Arán & Im by Manchán Magan (5 pm performance)

Arán & Im by Manchán Magan

“I just knew that I wanted to take people out of the norm, which is what theatre does. But I didn’t want all the conventions and trappings of theatre, of a three-act play. I imagined creating this little sanctuary on stage in which flour from Irish fields and water from Irish rivers could be transformed into a potent metaphor for our connecting to language, landscape and life.”
– Manchan Magan

Thanks to some very generous supporters, we’ll have two free to the public performances of Arán & Im (Bread & Butter) at Wheatgrass on Saturday, October 14th at 2 PM & at 5 PM.

Arán & Im (‘Bread & Butter’) is a theatrical performance,  produced by Once Off Productions and supported by Culture Ireland, in which Manchán Magan bakes sourdough bread for 70 minutes while offering insights into the wonders of the Irish language – exploring potent words of landscape, terms of intuition and insight, and the many phrases that bring to life the mysterious glory of our natural world. The show is a celebration of language, land and local Irish food, with freshly-baked traditional sourdough bread for the audience to slice and spread with butter they churn themselves from Irish cream. The show looks to find a way of talking about the Irish language – about the sublime beauty and profound oddness of this ancient tongue that has been spoken on the island for 2,500 to 3,000 years and is now slipping slowly from our grasp.

Dr. Shane Doyle who is a Montana-based scholar, teacher, and community advocate whose work focuses on the history and heritage of Native American tribes of the Northern Great Plains will be in attendance and will be meeting with Manchan Magan to discuss Crow language loss and preservation.

“Manchan is a national treasure in Ireland, beloved for his interpretation of the Irish language, as well as his work sharing Irish myth, mysticism and storytelling.  We are immeasurably blessed to get this show, that sold out all over Ireland, in our community.   Manchan is a captivating performer that will have anyone fall in love with stunning beauty and the eccentricities of the Irish language by the end of the show.”   – Lilia Tyrrell, Bozeman MT

What can the word for the lonesomeness of a cow bereft of her calf, diadhánach, teach us about our current methods of food production?

Why does one need to orientate oneself to the sun to give directions in Irish?

To what degree is the Otherworld embedded in words for cancer? What’s the word for the sound horses make when they meet after an absence?