A
Brief History of the Company
1984-2001
Anna Livia Productions
was founded in 1984 by Mary Durkan & Judith McGilligan in order
to produce I DO NOT LIKE THEE, DR. FELL by Bernard Farrell.
It was a financial and critical success and gave one the misguided
idea that producing shows was actually a good idea, great fun and
a way to make money. The later production of a one-man show THE
IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR by Michael MacLiammoir — before
the current renaissance of interest in Oscar Wilde — severely
challenged that assumption
A later production of BAGLADY,
a one-woman show by Frank McGuinness, had a short but very
successful run at THE GATHERING Festival. And this renewed
one’s faith in the madness of producing theatre.
Anna Livia Productions’
original intention got shanghied by the creation of the Toronto BLOOMSDAY
FESTIVAL in 1986. I had seen a really inspiring BLOOMSDAY
celebration in New York in 1985 and came back to Toronto full of messianic
zeal and ready to create our own unique BLOOMSDAY. Of course
any celebration was intended to be just a once-off event but this
plan went obviously awry.
- The Toronto BLOOMSDAY
FESTIVAL has had many incarnations in its thirteen-year history
— stylistically it’s been everything from short readings
on a beach to week-long, full-length, operatic-scale shows complete
with huge casts of actors, singers, musicians, and dancers. In 1988,
the highlight was a performance of JOYICITY by Vincent O’Neill,
a show which had been the hit of the Dublin Theatre Festival and
the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
- Audience size, depending
on venue, has been anywhere from a handful of enthusiasts lapping
up Molly Bloom’s reflections on life and love to five hundred
people enraptured by a fully dramatised scene with actors, singers
and musicians, recreating the richness of the characters and life
in the city Leopold Bloom encountered in Ulysses.
Some
of the Bloomsday Festival Highlights have been:
- being invited to be
one of eighteen cities around the world participating in a world-wide
Internet reading of ULYSSES in 1999. We recorded from
the McLuhan Centre, an appropriate setting for a truly "global village"
experience. To feel so connected to cities around the world from
Melbourne to San Francisco was really exciting. We read from Chapter
11, Circe (the Nighttown section), after Washington and before Mexico
City. Our regular cast of "Bloomers" were joined by Colm Wilkinson
reading as Malachy Mulligan.
- receiving a fax from
the Canadian Ambassador to Ireland in recognition of Toronto’s
having been selected to participate in the 1998 JAMESON GLOBAL
BLOOMSDAY Internet reading.
- co-hosting the very
successful INTERNATIONAL JOYCE CONFERENCE in 1997 at Victoria
College, UofT which was attended by hundreds of delegates from around
the world
- receiving letters of
congratulations on our 10th anniversary from the Irish
President, Mary Robinson who had recently visited Toronto, and the
Lord Mayor of Dublin in recognition of our achievement in connecting
the cities of Dublin and Toronto.
Some of the venues have
been:
Hart House Theatre; Bathurst
Street Theatre; Trinity St. Paul’s
The Great Hall/Music Gallery;
The Rivoli; U of T Bookstore
Art Gallery of Ontario;
Jackman Theatre; Innis College
Allen’s on the Danforth;
Quigley’s on Queen East; Zydeco’s on Markham
St. Lawrence Hall; An Seomra
Mor at Fionn MacCool’s; the Beaches.
The Mockingbird
Mary Durkan
Festival Director
