Theatre
Past Theatre Events
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The Last Lot
An extraordinary and moving event arrived in the empty pens and auction rooms of Kilkenny's Livestock Mart on the 19th of May 2007.
The Last Lot was a day of theatre that marked the closing of the Mart on the Barrack Street site, before trade moves to the new agri-retail park off the Carlow Road. It was a collaboration between UK based Talking Birds, Kilkenny County Councils Arts Office, and various artists and arts groups in the city.
Background Organised selling and buying of stock through the medium of a fair is over 170 years old in Kilkenny. A Charter granting permission to establish a fair was first granted by King William IV in 1835, but cattle fairs were held in the streets of Kilkenny from time immemorial - horned cattle at one end of the town, horses in another, sheep in a third and pigs in a fourth. In 1955, subscriptions from 851 individual farmers and 10 creameries provided the £22,000 capital for new mart which was opened on the Barrack Street site in October 1956. The tape was cut by Lieut. General Michael J. Costello, General Manager of the Irish Sugar Company, and the mart itself was blessed by Dr Collier, the Bishop of Ossory.
The Last Lot was an opportunity to take one last look at an important Kilkenny landmark before the site is totally transformed. It was made with the help and cooperation of the site's developers, KMART.
Talking Birds Described by The Guardian as „pioneers of site-specific theatre", Coventry-based Talking Birds specialises in theatre in unusual spaces with previous performance pieces having taken place in car-parks, monasteries, shop units, and on beaches. The company has been working in the UK and abroad since 1992 and its theatre work has toured from Slovakia to Seattle; its film work has been screened at festivals from Edinburgh to Volgograd and its web work has active participants from across the globe.
A documentary of the Mart and 'The Last Lot' commemorative events is in the making. The Arts Office hopes to showcase this in Kilkenny in the coming months. Should you wish to be placed on an information list of this event please contact the Arts Office.
