCES DEVLIN-GLASS
Founder and Creative Director of Bloomsday in Melbourne raids the archives to reminisce about Bloomsday in Melbourne's past and current adventures bringing Ulysses to life on the streets and in the theatres of Melbourne (and Dublin, and Kobe)
THE FIRST BLOOMSDAY AND A HISTORY OF THE MARTELLO TOWER
Steve Carey describes the appropriately lubricated and chaotic scenes of the first Bloomsday in Dublin, 1954; and the history of the Martello Tower, Sandycove
2020 ULYSSES IN PLAGUETIME
A Film Festival in 18 Episodes
Directed by Jennifer Sarah Dean
Film editing by Kurtis Lowden
In Ulysses in Plaguetime, Bloomsday in Melbourne generated 18 films, one for each episode of Ulysses, which was created under social distancing protocols. Each film aimed to distil the style and literary colour of the literary original. The films are available here.
More about Bloomsday 2020
Dion Mills as Carr
Syd Brisbane as Lenin
Matt Connell, Tzara
Milijanica Cancar as Nadya Lenin
Carr, Bennett, Tzara
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Tzara in Outrage mode
2019 TRAVESTIES BY TOM STOPPARD
Director: Jennifer Sarah Dean
fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Photos by Christa Hill
In Travesties, Tom Stoppard imagines meetings in Zurich in 1917 between three revolutionaries: James Joyce, Lenin, and Tristan Tzara. They debate art and its uses in styles derived from Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare and Joyce.
Directed by Jennifer Sarah Dean.
Photography by Christa Hill.
More about Bloomsday's Travesties
2018 HOLY COW
DIRECTOR: JENNIFER SARAH DEAN
FORTYFIVEDOWNSTAIRS, 45 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
James Joyce Slaughters the Sacred Cows of English Literature
Photos by Bernard Peasley
In Oxen of the Sun, Joyce rips through and riffs on 1000 years of English Literature, remaking it in his own image and for his own purposes, and explores fertility and gynaecology. Directed by Jennifer Sarah Dean.
Photography by Bernard Peasley.
More about Bloomsday 2018
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2017 GETTING UP JAMES JOYCE’S NOSE
DIRECTOR: WAYNE PEARN,
MELBA SPIEGELTENT, COLLINGWOOD
Photos by Bernard Peasley
An inventory of the smells Joyce uses in his fiction took Bloomsday scripters into totally novel territory in making theatre of all that reeks and pongs and disgusts, as well as what seduces and enthralls, and into the realm of circus.
More about Bloomsday 2017
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2016 A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
DIRECTOR: WAYNE PEARN
FORTYFIVEDOWNSTAIRS, FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
Photos by Bernard Peasley
In the centenary of the year in which Portrait was published, Bloomsday revised an existing script dating from 2007 and updated it to the 1950s. Set in the Garden of Eden, Stephen was a rebel without cause and a rebel without pause.
2015 THE REEL JAMES JOYCE
DIRECTOR: WAYNE PEARN
LIBRARY AT THE DOCK, DOCKLANDS
Photos by Bernard Peasley
Knowing Joyce knew his film and used it in his fiction, Bloomsday invented a scenario in which Charlie Chaplin sought to make a silent film based on Ulysses in about 1925.
2014 ULYSSES PRESTISSIMO
DIRECTOR: WAYNE PEARN
BRIGHTON THEATRE COMPANY, BRIGHTON
Photos by Bernard Peasley
Knowing Joyce knew his film and used it in his fiction, Bloomsday invented a scenario in which Charlie Chaplin sought to make a silent film based on Ulysses in about 1925.
2013 THE SEVEN AGES OF JOYCE
DIRECTOR: WAYNE PEARN
FORTYFIVEDOWNSTAIRS,
45 FLINDERS LANE
Photos by Bob Glass
A revival of our 2000 script for Antipodean Bloomsday, The Seven Ages of Joyce gave scriptors another opportunity to rework a play which integrated the events of Joyce’s life with his fiction, using as framework Jaques’s speech on the ‘seven ages’ of man from As You Like It. The focus of the festival was however, quite different, in that matters of the life-cycle and its stages, and in particular, mourning came in for intensive treatment.
Read more about Bloomsday 2013
2012 JOYCE’S MOLLY
DIRECTOR: BRENDA ADDIE
TRADES HALL, CARLTON
Photos by Maireid Sullivan
Bloomsday had often performed selections from Penelope, but never the whole chapter. This play, Yes, Yes, Yes! directed by Brenda Addie, was a choral piece featuring five Mollies, one of them male. They were of different ages and ethnicities, and genders, on the premise that Molly is EveryWoman.
2011 AN IRISHMAN AND A JEW WENT INTO A PUB
DIRECTOR: BRENDA ADDIE
OPEN STAGE THEATRE,
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
Photos by Maireid Sullivan
2011 was the year for getting to the bottom of how Joyce viewed the Nation, Nationalism and the Celtic tradition. An Irishman and a Jew Go into a Pub was directed by Brenda Addie, and drew on the Cyclops episode of Ulysses.
2010 JOYCE’S CARNIVAL OF VICE
DIRECTOR: BRENDA ADDIE
TRADES HALL, CARLTON
The focus in 2010 was on dramatizing Joyce’s Circe chapter. Set in a brothel in Nighttown, Carnivale of Nighttown, directed by Brenda Addie, offered scope for exploring not only the seedy and uninhibited side of Dublin, but also Bloom’s susceptibility to phantasmagoria.
2009 WILDE ABOUT JOYCE
STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA
Writing in the slipstream of the Wildean trauma, and admiring him deeply, Joyce had to exercise caution about how he handled Wilde’s social and moral transgressions. This original play developed by the scriptors, and directed by Brenda Addie, placed Joyce and Wilde in literary purgatory anticipating fame in Joyce’s case and ruing its loss, in Wilde’s. Their attitudes to morality and transgression and aesthetics provided for lively debate.
Read more about Bloomsday 2009
2008 JOYCE AND MODERNITY
DIRECTOR: BRENDA ADDIE
MUSEUM OF VICTORIA
AND MONTIES RESTAURANT
SMITH STREET, COLLINGWOOD.
An arcade show, Brave New World?, directed by Brenda Addie, was designed to investigate Joyce’s keen interest in science and modernity was staged at the Museum on the eastern and northern side of the CBD, and moved around many of the Museum exhibits. The evening gala was a Roaratorio based on Finnegans Wake and Rod Baker’s original compositions.
2007 JOYCE AND THE JESUITS
DIRECTOR: KAREN CORBETT
NEWMAN COLLEGE
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
Joyce’s upbringing by Jesuits (from his early schooling to graduation), rejection of them, and debt to them was the focus in 2007. The play, Jejune Jesuit, was an arcade-style show, and was an adaptation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (directed by Karen Corbett).
2006 JOYCE’S FALL INTO LANGUAGE
DIRECTOR: BRENDA ADDIE
MCCULLOCH GALLERY
MELBOURNE
This Bloomsday began in Port Melbourne and then moved into an art gallery in the CBD. It featured a play, Never a Cross Word, directed by Brenda Addie, in which Joyce’s linguistic and poetic inventiveness was the key focus.
2005 HER SINGTIME SUNG
DIRECTOR: GILLIAN HARDY
STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA AND
VICTORIAN ARTISTS’ SOCIETY
Her Singtime Sung (directed by Gillian Hardy) was a revival of the play performed in Dublin in 2004, but with the Joyce passages restored. It celebrated Joyce’s radical treatment of gender in his novels, but did not let him off quite so lightly as a person.
2004 HER SONG BE SUNG
DIRECTOR: GILLIAN HARDY
SUGAR CLUB, LEESON ST, DUBLIN
2004 featured two Bloomsdays, one in Dublin and one in Melbourne:
Her Song be Sung (directed by Gillian Hardy) was a play Bloomsday in Melbourne was invited and commissioned to perform in Dublin. It was at the Sugar Club in Leeson Street, Dublin. It was a revamped version of the play we’d originally written in 2001, except that different copyright laws meant that the scripters were forced to update and Australianise Joyce’s text.
Bloomsday at the Celtic Club was a low-key Bloomsday Dinner with readings.
Read more about two BLoomsday events in 2004, in Dublin and Melbourne
2003 WRITERLY JOYCE
STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA
2003 BLOOMSDAY
KOBE, JAPAN
2003 featured two Bloomsdays, one in Melbourne and one in Kobe (Japan):
Writerly Joyce at the State Library of Victoria focused on the Oxen of the Sun episode and Joyce’s debt to the literary tradition and his need to re-form it.
Read more about Bloomsday 2003 (Melbourne)
Bloomsday in Kobe, at Kobe College, explored the resonances between Japanese versions of womanhood and Joyce’s women of 1904.
2002 JOYCE HITS
TRADES HALL, CARLTON
Trades hall is an iconic location in Melbourne – site of the campaign which delivered the first eight-hour day. Joyce’s attitudes to work were the focus of this year’s treatment – his work as a writer, but also lots of different jobs, including the domestic work of women.
2001 SEAWRACK AND SEASPAWN
DIRECTOR: HOWARD STANLEY
PORT MELBOURNE
This Bloomsday was preoccupied with issues of life and death and the interrelationship between them in Ulysses. Port Melbourne, place of many arrivals of migrants, was even in 2001, a place of urban destruction and renewal. The play, directed by Howard Stanley, presented in the evening, at Molly Bloom’s pub, explored Joyce’s relationship with the women in his life and the women of his fiction.
2000 ANTIPODEAN JOYCE
NORTH MELBOURNE
This year tracked how Dublin was similar to and different from North Melbourne in 1904, and urban living and poverty were the top of the list for selecting passages. Additionally, in line with it being an antipodean celebration, anything upside down and inside out was the focus for this year’s writing. Surprising resonances were unpacked in this most peripatetic of Bloomsdays, the last of the 8am starts. Bloomsday was intrigued by some Finnegans Wake resonances with Australia, in particular the strange coincidence of HCE, one of the main characters, having had a highly productive career in Melbourne as Attorney-General and the founder of the University of Melbourne. A play, The Seven Ages of Joyce, was directed by Howard Stanley, and was performed on a minute stage, cabaret-style, at the Czech Club.
1999 MYTHIC JOYCE
SPRING STREET AND EASTERN HILL
This year’s Bloomsday tracked how Joyce used Homer. This time the glamorous north-eastern edge of Melbourne was the stage set. Beginning with Homeric invocations at 8am, almost every episode was explored. Parliament Station became the entrance to Hades; the steps of Parliament House became a site of Aeolian windy rhetoric; and wandering rocks were encountered in unlikely places. The Homecoming, the gala, was at the Town Hall. Simon McGuinness directed this day’s theatre, but was injured before the first performance.
1998 JOYCE AND MUSIC
WILLIAMSTOWN
Joyce’s writing revels in the musical, and Williamstown in 1998, with its cottagey streetscapes and many public buildings of the late nineteenth century, was a perfect stage set for exploring music of the period and how it is deployed in Joyce’s fiction. Bloomsday Players enacted Sirens in a café amazingly named Sirens at the beach; the Feis in which Joyce was second to John McCormack featured many songs from Ulysses and was staged theatrically at Williamstown Town Hall; a church, the Time-Ball Tower and the old Mechanics Institute were all sites for readings and a gala theatrical concert, all foregrounding Joyce’s catholic musical tastes.
1997 THE SCANDAL OF ULYSSES
MELBOURNE LEGAL PRECINCT
The first of the thematised Bloomsdays found its natural location in the legal precinct of the city, around the Supreme Court and in Collins Street. How did Joyce court controversy? What resistance did the novel encounter? Joyce
documents and dramatises many legal provocations of different kinds.
BLOOMSDAY 1994-1996
Bloomsdays in Melbourne were originally peripatetic, and based on the conceit that Melbourne could be thought of as an antipodean Dublin. Bloomsday reveled in the correspondences – the grand c19 architecture, the bay, the cemetery, the churches, and many, many quotidian venues which spoke to locations in Ulysses. Bloomsday sought places that resonated with readings from the novel, contextualized each reading, began early and ended late. It was the beginning of a love affair with the novel and both the cities we encountered. Scripts differed annually, but the timetable of the novel was usually closely adhered to. Simon McGuinness directed from 1994-1999.
Read more about Bloomsdays in Melbourne between 1994 and 1996