'Lots of fun and lots of sand' for Sun & Sea at Cork Midsummer Festival
A previous production of Sun & Sea in Santiago, Chile. (Photo by JAVIER TORRES / AFP)
It caused a sensation when it was staged at the Venice Biennale in 2019, going on to win the Golden Lion at the prestigious art showcase. Now Cork audiences will get the opportunity to experience Sun & Sea (Marina), an out-of-the-ordinary opera, which will be staged on a makeshift indoor beach in City Hall as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival.
The hour-long opera is a durational performance, meaning it will run continuously from 5pm-9pm over a three-day period. The show, which represented Lithuania at the Biennale, has been developed by an all-female team of composer Lina Lapelytė, librettist Vaiva Grainytė and director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė.
The audience will observe the beach scene from a scaffolded platform which will be erected around the Millennium Hall. As the cast of characters, including volunteer ‘extras’, take in the sun, relaxing, scrolling on their phones or playing beach games, beneath the banality of the beach scene lies the more sinister reality of the climate crisis.
A creative tour-de-force, the performance is also a huge logistical challenge for the Cork Midsummer Festival team and one of the most complex productions it has ever staged. Overseeing it all is the festival’s production manager, Aidan Wallace. He chuckles in acknowledgement when I say it is an ambitious undertaking.
“It is indeed — lots of fun and lots of sand,” Wallace says. Fourteen tonnes of the stuff to be precise. “It’s play sand that we’re bringing in. We source it from a local company out in Carrigaline. That will come in on a flat-bed truck, they will hoist it off on to a pallet truck and basically wheel it into the Millennium Hall. Then a crew of eight with shovels and brushes will spread it out over the floor. Hopefully it will take a day, it could take two, depending on how the process goes.”
Given the themes of the show, sustainability is key and the sand will be reused afterwards. “The company will take it back, sieve out all the sand with special machinery, power-wash it with disinfectant and reuse it. A lot of it goes to the equine industry, sandpits for horses and stuff like that.”
Wallace says that finding a place to host the performance was also a challenge but City Hall stepped up to the plate. “The trickiest thing at the start was trying to find a venue for it in Cork because the company have a quite detailed plan about where it could go and the viewing perspective for it as well. We had a good few meetings with City Hall, we talked it through and did bespoke drawings. They were very amenable and helpful getting it across the line.”
Putting the viewing platform for the audience in place will also take some work, he says. “Basically we are bringing in scaffolding that goes 360° around Millennium Hall. Sometimes the company has it on two sides but to get the capacity we needed for City Hall, we went with four sides. The audience will be standing, up at a height of four metres, and looking down on to the beach.” Two layers of plastic ground protection will be laid down in the Millennium Hall before the sand is installed and a comprehensive clean-up plan has been put in place.
“We have a professional cleaning company coming in with industrial hoovers to make sure there is not a grain of sand left anywhere in City Hall. People will be walking through and getting sand on their feet so there will be a daily clean happening to make sure that the sand is contained as much as possible.”
Once the complicated installation process is complete, Wallace is looking forward to seeing the final result as the beachgoers enjoy the fruit of his team’s labours. He says the show will have a real ‘wow’ factor.
“I was brought on board with this in October to figure out the feasibility and logistics of it all. It is the longest project I have worked on in Midsummer just in terms of getting it over the line. After all the work, it will be great to finally get it in and see it.”
- Sun & Sea (Marina) is on Jun 23, 24 and 25 as part of Cork Midsummer Festival. www.corkmidsummerfestival.com
- I Fall Down: A Restoration Comedy Crawford Art Gallery, June 14-18: Actor and writer Gina Moxley and company deliver a performance across the gallery that combines opera, contemporary movement and installations.
- Ritual Warehouse @ Marina Market, June 14-17: Award-winning dance innovators Junk Ensemble come together with visual artists Jesse Jones and Aideen Barry for this immersive performance.
- Happy Days, Cork Opera House, June 14-17: Siobhan McSweeney (Derry Girls) returns to her hometown to play the half-buried Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s classic.
- CMF Music Trail Crawford and Co, The Roundy, Fionnbarra, Franciscan Well, Crane Lane, June 17: Taking place across some of Cork’s most iconic pubs, the music trail features a line-up of both well-established artists and new names. (All events are free)
- Midsummer Parade, Grand finale on Grand Parade, June 18: Cork Community Art Link celebrates its 30th year with an extravagant parade down Oliver Plunkett St, filled with fantastic floats and street performances.
- Max Richter Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, Cork Opera House, June 21: Renowned string orchestra 12 Ensemble, led by artistic directors Eloisa-Fleur Thom and Max Ruisi, perform Max Richter’s re-invention of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
- Spin Spin Scherezade, Crawford Art Gallery, June 22-24: Artist Orla Barry’s new live artwork combines oral history and autofiction. Barry draws on her experience running a pedigree Lleyn sheep flock for a performance that promises to be a funny monologue about the intersection of man and animal.
- Sun & Sea, Cork City Hall, June 23-25: This award-winning opera performance will take place on its very own indoor beach inside Cork City Hall. The production has already wowed audiences across the globe and has been celebrated for its humorous exploration of our relationship with the planet.
- Ode To Joy, Crawford Art Gallery, June 24-25: The Cork Deaf Community Choir and artist Amanda Coogan come together for a performance of Beethoven’s classic in Irish Sign Language.
- Island Of Foam, John Redmond Street, Shandon, June 25: German artist Stephanie Lüning will transform John Redmond Street by Shandon into a mesmerising rainbow with the use of water, biodegradable soap and food colouring. After the colourful mix flows down the street, attendees will be able to jump right in.
