Performing Arts Episodes

When Frederick Douglass left Belfast in 1845, only seven years after escaping slavery, he declared: "Wherever else I feel myself to be a stranger, I will remember I have a home in Belfast." That remarkable statement from a Black abolitionist finding radical welcome in a 19th-century Irish city is the beating heart of North Star, the immersive musical and theatrical experience that Northern Ireland-based DJ, broadcaster, and creative producer Kwame Daniels brings to New York's Irish Arts Cente...

In this conversation recorded at the 2025 Capital Irish Film Festival, host Martin Nutty sits down with two trailblazing Irish filmmakers who are pushing boundaries in their respective genres. Aislinn Clarke discusses her groundbreaking Irish-language horror film Fréwaka, exploring how her childhood love of horror (she saw The Exorcist at seven!) and her father's commitment to preserving the Irish language converged into a unique cinematic vision. Clarke reveals the gift of discovering the pe...

The Smuggler is back and rhyming its way through Ireland, so we updated our earlier episode with actor Mick Mellamphy with news of his Irish tour of Ronán Noone’s award-winning one-man tour de force this July. Set on a wealthy American island enclave and performed in rhymed verse, The Smuggler follows Irish immigrant Tim Finnegan as he’s pulled into the local criminal underworld after a fatal crash stirs tensions between locals and migrants. It's a raucous, interactive experience, with the...

In this episode, host Martin Nutty chats with Declan Curran, actor, writer, and producer of the acclaimed short film Dear Imelda. Declan traces his creative path from creating teenage comedy sketches on YouTube to crafting award-winning short films that have screened at festivals worldwide. His growing success is highlighted by a recent distribution deal brokered by Network Ireland Television (NITV) with the Japanese streaming platform SAMANSA, expanding his reach to international audiences. Re...

In this episode of Irish Stew , host Martin Nutty connects with key figures from Solas Nua , a dynamic Washington, D.C.-based arts organization devoted to contemporary Irish culture. Recorded during the Capital Irish Film Festival , the conversation features: Kate Meenan-Waugh , Board Co-Chair Andrew Dolan , Executive Director Rex Daugherty , Artistic Director of Theater Kate recounts her Irish upbringing, her background in education, and the path that led her to Solas Nua. Andrew ...

When you’re in a UNESCO City of Music, you expect to hear some great sounds, which we did when we found our way to the Duncairn Centre for Culture & Arts to hear the Belfast singer, songwriter, performer, and musical explorer Suzanne Savage. Hooked at age seven by an Ulster Orchestra concert, she picked up a violin at age eight. Within a few years, she was practicing classical music by day and gigging with Belfast bands by night. Suzanne talks about her deep connections with Belfast and it...

Former champion boxer John Duddy from Derry and one-time construction worker Newry’s own Ciaran Byrne share their unlikely paths to acting on stage and in film in part two of our first live podcast recording for Origin Theatre’s 1st Irish Festival. The two friends delve into how their life experiences inform their performances, personal traumas from The Troubles, and the critical role of theater in post-conflict healing and education. Sharing compelling narratives throughout, Ciaran and John ...

After Origin Theatre’s artistic director Mick Mellamphy welcomes our paying (!) audience to the 1st Irish Festival’s first live podcast event, we introduce theatre makers, Derry’s own Labhaoise Magee of Fair Play Productions and Big Telly Theatre’s Crissy O' Donovan who was raised in Dublin, worked in GB, and is now based in Northern Ireland. Fair Play brought Sinéad O'Brien's "storytelling masterclass" No One is Coming to Origin 1st Irish this year, while Big Telly staged the immersive Grann...

Join us as Larry Kirwan spins us back to the vibrant, violent New York City of the 1980s and the lives of the mostly undocumented Irish who called a patch of turf there home, in his novel Rockin’ The Bronx. Best known as the frontman for the legendary Irish-inflected rock & roll band Black 47, Larry delves into themes of immigration, Irish and Hispanic cultural intersections, the shifting fortunes of the navvies and the nannies, the unnamed scourge of AIDS, Reagan-era politics, and his creat...

“St. Patrick’s Day Today, Hungover Tomorrow.” Seeing that slogan on a St. Patrick’s Day T-shirt sent William Spencer Reilly on a mission to “reclaim the day” from negative stereotypes to what is best about Irish culture. So, he created the Sober St. Patrick’s Day® Grand Celebration, a culture-rich, family-friendly, attractively priced, alcohol-free way to enjoy the “great day for the Irish.” We delve into Bill’s life in theater production, how it served him in developing Sober St. Patrick’s D...

For the 2nd year in a row, Irish Stew hosts Maedhbh Mc Cullagh, the director of the Capital Irish Film Festival, who discusses the festival's offerings, the audience's response, and the challenges and rewards of organizing such an event in Washington, D.C. Eva Birthistle joins John Lee and Martin Nutty to discuss her directorial debut, Kathleen Is Here, a gripping psychological thriller. The conversation explores the ideas behind the film, along with Eva's move to the other side of the camera...

Star Trek said it would happen in 2024, but for Paddy Cullivan, 2032 will be the year of Irish Unification. Through hot takes on Irish history and AI-fueled visions of Ireland’s future, Paddy charts the course to unity in 2032 through his antic, visionary one-man show I Can’t Believe It’s Not Ireland, on the eve of its US Tour. Paddy is best known for fronting The Camembert Quartet on Ryan Tubridy’s Tubridy Tonight and then The Late Late Show, playing with everyone from Sinead O’Connor to Ru...

Is this one of our author episodes or should it fall into our Irish Drinks category because your co-hosts have grabbed a table by the pot-bellied stove at New York’s legendary McSorley's Old Ale House for a conversation with author, cultural creator, and impresario Charles R. Hale. Charles is known for curating lively artistic salons, producing eclectic concerts, and presenting original performance pieces that blend music, imagery, video, and storytelling. We focus on his deeply personal new b...

Writer, performer, and force of nature, born Morag Prunty, but best known by her pen name Kate Kerrigan whisks us from London where she grew up with an Irish identity to Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way where she’s living with an English accent. In this episode, Kate spins tales of idyllic childhood summers in Mayo, the dynamics of being Irish in England during the turbulent 70s and 80s, her challenges in navigating the complex terrain of her Irish identity, and her late-in-life recognition of the o...

Launching Season Six, we go behind the scenes of the woman-strong Irish film Lies We Tell, a brooding tale of angels and demons, light and shadow, manners and mores, family secrets and family crimes, which The Guardian called “a tightly laced, elegantly cut gothic period drama.” A total rethinking of Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1864 novel Uncle Silas, the film centers on Maud Ruthyn, brilliantly portrayed by the rising young star Agnes O’Casey, great-granddaughter of the playwright, Sean ...

From New Jersey to Sligo, Wales, London, Germany, to touring the globe and then to New York, Roger Clark stamps his passport as a leading citizen of the Global Irish Nation. And to millions around the world, he is an icon. An actor, filmmaker, voiceover artist of over 150 audiobooks, Roger’s claim to global fame is his performance-capture portrayal of the cowboy antihero Arthur Morgan in the massively popular action-adventure video game, five years in the making, Red Dead Redemption 2, a.k...

When Seamus Heaney wrote, “Walk on air, against your better judgement,” he could have been writing about Pauline Turley. From Newry to New York, Pauline has paired hard work with serendipity to arrive at her pivotal role charting the impressive trajectory on New York’s Irish Arts Center from a cramped tenement building to its expansive new home. She tells of how winning the Green Card lottery led this Trinity College Drama and Theatre Studies grad to depart for New York on something of a lark,...

Join us as we pick up the conversation with Doug Devaney who interviewed us last fall on The Plastic Podcasts. A talented podcaster, Doug’s also an actor, writer, journalist, and self-proclaimed "songster, funster, punster, hamster." In this episode we delve into the core concept of The Plastic Podcasts, which centers around the notion that “we all come from somewhere else.” Doug explores Irish diaspora narratives in England by engaging in lively discussions with actors, activists, artists...

For over 25 years Manachán Magan has been at the forefront of Irish cultural affairs. He first rose to public attention with the 1996 launch of Irish language television now known as TG4. Together with his brother Ruán, Manachán produced a ground breaking series of television programs exploring indigenous cultures across the globe Since those early days, Manachán continues to drive the cultural conversation through multiple mediums. He has proved to be an accomplished journalist, theatrical p...

Growing up with one foot in Dublin and the other in Cork, Michael “Mick” Mellamphy now has a foot in Ireland and one in New York, where he’s in starring in Ronán Noone’s The Smuggler at the Irish Repertory Theatre, part of the Origin Theatre’s 1st Irish Festival he curated, on stages around NYC for Jan. & Feb. 2023. And he still made time to sit down with us a couple of hours before The Smuggler’s final dress rehearsal before opening night a few hours later. But as well known as Mick is in the...

In a way we’ve been teasing this episode since our first, as we’ve treated you to a wee taste of Rosa Nutty’s music at the opening of every Irish Stew episode. Now we go beyond the snippet and follow Rosa through the emotional landscape she travels in song. Her first album after a five-year absence from the recording studio, World So Blue is getting rave reviews, like this from The Irish Times: “Now she’s back with a long-in-gestation debut album that weaves a kind of spell that will calm ...

Gregory Harrington has stayed busy since our initial episode back in February 2022. Since that conversation, the accomplished violinist released a recording titled Gregory Harrington: Live From The Irish Repertory Join Martin Nutty as he chats with Gregory about the risks of recording beloved traditional Irish tunes as a classically trained violinist. Learn how Gregory approaches the recording of music outside classical repertoire and how he approaches the challenge of bringing something fresh ...

In times past, the Irish language (Gaelic) was thought by some to be a mark of backwardness. In this episode, husband and wife team, Colm Bairéad and Cleona Ní Chrualaoi reveal how Ireland's native tongue provided entrée to the world of movie-making leading ultimately to the creation of An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl), Ireland's nominee for the Best International Feature Film Oscar. While there are a number of hurdles to jump before the final five Oscar nominees are announced, there is little ...

Growing up in a Dublin home with no TV, Aedín turned to books, reading them aloud, drawing out the characters, and letting the words wash over her, which is how at age ten she managed to read James Joyce’s intimidating novel Ulysses. She was drawn to the rhythms and music in the words of the great writers, no surprise coming from a home with her avid reader mother and her father, Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains. But she’d feel the lure of the stage and after early acting experiences in Dubli...