A show celebrating cultural connections set to kick-off Tipperary arts festival

FOUND,a show that  is in part inspired by Aideen Wylde’s father Donal Wylde, the acclaimed RTÉ cameraman from Clonmel, is due to be one of the highlights of the Clonmel Junction Arts Festival.

In 1980 Donal travelled to Newfoundland to make a series of documentaries about the forgotten Irish - the descendants of the original settlers from the south of Ireland who made a home on “The Rock” from the late 1700's. 

FOUND celebrates the the cultural connections that link the two communities across the Atlantic to this day, from the shared accents to the shared DNA. 

The show offers Bridget Jones meets Indiana Jones, with talking fish, in a joy-filled night of theatre, traditional storytelling, and music directed by Julie Kelleher. 

Eileen is lost. According to everyone else, her life is as beige as the back of a hand, so she hides in her headphones and lives quietly through other people’s stories. Auntie Breege has been laying on the pressure too—to get a husband. Any husband. So when the mysterious disappearance of a dolphin, a celebrity folklorist, and the quest to find the Almanac of Old Lost Land falls into her lap, Eileen is set on the ultimate voyage of self-discovery...whether she likes it or not!

Inspired by writer and performer Aideen Wylde’s deep connection to the province of Newfoundland, Canada—her ‘backwards genealogy’—FOUND is a  wild, and weirdly wonderful mishmash of traditions, from here and there, that make the Irish of both places ‘a people divided by time’. 

Supported by the Arts Council, with further support from The Everyman Theatre, Clonmel Junction Arts Festival, Cork Midsummer Festival and Garter Lane Arts Centre.

 Clonmel Junction Festival Dates

Venue: Mulcahy’s Pub

Dates & Times: 

Preview – 9pm, 29 June

9pm, 30 June & 2, 6, 7, 8 July

2pm 1 July

5pm 2, 8 July

Tickets: €22 (€18 concs, €16 preview)

Booking: www.junctionfestival. com