New Moon, February 2026
Celebrating our losses and gains – gearing up for the challenges ahead, being playful, dodging the bullets. Welcome to protest, resistance & backing for the artistic impulse in the moment and also artistic work a long time in gestation.
Margaretta
23 November 2025, Margaretta D’Arcy died. She had been actively campaigning for Palestine Action, and against US military planes in Shannon, right to the end. She was 91 years old.
She loved to celebrate Nollag na mBan and championed an open door policy in her own house and so a memorial event was arranged for the Rowing Club in Woodquay on 6 January in the centre of Galway.
True to form, it was chaotic and anarchic. No-one was sure what time proceedings would begin nor who would lead them. Artists and friends, young and very old poured in and everyone had something to contribute. Poet Sarah Clancy became a last minute MC and things got underway.
(L-R: Leila Doolin, The Raging Grannies)
The Raging Grannies were among the first to sing their own lyrics to popular songs and urge everyone to join in their satirical choruses. Lelia Doolin was among them. Sailhymn, a gifted young singer sang their own protest songs, as did Nicole Blue and more.
I performed a resistance poem by Tori Amos called ‘Girl Disappearing’ and alluded to Margaretta’s performative side, by applying costume, hat and clown nose to do so.
Once, I had played the role of Margaretta in a play called ‘Invisible Women’ by Geri Slevin, that charted Margaretta’s ‘dirty protest’ in Armagh Prison for better conditions for Women Prisoners. The proof is still on the stone wall of the BOI Theatre at University of Galway, looking the part, but not the real thing. Phew. I was acting. Margaretta was too shy to come to see herself portrayed on stage. She was never shy as an audience member at any other performance. If Margaretta D’Arcy was present, she would await her opportunity and hijack each event in order to highlight her latest cause, vehemently.
Speaker after speaker mentioned that Margaretta was a friend and an adversary at one and the same time. Catherine Connolly, President, recounted her final visit with Margaretta, where instead of small talk she was given 3 major political challenges to complete. She reminisced that when she had 15,000 signatures backing a Gluas tram for Galway, Margaretta argued for a completely different idea. They later became firm friends. Several artists told of being given impossible jobs by Margaretta. This often turned out to be a generous gift, as Sarah Clancy acknowledged.
Celebrating our losses and gains – gearing up for the challenges ahead, being playful, dodging the bullets.
(L-R: Sarah Clancy, Leila Doolin, Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington, Fionnuala Gallagher)
The kindness shown towards young women and artists, also, was legendary, and at the memorial, each of us realised that as well as being awkward and sometimes belligerent, Margaretta spurred us all on, endlessly, her door always open and welcoming. A short clip from Emma O’Grady’s documentary, ‘Mad, Bad & Dangerous’ featured Lelia Doolin and Margaretta D’Arcy interviewing each other. It quickly transformed into an argument about what was to be discussed. Lelia, her good friend, carries the flame onwards.
Many other astute, vocal and political artists stood up to say their piece. A white-bearded tall man with a kind face and quiet demeanour waited patiently in his long herring-bone coat to sing a song. When he finally stepped a couple of paces in from the side of the room, he spoke gently and said ‘ I sing as people enter the world and depart the world. That is what I do’. He began to sing and a hush fell on the room. It was a song about friendship and his voice was warm and rich and other-worldly. A balm. He finished, stepped to the side, bowed his head and looked utterly spent. Then he left without ceremony. It was one of those impromptu moments that takes everyone by surprise. A blessing had taken place.
Music took over. Little John Nee sang in celebration of irreverence, protest and kinship and the party continued into the night.
Atelier Samuel Beckett, Mericourt, Paris
In between Margaretta’s funeral and her memorial, I accepted an invitation to stay as an Artist In Residence at Atêlier Samuel Beckett in the village of Mêricourt, North West of Paris, high on a steep ridge, overlooking the river Seine. December. A Time-out. A Collapse. A Fresh Look. A Change of Air.
(L-R: View of the Seine from Atelier Samuel Beckett)
Beckett, the scavenger of the chaos of the mind, recognised the relentless descent of the human until they are open to ridicule. Better to have the last laugh, he reckoned.
I thought I might be going to stay in a bunker, with a tiny window up high, to keep it dim, like many of Beckett’s stage sets.
Celebrating our losses and gains – gearing up for the challenges ahead, being playful, dodging the bullets.
(View of The Writers Studio )
No, it was a gorgeous airy bright and cosy house for 2 artists, complete with a library and views of the barges motoring along between Paris and the Sea.
(Samuel Beckett Looks On )
All the climbing hills are chalky cliffs with caves. A far cry from the geography of Athenry. Only the Full Moon accompanied me.
I was lucky. Next door lives Lee DeLong, Red Nose Clown Director, Playwright and Performer. Lee decided I needed iron and feeding up so she cooked me dinner several times. In return, I sat in the listener’s chair and became the first to receive a presentation on her creative process, newly commissioned by a co-op of Artists in Bosnia, and never before spoken aloud. A preview. I also read her new solo autobiographical show ‘Cowboy’.
A wild ride. I can’t wait to see it. A true artist at a pivotal point in her life, unstoppable. Best of all, a chance for exploration and discussion alongside steak, cheese, cheese and more cheese. I was fortified.
Further up the hill live Conor Lovett, Actor, and Judy Hegarty Lovett, Director, and family, proprietors of Atêlier Samuel Beckett. I was encouraged to wander in anytime. The hospitality was warm. This couple from Cork have not lost their love of ‘scoraíochtaí’, the Cork term (in Irish) for ‘the art of visiting a neighbour’s house for a chat’. We conversed happily about ‘crazy notions’, mid-life crises and ‘old-fashioned madness’. Conor is preparing to perform a six hour long Beckett ramble in Venice this summer. Say no more.
I relished the time to sort through several pieces of writing I had brought with me. Musically speaking, the birds and I sang our notes out loud and watched to see where they settled. My lungs cleared in the brisk air as I watched the geese preparing to migrate and I returned home with crazy notions.
Little John Nee
A whisper on the grapevine mentioned a three night run of ‘Gentle Punk’ by Little John Nee in the Mick Lally Theatre in mid January. I showed up and was lucky to get the last ticket behind the bar.
Inside was a surprise. A full set, gorgeous lighting and a delicious feeling that the performance space had been fully inhabited and shaped into a new world and our seats arranged accordingly, on 3 sides.
The Set Design includes A Rain Shed, a small bench, a stone wall he can stand or sit on. Several birds and gadgets that come to life magically. Several instruments. A Dharmaphone out in front – A mixture of a Double bass with two strings adjoined to a two-tiered keyboard. Behind it all hangs a long backdrop painted by Philip Lindy, in a Japanese style, of trailing plants, done in inks, creating a subtle lilac hue. The Mick Lally Theatre is transformed.
Little John enters as a one man band, banging a metal petrol can, wailing and wearing a thick woollen three-piece suit, doc martens and spikey hair. He parades and chats to the audience, takes his time to relax and animate scenes for us, using short snatches of songs and sound to punctuate changes of scene and tempo.
Gentle Punk is whimsical, satirical and moving. It is as much about the creative process as it is a political ribbing of how housing is mixed with business in Ireland. All manner of characters are squatting in an empty failed tourist village, left over from the Celtic Tiger, in the top of Donegal, that had been built on the site of an abandoned famine village, complete with cabbages planted in every garden as an emblem of the famine times. And so a new community is born. Not unlike refugees from anywhere in the World.
Little John chats and chides, nudging the audience, teasing us gently with snippets about migratory birds, stars, planets, cabbages and flags. He re-enacts a community meeting where everyone has a say in turn on top of the wall. Strange and wonderful individual opinions are proffered including the idea that the Unionists can fly any flag they like from their houses, alongside a tricolour nearby.
Gentle Punk is not a traditional Little John Nee show involving a story arc or journey. Instead, it is a fluttering through his magical imagination, inhabiting strange creatures and moments of discovery in a timeless present. The show is gently paced and light in tone. He is in rich voice. Playfully, he prises open the thick shells that surround and protect our thoughts. Little John sets us free. Afterwards I found out from Síomha Nee, the young producer, that this was the première. No fuss. The fanfare was the bang on the metal petrol can.
New Moon, Solar Eclipse, Chinese New Year, Pancake Tuesday, all rolled into one.
New projects. Listen for the unexpected. Cherish the welcome into homes. Take your seat and let the artist unfold their dream. Chat about it after.
Fou Scarf
17/02/2026
*Fou Scarf AKA Fionnuala Gallagher is a Director and Curator of The Athenry Foundation For Art, a Theatre Founder and Director, and Red Nose Clown.