The Molly Bloom Duologue: A Preview

Listen to a 4 minute preview of the 3 hour Molly Bloom Duologue with Caraid O'Brien and Bernadette Quigley.  The complete text recorded live will be broadcast on Monday, June 16th at 11pm on wbai.org.

Radio Bloomsday 2014: The Molly Bloom Duologue

WBAI Broadcasts Caraid O’Brien & Bernadette Quigley's Complete Molly Bloom Monologue as a Duo Dialogue 

on Radio Bloomsday 2014

New York, NY -- Back by popular demand, the innovative performance of the complete Molly Bloom monologue from James Joyce’s Ulysses recorded live on June 16, 2013 by not one but two actresses, Caraid O’Brien and Bernadette Quigley, will be rebroadcast nationwide on Monday, June 16, 2014. Tune into Radio Bloomsday on WBAI (99.5 FM in NYC) or stream at wbai.org beginning at 7pm until the wee hours of the morning.   Each year, Radio Bloomsday ends its 7 hour nationwide broadcast of James Joyce’s Ulysses with the novel's final celebrated chapter – a two and a half hour passion filled monologue, by the novel’s heroine, Molly Bloom.  For the second year the re-imagined monologue will be presented as a conversation that Molly has with her younger self, with every word still faithful to the text of one of the most celebrated chapters in literature ever.  The Molly duo begins at 11.

The Molly Bloom soliloquy is also the most sexually explicit chapter in Ulysses and the reason why the book is so frequently censored.  Molly, a soprano, has spent the day in bed with her lover Blazes Boylan while her husband, Leopold Bloom wanders around Dublin. Throughout the two and a half hour episode, a flood of memories is unleashed as the two Mollys spend the night together, attempting to unravel the mysteries of their art, their lovers and their lives. Despite all the men that have crossed Molly’s path, she is her own most faithful companion.

Ms. O'Brien says, "From the moment I first read Molly Bloom’s monologue on my bed in Mount Scopus in Jerusalem where I was studying Yiddish literature, that episode became the road map for my own artistic experience. Like Molly, I fantasize about a time of endless financial resources, when I have an limitless supply of costumes to wear onstage, and can throw a handful of tea in the pot without scrimping to make it last as long as possible.  Like Molly, I am a performer who spends more time in bed than I do on stage."

Earlier in the evening, from 7:00 p.m. on, WBAI's Radio Bloomsday's broadcast includes a kaleidoscope of global artistic talent united by a passion for getting under the hood of the most influential novel of the twentieth century - James Joyce's Ulysses.  Commemorating Father’s Day, the broadcast explores the often complicated relationship between fathers and their children as portrayed in Ulysses. 

This year’s performers ranging in age from 5 to 85 years of age include Alec Baldwin, Aaron Beall, Mannix Beall-O’Brien, Marie-Louise Bowe, Justin Vivian Bond, Charles Busch, Janet Coleman, Frank Delaney, Paul Dooley, Roma Downey, David Dozer, Anne Enright, Jim Fletcher, Garrison Keillor, Michael Laurence, John Lithgow, Marc Maron, Nick McDonell, Paul Muldoon, Felix Norris-Lindsay, John O’Callaghan, Bob Odenkirk, Wallace Shawn, Marc Singer, T. Ryder Smith, Jerry Stiller, Tarab, Kate Valk, Heather Woodbury, Fiona Walsh, Zeroboy and many others. Musicians appearing on the broadcast include Australian performers Roger Norris, Graeme Norris and Susannah Norris-Lindsay, All Ireland button accordion champion, Martin O’Connell, fiddle player Marie-Louise Bowe, singer Eileen Ruby, Steven Antonelli, Ralph Martin, Johnny Coughlan, and Brad Maestas.

The Mollys Bloom (Caraid O'Brien and Bernadette Quigley) photographed by Louie Correia

BIO's:

Born in Galway, Ireland, Caraid O'Brien is a writer, performer and director.  She is the director of Radio Bloomsday, an annual marathon radio performance of James Joyce’s Ulysses featuring over 100 performers on WBAI.  Her direction of Bloomsday on Broadway for Symphony Space is available on CD starring Stephen Colbert.  Caraid graduated summa cum laude, phi beta kappa with a BA in Yiddish literature from Boston University, studied Yiddish and Hebrew at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Irish (Gaelic) at the National University of Ireland. www.caraidobrien.com 

Bernadette Quigley has performed the Molly Bloom soliloquy live at Symphony Space.  Her many film and t.v. credits include The Suspect, Dream House starring Daniel Craig, The House Is Burning, Jim Sheridan’s Oscar-nominated In America, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Third Watch, Kings and most recently, Unforgettable. Quigley has also performed on and off-Broadway and extensively in regional theaters across the U.S. www.bernadettequigley.com

A Recent Visitation of Jupiter Pluvius

New York is feeling much like Dublin today. Thundershowers, wet winds and drenched socks took hold of the city during "a recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius," this mid May morning. The rain has stopped, the trees are washed but the pavement is still dark with damp. As Joyce writes in one of his early poems about the rain: " Rain has fallen all the day./ O come among the laden trees:/ The leaves lie thick upon the way/ Of memories." Performer Marc Singer describes Dublin in similar circumstances as Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom walk home after a rain shower on Radio Bloomsday this June 16, less than a month away!

Water is almost a character in Ulysses as well it might be given the typical wet and rainy Irish climate. Of course, Ireland much like Manhattan, is an island surrounded by water, and its writers talk often of the sea.

Several chapters of Ulysses take place by the Sea. "Thalatta! Thalatta!" The novel begins in the Martello Tower as Dedalus watches Buck Mulligan shave and take a bath in the ocean. Stephen refuses to swim, and admits to being a hydrophobe, or at least that is what he tells Bloom at the end of the novel in the Ithaca episode, explaining why he doesn't want to wash his hands. Later in Proteus, he walks on the beach thinking of his past and imagining his future. You will hear the poet Paul Muldoon perform an excerpt from the second half of this chapter on Radio Bloomsday.

Even Bloom has his moment by the sea. In the Nausicaa episode, we return again to the Atlantic Ocean as Bloom watches the fireworks and the girls playing in the sand. I also love the end of Lotus Eaters episode which also sets Bloom in a body of water, the bath: " He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.

Yesterday, I was discussing Ulysses with the charismatic actor, Jim Fletcher, who recently played the title character in Gatz, Elevator Repairs Service's unforgettable performance of the complete text of The Great Gatsby. He will be performing John Milton's poem about a shipwreck Lycidas on Radio Bloomsday, which is referenced several times throughout Ulysses by the students in the Nestor episode and by Dedalus in Proteus as he walks along the strand. Milton wrote the poem about his college friend, another aspiring writer, who died in a shipwreck off the coast of Ireland. It is obviously a favorite poem of Stephen's. He has emerged alive from the shipwreck of his life, not to be romantized as the poet who could have been but challenged to become the writer of his dreams. Can he do it? Even if his snarky friends keep him from being published in their literary journal. Who will help Stephen find his place on the literary landscape that is his destiny? No one offers to help him, it seems except Bloom, and Bloom can barely get Molly a singing gig once a year.

But Bloom has ulterior motives. He sees Stephen as a possible suitor for his daughter Milly. His wife Molly has her own designs on the young poet, however. As she says during her monologue fantasizing about being the muse of the handsome writer:

they all write about some woman in their poetry
well I suppose he wont find many like me
where softly sighs of love the light guitar
where poetry is in the air
the blue sea and the moon shining so beautifully
coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa
the lighthouse at Europa point
the guitar that fellow played was so expressive
will I ever go back there again
all new faces
two glancing eyes a lattice hid
Ill sing that for him
theyre my eyes
if hes anything of a poet
two eyes as darkly bright as loves own star
arent those beautiful words
as loves young star
itll be a change the Lord knows
to have an intelligent person to talk to about yourself
not always listening to him and Billy Prescotts ad
and Keyess ad and Tom the Devils ad
then if anything goes wrong in their business we have to suffer
Im sure hes very distinguished
Id like to meet a man like that
God not those other ruck
besides hes young

Tune in on Thursday, June 16th at 7pm to hear Stephen, Bloom, Molly and more on WBAI in NYC and KPFK in Los Angeles and on wbai.org from anywhere in the world!

One Month Til Bloomsday!

Today is Monday, May 16 - one month to go until Radio Bloomsday 2011 is broadcast live on WBAI 99.5FM in NYC and on KPFK in Los Angeles. Preparations are well underway on both coasts and several countries. In addition to our live performances, we have several pre-recorded segments as well. Last week, we recorded three fantastic actors at the KPFK studios in Los Angeles. Actor Marc Singer makes his Radio Bloomsday debut this year. Marc performs an excerpt from the Eumeus episode as a drunken Leopold Bloom supports an even drunker Stephen Dedalus through the streets of Dublin on their way home after a wild night. Bloom and Dedalus have spent the night carousing in a whorehouse where all of Blooms scatological fantasies were realized. He does a wickedly funny turn narrating the end of this very long day. Last years listeners will remember hearing Charles Busch perform the infamous Madame Bella Cohen practicing her sadomasochism on our heros.

Paul Dooley and Bob Odenkirk who both performed Bloom monologues last year, joined forces brilliantly this year to record several of the Questions and Answers from the Ithaca chapter of Ulysses. Written in the style of Catholic Catechism, this penultimate chapter of Ulysses consists of 309 questions and answers about the main characters in particular and the universe in general. This episode, known for its relentless details, pinpoints Bloom and Molly's location with lattitude and longitude, and includes an extremely long list of men who might have slept with Molly.

The poetic quality of Ithaca is impossible to ignore, however, in spite of its Catechetical format. It is in this chapter, that Bloom and Stephen stepping outside for a piss look up at the sky and see, "The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit" and a more detailed description of dueling streams of urine you would be hard pressed to find anywhere. Bob as Bloom compares women to the moon. Paul as Bloom remembers his favorite memories of his daughter Milly before kissing "the plump yellow smellow melons" of Molly's rump, a touching gesture that so enrages his wife as we will hear during her following two and a half monologue, performed in its entirety one month from today.

But first, I will leave you with Molly's outrage as another amazing actor, Radio Bloomsday regular, Jim Fletcher is on his way over for a rehearsal.

any man thatd kiss a womans bottom

Id throw my hat at him after that
hed kiss anything unnatural
where we havent 1 atom of any kind of expression in us
all of us the same
2 lumps of lard
before ever Id do that to a man
pfooh the dirty brutes

Our Postcard - Molly Bloom in bed

For you New York locals, we have started papering the town with our Radio Bloomsday 2010 postcards and many people have asked about the images. Molly Bloom photographed by Louie Correia adorns the front and back of the card. We built a set in my bedroom, covering two sides of the wall with several 6 foot sheets of white butcher paper, then pasting on several layers of the New York Post, before adding a layer of gesso, to create the idea of a book. We then used charcoal to draw lines and handwrite two pages from Molly Bloom's monologue beginning with the word flagellate. Finally, we painted over the charcoal with black acrylic paint and a square brush. Our photographer, Louie Correia, a gifted graduate of FIT and a descendant of several generations of Portuguese Circus performers, came over for about 4 hours and took approximately 400 images with a digital camera of Molly Bloom at different stages of her day in bed.



Our aim is to present Molly Bloom as if she has just been hurled from the pages of a giant copy of Ulysses. Art in motion. Literature in progress. On the front color side, it is daylight and she is rehearsing with Blazes Boylan just after they make love around 4 oclock in the afternoon. On the backside, she is alone in bed in the wee hours of the morning waiting for Bloom to come home. Molly Bloom, the singer, the artist, working and living and eating and loving all day long in bed. Bed as the female power center of the home. Bed as canvas. Bed as work station. Bed as concert hall. Bed as the stage for life. Bed, bed, bed.

Let us know if you see the postcards and tell us where! Or send us your address and we will mail you one old school. Special thanks to Raphaele Shirley, Bobby of Bibberbox and Olivia Beall for their advice and expertise.

What is Bloomsday?

Bloomsday is a literary holiday. It is celebrated each year on June 16th commemorating the day that James Joyce's epic novel, Ulysses, takes place - on June 16th, 1904. Joyce chose this date for his novel in honor of the first time he went out walking with his future wife, Galway girl, Nora Barnacle the inspiration for the character of Molly Bloom.

Ulysses is considered by many to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. Certainly, it popularized the stream of conscious monologue within literary texts. James Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1882. He spent most of his writing life in exile in Paris and Zurich where he died in 1941.

On Bloomsday every year, actors, writers and readers of all sorts get together and read Ulysses aloud. These celebrations take place onstage, in the street, in private homes, on the beach and in our case, broadcast live on the radio from 7pm to 2am on WBAI, 99.5FM or wbai.org anywhere in the world.

One of the most famous chapters in Ulysses is the final Penelope episode or the Molly Bloom monologue which takes place as Molly is lying in bed, thinking about her day, her lovers, her life. Consisting of eight very long run on sentences without punction, Molly Boom's solilquoy is a sexy, powerful, magical piece that takes 3 hours to perform. Caraid O'Brien will be performing the entire Molly Bloom monologue this year beginning at 11pm.

In the photo above, the actress Marilyn Monroe reads Molly Bloom's thoughts from Ulysses.