Kilkenny's Set Theatre has weathered the storm facing Ireland's live venues, conceptualising, filming, and editing a series of unique concert films showcasing the sheer breath of our island’s creative forces - Stephen Butler of Indie promoters Labyrinth introduces the series...
Music venues the length and breadth of the country have long been society's escape from the stresses and trappings of modern life. But what makes these buildings more than bricks and mortar? Is it the beloved communal experience of artist and crowd becoming one that we only get from live performance? Perhaps it is those magical moments shared with our close-knit friends and loved ones that last a lifetime in the memory.
Whatever it is that sparks that fire, feeds our creative minds, and heals our souls, has slowly ebbed away in these unpredictable times, and feels like a distant memory, for now.
In the Summer of 2020 four of the music industry’s most forward thinkers got together to create the Live Venue Collective, a collective of small and medium independent Irish music venues focused on supporting each other and ensuring their continued support to the vast talent in the Irish live industry at all levels and across all genres. This was a turning point in a year of such uncertainty and offered light at the end of the tunnel for the sector, culminating in the form of the Live Performance Support Scheme, that saw each venue create 16 online live streamed events to help support musicians, filmmakers, lighting designers, sound engineers, bookers, promoters, suppliers, and many more within the industry that has been shuttered since March.
While other venues raced out of the blocks at breakneck speed with their live streams, we decided to take our time and conceptualise a series of concert films, with the hopes of creating an experience that lasts longer than this strange period in which we currently reside and acts as a time capsule for us to look back on.
Our focus from the outset was how to bring that energy and feeling from our venues, and put it into the homes of each viewer, while fully aware something gets lost along the way. People’s propensity to sit down to a two hour show wanes ever more with each passing generation, so with that firmly in our minds we made each film last in and around 40 minutes, and to fully focused on making production values as high as we possibly could. What we have created sits somewhere between a live show and studio performance, with collective filmmakers Bearfoot Productions and Geppetto adding their own magic to ensure each film is a visual departure to the last, and is tailor made to the act.
A big positive from this, is being creative again added some colour to the half-life of last year, and this is something we would like to continue in some form going forward, but we cannot wait until the time is right to entertain full capacity audiences again.
Right now the lights are back on, and this is music, only different…
Set Theatre’s free-to-air concert films are broadcast every Friday and Saturday throughout January and February exclusively on their YouTube channel - full details here.
