Entertainment

Joycean experiment returns to Hammersmith for Bloomsday

James Joyce in 1915 (Picture by Ottocaro Weiss, in public domain)

JAMES Joyce’s Ulysses may be more than a century old, but film-maker Laoisa Sexton insists it remains as provocative, playful and relevant as ever.

Laoisa Sexton is the co-director of The Ulysses Project, which returns to the Irish Cultural Centre on Bloomsday, June 16, following a sold-out screening at the venue in 2024. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Sexton and fellow director Trevor Murphy.

More than 75 actors from around the world appear in the production, including John Turturro, Olwen Fouéré, Patrick Bergin, Paula Meehan and the late Shane MacGowan.

The idea for the project emerged during lockdown, when traditional Bloomsday readings became impossible.

Having taken part in Joyce celebrations for years — particularly in New York, where Sexton says Bloomsday festivities can rival those in Dublin — she began looking for another way to bring the novel to life on screen.

Filmmaker Laoisa Sexton

“We didn’t want people simply reading from a book,” she explained. “We wanted the actors to learn the passages and perform them naturally.”

Actors recorded themselves from their own homes using self-tape techniques, while Murphy faced the formidable task of stitching together hundreds of clips into a coherent cinematic whole.

Despite the unusual production methods, Sexton said the ambition was always to create something that felt like “a proper film”, rather than simply a lockdown experiment.

Part of the film’s energy comes from its fluid casting approach, with multiple actors portraying Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus.

For Sexton, that reflects the restless, stream-of-consciousness style that made Joyce’s novel revolutionary in the first place.

“Performances help you get to the heart of the characters,” she said.

The filmmakers also encouraged performers to use their own accents rather than attempt stylised Irish voices, something Sexton believes gives the film a more intimate and authentic quality.

One of her chief aims was also to shine a brighter light on the women of Ulysses, who she feels are sometimes overshadowed in traditional readings of the novel.

“Molly Bloom often only appears at the end,” she said. “I started asking myself — where are all the women in between?”

Revisiting the book, she found a gallery of vivid female characters she felt deserved greater prominence, from the flirtatious Gerty MacDowell to Bella Cohen, the gender-bending brothel keeper of the “Circe” episode.

Although Ulysses is often viewed as intimidating, Sexton believes audiences are sometimes surprised by how funny, earthy and recognisable it still feels.

“There’s a perception that it’s only for academics or older generations,” she said. “But Joyce is incredibly modern.”

Since its initial online release — originally intended as a one-week Bloomsday fundraiser for a Brooklyn charity supporting homeless pregnant women — The Ulysses Project has gone on to screen in Dublin, London and New York, becoming one of the standout events of Dublin’s Bloomsday Film Festival in 2022.

Laoisa Sexton, originally from County Clare, has worked extensively in theatre, film and television in Ireland and the United States, while Murphy has built an international career as a cinematographer across feature films, commercials and music videos.

Trevor Murphy

The Screening of The Ulysses Project will be followed by Q&A with Laoisa Sexton and Trevor Murphy.

Laoisa Sexton is an actress, playwright and filmmaker from County Clare. After studying drama in New York, she performed regularly Off Broadway and has appeared in TV series including Red Rock and Fair City, as well as a number of independent films. She has written and performed three critically acclaimed plays that premiered Off Broadway. An award-winning filmmaker, Sexton recently won Best Director at the Dublin Comedy Film Festival, while her short film The Lucky Man received multiple honours at the LOCO London Comedy Film Festival.

Trevor Murphy is a Dublin-raised cinematographer and filmmaker who has worked internationally in film, television drama, commercials and music videos for more than 15 years. Alongside directing his own projects, he has shot the feature films Poster Boys and the upcoming Catch the Wind. Murphy has also worked on numerous award-winning short films and recently won Best Cinematography for The Listeners, a poetry short film starring Freddie Fox.