Imagine Day 3: The World’s Oldest Organisation…and Ireland’s Best-Kept Secret

There’s lots to look forward to on Day 3 of Waterford’s Imagine Arts Festival. Learn about Freemasonry—one of the world’s oldest traditional and fraternal organisations in a tour of the Masonic Lodge. Find out about the history of the People’s Park and Courthouse and make sure to see Susan O’ Neill—Ireland’s best-kept secret….for now.

Thursday October 27, 2022

Heritage and history:

  • What: Behind Closed Doors—Masonic Lodge Tour
  • Where: Masonic Lodge building, Waterside 
  • When: 11.30

In the Behind Closed Doors Series, there will be a guided tour of the Waterford Masonic Lodge building, where you’ll learn about Freemasonry and see the Lodge meeting room. The tour takes about an hour.

Freemasonry in Waterford city dates back to at least 1757. Freemasonry is one of the world’s oldest traditional and fraternal organisations. It has three main focuses—fraternity and friendship between all its members, charitable relief to those in need, and preserving its traditions and customs at the Lodge gatherings. 

Masonic Lodge Waterford City 1 Waterside

Visual Arts:

  • What: Earthbound Exhibition by Pascal Ungerer
  • Where: GOMA Gallery
  • When: 12-5 p.m.

Artist Pascal Ungerer is interested in people’s connection to place and land and the wider perception of the natural or built environment and the interrelationship between these two contrasting spaces.

His most recent work looks at liminal landscapes on the margins of human habitation, places that are temporal with a cyclical flux between abandonment and habitation.

Pascal says he is often drawn to unusual structures or topographies as well as places that have storied, hidden or layered histories.

This exhibition, Earthbound, will showcase some exciting new work by Ungerer in a show that brings together many of Pascal’s interests, in pensive, foreboding and empty landscapes as well as abandoned industrial infrastructure, which he says is “emblematic of an architecture of the periphery because of its obsolescence, marginality and alterity.”

Earthbound 2022 oil on canvas 160 x 120 cm

Performance:

  • What: The Possession Project with Amanda Coogan
  • Where: Waterford Treasures Medieval Museum
  • When: 3, 4 and 5 p.m.

The Possession Project in Waterford creates a hybrid production containing durational, site responsive and immersive aspects. Audiences are guided through the production beginning at the reception of Waterford Museum of Treasures when they are brought down to the atmospheric Choristers’ Hall, the performance space, for the 50-minute-long production.

Possession presents an outline of the story of the Táin. The play dramatises the Cattle Raid of Cooley but, unusually, Waterford playwright Teresa Deevy focuses on Queen Maeve’s perspective throughout. Amanda Coogan calls her current exploration of Deevy’s work The Possession Project, which she has developed into a production for the Imagine Festival in collaboration with theatre makers Alvean Jones, Lianne Quigley and SETU staff and students.

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Heritage and history:

  • What: The Park and Courthouse—A Talk by Joe Falvey
  • Where: Waterford Courthouse
  • When: 7 p.m.

The Park and Courthouse talk is run by the Waterford Archaeological and History Society and led by local historian Joe Falvey who discusses the park, courthouse and the surrounding area.

You’ll learn about the history of the People’s Park and its environs with particular reference to the adjacent Courthouse as well as to the establishment of its local schools and more. Joe is a retired teacher having spent almost 40 years at Newtown School. 2022 marks his 50th year in Waterford.

Courthouse

Music:

  • What: Susan O’Neill
  • Where: Christ Church Cathedral
  • When: 8 p.m.

Hosting Susan O’Neill, the spectacular Christ Church Cathedral has been a place of living history and worship for over 1,000 years. This will be a night to remember.

Having wowed huge festival stages over the past few years, moonlighting with Mick Flannery and Irish dance band King Kong Company and accompanying the queen of traditional music Sharon Shannon on her international tours, Susan has spent the last few years honing her craft as a solo performer. A songwriter of hidden depths, with a timeless voice that is equal parts balm and blowtorch, she is audacity personified—a free spirit and a real performer. As of now she is Ireland’s best kept secret, however with the release of “In The Game” that is guaranteed to change.

SusanONeill Photo 2022 1

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