It's been a busy year for acclaimed actor, writer and comic Hannah Mamalis - earlier this summer, her debut short film as writer and director, Baby Steps, won Best First Short Drama at the Galway Film Fleadh, and this September, she premieres her stand-up comedy sketch show Stars at this year's Dublin Fringe Festival.
Here's a sketch I made last year for No Worries if Not on @RTE2
— Hannah Mamalis (@Hantmam) August 8, 2023
The Magician (in two parts) pic.twitter.com/RWfJ4KCHwT
We asked Hannah for her choice cultural picks...
FILM
Okay, not exactly a finger on the pulse pick here but I watched Bringing up Baby for the first time recently and I’m obsessed with Katherine Hepburn. The first 20 minutes play like a Merry Melodies cartoon where she’s the Bugs Bunny foil to Cary Grant’s Daffy Duck. I loved watching her make dumb faces. I loved watching her constantly falling over stuff. I loved the fact that afterwords I read that the movie went over budget and over schedule because they couldn’t stop laughing on set. That’s the good stuff.
MUSIC
Soda Blonde are, in my opinion, the best band working in Ireland right now. There is such integrity and craft and burning talent in everything they do and it’s so satisfying watching them grow and evolve. Some of my favourite gigs have been seeing them live, Faye’s voice is just out of the world. They have a new album coming out in September and it’s going to be an absolute banger.
BOOK
I finished George Saunders Lincoln in the Bardo recently. I tried to read it years ago but it didn’t really click. I genuinely think I might have been too stupid for it at the time. And also it was the book on the bedside table at a friend’s house that I read hungover as I awkwardly waited for them to wake up. So not the most optimum of reading conditions. I really loved it this time round. Saunders has such a charismatic way of writing. Very funny, often moving, sometimes weird but ultimately so generous to the reader and their experience. I’d recommend his latest short story collection, Liberation Day too.
THEATRE
I’m looking forward to seeing a bunch of shows at Dublin Fringe Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival. Those 10 quid arts worker tickets are a godsend. Kelly Shatter’s The Scratcher would be my top tip for Dublin Fringe. I’m currently booked into three shows at the Dublin Theatre Festival: Truths a Dog Must to Kennel by Tim Crouch, Ironbound and We Were Promised Honey which I had planned on going to go see when I was at the Edinburgh Fringe last year but it was on at 10 am which look, realistically was never going to happen.
TV
Station Eleven came out in the middle of a pandemic and also happens to be about the aftermath of a pandemic which is why I think most people don’t know about it or were uneasy to dive in. Which is fair enough. But I cannot recommend it highly enough. It’s such a profoundly beautiful show. All about how art can survive and transcend and heal. Which sounds pretentious but it’s absolute magic. It’s also a nice one-and-done series, too, 10 eps and that’s it. I’ve watched it 3 times through and bawled my little eyes out each of those times.
GIG
Do comedy gigs count? I'm going to see Peter McGann’s Great Lad in Vicar St on September 15th. He’s probably the most naturally funny man in the country. Also Broad Strokes at Dublin Fringe Festival are going to be great!
I was at Edinburgh for a day at the end of the month and blitzed a bunch of shows by some L.A. clowns. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen an American clown pull something out of their cooch or slip on a banana 10 times in a row and somehow make it transcendently funny.
ART
My dad is an incredible artist. He works down in Connemara and does a mix of abstract and landscape. I think I often took for granted growing up surrounded by his paintings and what that did for inspiring my own creativity. I run his Instagram page and I’m a bad daughter who’s bad at updating it but you can find a mix of his work here.
PODCAST
I re-listened to S-Town from the Serial team a few weeks ago. It really is the best story about a depressed Southern horologist that you’re every likely to hear. They also just released a new series called The Retrievals which follows a group of women who went through egg retrieval procedures at Yale hospital. It’s a harrowing listen about how women’s pain and experience is treated and discounted in the health system. Which I think many women would agree is pretty universal.
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TECH
There’s a website called Drive and Listen which pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin. You pick a city and your screen becomes a POV of you driving through that city, you can then choose what radio station from that country you want to listen to. It’s weirdly evocative and calming. Like that feeling of landing in another country for the first time and getting a taxi from the airport. Or driving at night in the back seat of your parents' car.
THE NEXT BIG THING
I mean, hopefully a meaningful shift in how we treat and pay people working in the arts. In an already tenuous industry, things feels particularly rough right now. Those striking in the U.S. aren’t doing so in a bubble - their issues are our issues too. We all need clarity around royalties and contracts and A.I. Unfortunately the lack of respect and dignity afforded is systemic. I also think it’s a real bummer that comedy isn’t officially considered an artform in Ireland, of all places. The big thick comedy heads on us. It’d be great if there was support and funding offered to those honing their craft, a craft like any other.
Hannah Mamalis’s Stars opens at Project Arts Centre from Sep 20-23, as part of this year's Dublin Fringe - find out more here.
