Samhain at CCI : Hallowe’en Night

Samhain, marking the arrival of the darker months, is the festival of the dead when the little people, the fairies, and the dead can come through to the world of the living.

Join us for an evening of stories, performance, projections and the unknown hosted by multiform artist Macdara Smith. Come in fancy dress and take part in the competition for the best costume! Together with special guests, Macdara Smith invites you to join him in his explorations of the other side, a place where, through a series of mediumistic drawings, he has discovered a world that is a blackened mirror image of our own….

Performance artist and singer June McGrane will join forces with free improv rock group Underpressure to create a once-off soundtrack to a horror film that was never made. Weaving words and sounds together they conjure songs from nowhere. Dread and menace hang heavy in the air! Underpressure is Ben Bouliane (bass & keyboards), Jurek Zablocki (drums), Nicolas Wegrowe (guitar & electronics), Macdara Smith (voice, trumpet & keyboards) June McGrane (voice).

Eddie Lenihan will regale us with stories that, as the RTE Guide says, are “not for the faint-hearted, but then good stories never are”. One of Ireland's greatest seanchaí, he is the author of 17 books and has made 12 recordings. His interests span folklore and haunted places, fairy paths and holy wells, the Otherworld and the preservation of traditions.

Macdara Smith’s distinctive ‘take’ makes him the ideal host as he flavours the night with his unconventional humour.

Image: Macdara Smith