Home Entertainment

Building on last year’s sellout show Howl On, Pat McCabe again joins forces with Michael Lightborne and David Murphy to present a new hallucinatory literary soundscape.

Set in the fictional Irish city of Midford, at its centre is Ellen Daly, an elderly woman mourning her son Roger, whose death reverberates through a fractured city populated by damaged lives. The work unfolds as a living transmission, replaying guilt, complicity and buried crimes in a world shaped by catastrophe.

Combining literature, sound and performance into one layered, immersive experience, Home Entertainment is a dark, funny and unsettling exploration of modern Ireland, examining how societies archive their sins, how technology reanimates trauma, and how memory refuses to stay buried.

Patrick McCabe is the author of eleven novels, including The Butcher Boy, The Dead School, Breakfast on Pluto, and Goldengrove. David Murphy (Cuimhne Ghlinn: Musical Explorations...) is a pedal steel guitarist, expanding the instrument’s reach in a modern Irish context. Michael Lightborne’s (Dormant Volcanoes of Ireland) work explores sound, environment, projection and cinema.

Literature programme supported by Cork Midsummer Festival and University College Cork – partnering to create a unique strand of events that feature cross artform collaborations, performance and conversation