On Monday 24 September Jannette met over 80 members of the Kilkenny Liberal Studies Group. Noh, karesansui gardens and other Japanese arts were completely new to the group. It was such a lovely, enthusiastic group to finish the short, but busy, trip to Ireland! The Liberal Studies Group asked very interesting questions following the talk and reading, and the Q&A session clearly indicated their great appreciation of their introduction to noh, the story and the poetic form of Between the Stones. Jannette was wonderfully supported for the reading by Christopher Heltzel and Margot Lydon (a member of the Kilkenny Liberal Studies Group) who are both local to Kilkenny.
Only a few members of the Kilkenny Liberal Studies Group knew that Kilkenny had a special connection to the story of Between the Stones as Jannette spent many holidays in Kilkenny in the late 1970s visiting the home of ‘Farmor’ and her family and contributing to two of the Kilkenny Arts Festivals that have occurred annually for the past 44 years.
Jannette was able to stay with two close friends, Eva & Rudolf Heltzel, who still live in Kilkenny - Rudolf, a world-renowned silver and goldsmith, has been seriously ill recently and it was lovely for Jannette to see him at home recovering after spending months in hospital. Eva, continues to be a great supporter of Jannette’s work, travelling to London last February to see the ‘Noh time like the present… tribute performance for Akira Matsui’, and continuing to offer great moral encouragement for the Between the Stones project, and to Jannette.
So, thank you Eva, Rudolf, Christopher and all the people of Kilkenny who have supported the project thus far!
“I originally met Jannette many years ago through one of my best friends Farmor. And it was when Farmor was celebrating her 70th birthday in London that I attended Jannette’s production of ‘Pagoda’ which was fantastic. Having then become enthusiastic about Noh, I went to London to see Jannette’s last Noh-related production last year (2017), and of course, this year’s Phase 1 talk at the RHA, followed by the one here in Kilkenny, to hear more about her new Noh collaboration ‘Between the Stones’.
I, like everyone in the audience was enthralled. The Liberal Studies Group in Kilkenny had never heard of Noh. We were so enthusiastic the hand clapping took a long time to stop! The Study Group want to know more and will happily travel to the Mill Theatre in Dublin in February 2019 for the second part!”