Bloomsday Lock-in

Bloomsday is an annual celebration that takes place around the world. It celebrates Thursday 16 June 1904, which is the day depicted in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The day is named after Leopold Bloom, the central character in Ulysses.

Bloomsday in Brooklyn the annual literary pub crawl featuring readings from James Joyce will this year be presented in an online modern adaptation of the epic and far roaming Ulysses aptly titled Bloomsday Lock-in on Saturday, June 20 @ 3pm New York / Eastern time. The world premiere screening will run for one week June 20-26, 2020.

This year’s presentation features a glittering international cast that stretches worldwide from Tipperary, Limerick, Galway, Belfast, Dublin, London, Strasbourg, Paris, Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles.

All proceeds raised from this world premiere online screening will go directly to Chips Soup Kitchen & Women Center a Brooklyn charitable organization that feeds over 350 meals a day to the homeless, and shelters homeless pregnant women & their infants. 

James Joyce was a modernist and this promises to be a thoroughly fresh contemporary take on the novel that nobody wanted to publish & everyone tried to ban. This presentation favors a more dramatic conceit & will be an adaptation that features excerpts from the 1922 version of the book. Bloomsday Lock-in is a play on the current “lockdown” situation in COVID-19, a lock-in in Ireland is typically when the pubs shut but allow patrons to stay drinking and carousing after-hours illegally.

Bloomsday Lock-in is presented by The Society of Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and will feature over 50 actors from stage, screen, literature and the music industry, including John Turturro (The Plot against America, Batman, Barton Fink) Patrick Bergin (Cold Sun, Red Rock, Sleeping with the Enemy),  Ian McElhinney (Game of Thrones, Derry Girls, Dr. Who) Aidan Gillen (Those Who Wish Me Dead, Game of Thrones, The Wire), Colin Quinn (Saturday Night Live), Spider Stacy (The Pogues), Barry Ward (Dating Amber, The End of the F***King World), Billy Carter (The Plot against America, Titanic), Olwen Fouéré (She Will, The Survivalist ) & renowned Irish poets Theo Dorgan & Paula Meehan. 

Bloomsday Lock-in is produced by Declan Walsh and Ten Thousand Hours Films. 

Directed by Trevor Murphy and Irish Actress Laoisa Sexton (Red Rock.)

Music score by Gavin Cowley.

“Lass of Aighrim” performed by Betty Walsh.

Presented in association with Georganne Aldrich Heller (Irish Film & Theatre Production) and Dan DeMello (associate producer/world premiere screening.)

The international cast includes actors from stage & screen: Susan Ateh, Sebastian Beacon, Donal Brophy, Steve Blount, Robert Carroll, Jarlath Conroy, Gina Costigan, Graeme Coughlin, Adrian Crowley, Hazel Doupe, Cecile Dellepiere, Daniel Fitzgibbon, Tony Fitzgibbon, Rosemary Fine, Eoin Geoghegan, Vera Graziadei, Steve Gunn, Frances Healy, Johnny Hopkins, Suzy Houlihan, John Keating, Laura Keating, Aidan Kelly, Alan King, Nick Lee, Laurence Lowry, Andrew Lynch, Kal Mansoor, Kevin Marron, Michael Mellamphy, Caroline Morahan, Keshav Moodliar, Elizabeth Moynihan, Georgina McKevitt, Clara Onyemere, Kieran O’ Reilly, John Pirkis, Rachel Rath, Paul Reid, Erin Ruth, Laoisa Sexton, Bianca Stephens, Fiana Toibin, Betty Walsh, Declan Walsh, Zoe Watkins, Sybille Wehrli, Ali Zayn & more!