22 April,
Panel /
A Personal History of Pyromania
Wednesday, 22 April 2026, 7:00pm
The Mick Lally Theatre / €14/16
Book NowAn intimate, darkly comic essay-performance that reflects on the meanings and functions of fire in life and art. Moving between childhood experiments with homemade fireworks, family and national history and the author’s novel Deep Burn, Brendan Mac Evilly traces a lifelong fascination with flame. At its centre sits an elusive story about the burning of an inherited uniform—a moment that hovers between memory and invention—asking why we are drawn to fire and what can it transform?
Combining live reading, projected media, sound and ceramics, the piece considers fire as a force of attraction, creation, remembrance and release.
Written and performed: Brendan Mac Evilly
Director and media design: David McGovern
Music: Irene Buckley
Recorded Readings: Aisling Flynn
Brendan is the author of the novel Deep Burn (Marrowbone Books 2025) and At Swim: A Book About the Sea (Collins Press 2016). His fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, Channel, the Honest Ulsterman, the Guardian, the Irish Times, and Sunday Times among other outlets. He is the director/editor of Holy Show, an annual arts journal and production company, and is the current Emerging Curator in Development at Kilkenny Arts Office.
