Carmel Winters is an acclaimed writer and director for stage and screen. Her award-winning films include Snap and Float Like A Butterfly, and her award-winning plays include B For Baby and The Maestro And The Mosquita.
Her new play Cuckoo Time premieres in Glass Mask Theatre on Dublin's Dawson Street this October.
We asked Carmel for her choice cultural picks...
MUSIC
I am thrilled by the evolving musical world of Dogtail Trio – a virtuoso musical collective from West Cork featuring Camilla Griehsel, Paul Tiernan and Maurice Seezer. I love how they fuse the best of jazz, musical theatre, world music, opera, pop, soul and country to create their own unique take not just on music but on being human. They have lost beloved collaborators along the way – Camilla's late husband Colin Vearncombe (AKA Black) and their beloved musical genius Fergus O Farrell (of Interference) but they take that loss and metabolise it into an extravagantly joyous and mischievous celebration of being alive – not despite the heartbreak but because of it. Their musical collaboration has very much inspired my current play. I am very grateful to Paul for his song Shop of Love, which I think must be one of the greatest but least known anthems to life.
BOOK
The book beside my bed is Manchán Magan’s Ninety Words for Rain, illustrated by Megan Luddy. It is the only book of his not gifted to me and inscribed with his name, his grá mór. I knew the time for when he would visit with a box of his latest publications in the boot of his car and perhaps a jar of his best honey, full of bee biscuit, was passed. It was driving rain (báisteach shíobtha) against the window as I opened it for the first time so I filmed that and sent it him, along with the notion that this might be one of his books that would indeed inspire a film in me. The notion prompted a spalp (burst forth) of joy in him. I’m obsessed with weather. I don’t consider it small talk to lean on a gate with a neighbour and read the sky together. More and more it seems to me that our emotions are a kind of ever-changing weather moving through us. Now, in the loss of Manchán, there are ninety kinds of deor fhearthainne (‘rain tears’) passing through me and all who mourn his passing. But of course after rain comes that spréach (sparkle, spark, spirit, animated life force) of light by which we see the world illuminated as if for the first and last time.
ART
This Summer my wife, artist Toma McCullim led a collective of Queer Artists, myself included, to curate a show together, based on the Crawford Gallery Collection, the making and showing of which would inspire Love/Grá. Toma made a piece called ‘Lilith’ which featured intimate photographs of parts of women’s bodies – a belly button in a soft shiver of skin, a curl at the nape of the neck, an eye seeing, a dimpled bottom – printed onto the gilt-edged pages of an ancient bible. These were suspended on fishing wire to co-create a large floating Goddess. I loved watching the spark of delight in people as they encountered this many eyed, multi-limbed Lilith. As the pages and body parts lightly stirred and fluttered it was a wonderful image of the We as One.
FILM
Screened directly after my own film The Art Of Loss at the Irish Film Institute documentary festival was another film about a daughter’s relationship to her mother, A Want In Her by Myrid Carten. I might have missed it otherwise but I’m glad I didn’t. Myrid fuses old footage from her childhood roleplaying with her sisters, with recent interviews with her mother and uncles, many shot in the old derelict caravan at the back of the family house where one uncle stubbornly returns and sleeps on the broken shards after all the windows have been smashed to keep him from coming back. Behind the camera the filmmaker eyes her family’s experience of addiction and how they have loved and hurt and betrayed and forgiven each other along the way. It’s a strange kind of mirroring. More is left unsaid than said but what is seen is suffused with a luminous searching and subtle humour. I was left with a want to know more about the filmmaker’s mother and her struggle with mental illness and alcoholism. What is it like to see herself being seen like that - by her daughter, by a cinema of strangers?
APP
I have an eagle-eyed niece in Leitrim who is friend and forager of every wild plant and mushroom in the country. When I am on the hunt for mushrooms and she is not on hand I consult Sporecast – an app that guides you when and where to look for the mushrooms growing near you. It’s coming up to liberty cap time now (also known as ‘fás aon oíche’ as they fruit overnight). I hope not to miss them again this year. When I had a flu virus a while back that laid me flat, I borrowed a couple from a friend’s stash (hidden away for her planned visit to the fairies) to see if it would help. After just two mushrooms I recovered my ability to laugh at myself, which was a great prompt for recovery!
THEATRE
Deaf Republic, by Dead Centre. "A deaf boy is shot for not obeying orders he couldn’t hear. The next day, the whole town wakes up deaf." This is the kind of play concept I wish I had come up with myself! I love theatre that instantly catapults us into whole new ways of seeing and hearing – or not seeing, not hearing – the world. It brings to mind The NYT Op-Doc film Notes On Blindness in which theologian John Hull records the experience of going blind - watch ot on YouTube here. There’s one revelatory scene – I won’t spoil it – that blows my heart wide open every time I return to it. I’m running off to see Deaf Republic now. It stars one of my all-time favourite actors – Derbhle Crotty – and she just surprised me with a ticket!
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TV
The Dog House is my favourite go-to television. Watching humans and dogs fall in love with each other and make each others lives more lovely and meaningful is pure heart medicine. I love that the show’s attitude to both dogs and humans is loving and compassionate. They don’t blame or vilify the people who have to give up a dog for whatever reason. They just try to make a bad situation better for one and all. I’d love to have that job of matchmaking humans and dogs myself – imagine being the architect of all that love?
GIG
Secret Song in the legendary Levi’s Corner House in Ballydehob is my favourite gig ever. On the first Sunday in October each year you show up (if you are lucky enough to have a ticket) to a day long festival of mystery musical guests. The excitement running from the bar to the garden to the living room to see who might show up next is tremendous. And so often the thrill of seeing my favourite acts – The Kates, Wallis Bird, Lisa Hannigan, Mick Flannery, Susan O Neill show up is matched or even surpassed by discovering a new gem. That’s how I came to know the band This Is The Kit.
RADIO/PODCAST
At the funeral mass of our beloved step grandson his mother played Thich Nhat Hanh’s Great Bell Chant. It was as if our sorrow was given wings to fly. I listen to that every day since.
THE NEXT BIG THING...
Camilla Griehsel. At 60, she is acting in a play for the first time. Brave, brilliant and bold – she is like a panther come in from the wilds to stalk the unlit corridors of our imagination.
Cuckoo Time premieres at Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street, Dublin from 14th October - 1st November 2025 - find out more here
