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MUSIC NETWORK PRESENTS: Iarla Ó Lionáird, Úna Monaghan & Kevin Murphy

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Iarla Ó Lionáird voice Úna Monaghan harp, electronics Kevin Murphy cello You won’t want to miss this much-anticipated  new Music Network collaboration featuring vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird, harpist and sound artist Úna Monaghan, and cellist Kevin Murphy Renowned vocalist and member of supergroup The Gloaming, Iarla Ó Lionáird is one of Ireland’s most distinctive voices.

€15 – €18

FAMILY: Kyle Riley – Little Folk On Tour

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Kyle is back with his engaging, entertaining, and energetic show Little Folk On-Tour. He leads your children on a musical adventure playing his catchy original tunes, pop songs and traditional children’s music. Here the kids don’t just listen to the music, they become a part of the show. Come and join Kyle and make BIG

€10

LIVE Network presents: Douglas Stuart & Elaine Feeney

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Booker Prize Winner Douglas Stuart talks Shuggie Bain with Irish author Elaine Feeney Douglas Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he moved to New York, where he began a career in design. Shuggie Bain, his debut novel, won the 2020 Booker Prize and was a finalist for the

€15

THEATRE: A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Gabriel García Márquez's darkly comic tale, brought to the stage for children and adults to share. In a kitchen, in a theatre, two storytellers and their audience find something remarkable — a very old man with enormous wings. The wise neighbour woman tells us he’s an angel. The priest says he’s an imposter. Pilgrims flock

€10
Recurring

FAMILY: A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Gabriel García Márquez's darkly comic tale, brought to the stage for children and adults to share. In a kitchen, in a theatre, two storytellers and their audience find something remarkable — a very old man with enormous wings. The wise neighbour woman tells us he’s an angel. The priest says he’s an imposter. Pilgrims flock

€8 – €28

CINEMA: Another Round

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) and his three teacher friends all seem to have hit a middle-age rut in their lives. When one of the group tells the others about an obscure philosophy proposing that humans aren’t born with enough alcohol in their blood and so cannot reach their full potential, the men decide to test the

€7 – €9

Work-in-Progress & Workshop: WATERBIRTH

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Waterbirth – A Work-in-Progress Performance Come and join Darn Skippy Productions for this work-in-progress presentation of Waterbirth, a new play about motherhood and climate change – and join the company live on ZOOM immediately afterwards for a feedback session and creative workshop. Marina is pregnant and the climate is in crisis. But she’s fine. Everything is fine.

FREE

FAMILY CINEMA: Peter Rabbit 2

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

The lovable rogue is back.  Bea, Thomas, and the rabbits have created a makeshift family, but despite his best efforts, Peter can’t seem to shake his mischievous reputation … Adventuring out of the garden, Peter finds himself in a world where his mischief is appreciated, but when his family risks everything to come looking for

€5

CINEMA: NOMADLAND

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

In Chloé Zhao’s multiple award-winning feature, Frances McDormand plays Fern, a displaced woman in her 60’s, who, having lost her husband and her home, sets off on the road to explore life as a modern-day nomad. A mixture of fiction and documentary filmmaking, Nomadland features a cast of real life nomads: people living on the

€7 – €9
Recurring

SCHOOLS: CELLO, Nice to Meet You! with Greg Sinclair

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

We are delighted to present  a very special event for the classroom with musician and composer,  Greg Sinclair. A single class can join Greg LIVE on zoom for CELLO, Nice to Meet You! – a playful, interactive introduction to the cello and graphic notation. (suitable for 2nd Class-6th Class.) Greg Sinclair is an award-winning performer

€30

LIVE Network: Republic of Shame

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

LIVE Network and Riverbank Arts Centre present a night of conversation and creative responses to the ongoing legacy of the mother and baby home institutions. Until recently, religious orders and the Irish state operated a network of institutions where thousands of women and children were disappeared into, separated from each other and exploited. Through breaking

€10

THEATRE: Seven Ages of Mam

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

A new, heart-warmingly funny yet poignant play starring Pauline O’Driscoll (Smalltown, The Young Offenders) in which Mam shares her hilarious take on motherhood, sexuality, grief, infidelity, ageing, love, lust and loneliness.  A female-centric piece that will appeal to all. A contemporary reimagining of Shakespeare's most famous soliloquy - but from a Mam's point of view! 

€15 – €18

FAMILY: CBI Online Book Clinics

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Riverbank Arts Centre is partnering with Children's Books Ireland on FREE online book clinics on Saturday 2nd October, 11am-3pm. Are you a young reader? Looking for a new series to delve into? Feeling uninspired by your bookshelves at home? Do you need a prescription for an exciting new read? Then pop into the virtual Book

FREE, booking essential

CINEMA: Redemption of a Rogue

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

After seven years in exile, prodigal son Jimmy Cullen (Aaron Monaghan) returns home to Cavan to make peace with his dying father. Within moments of Jimmy’s arrival, the old man breathes his last and the heavens open. All that remains is to organise the funeral, except his father’s will stipulates he cannot be buried on

€7 – €9

Kildare Readers Festival: Shelving

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Why do artists and writers shelve or abandon particular projects – books, artworks, ideas? What does this tell us about how artists and writers work? What does it tell us about the systems in which they work, the expectations placed upon them, the kinds of work considered viable, valuable, worthwhile? For this event as part

FREE, booking essential

SCHOOLS: Geansaí Ottó le Sadhbh Devlin (bilingual – Irish/English)

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Tá stíl ag Ottó agus is breá leis éadaí deasa. Ach ní thuigeann Mamó rud ar bith faoi chúrsaí faisin. Nuair a thagann geansaí gránna eile sa phost uaithi tá rogha ag Ottó - caithfidh sé rud éigin a dhéanamh... Léifidh Sadhbh óna leabhar úr-nua agus beidh deis agaibh bhur geansaithe féin a dhearadh freisin!

€30
Recurring

EARLY YEARS: Shimmer

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

A dance show for audiences of babies aged 3-12 months. Full of silver, light and wonder, Shimmer is a unique, dream-like dance show for audiences of babies and their adults. Shimmer invites its audiences into an immersive reflective space created by Katie Davenport animated by a twinkling original score by David Goodall, gentle choreography by

€10

CINEMA: Annette

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Henry and Ann are famous, and madly in love. The tabloids and gossip columns are frenzied: he is a shock-jock, stand-up comedian, while she is a beloved operatic soprano. They marry and welcome a baby daughter; Annette. But all is not well … Henry struggles, resenting his wife and the monotony of family life. As

€7 – €9

MUSIC: Cassiopeia Winds

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Cassiopeia: a group of five bright stars, to be found in the northern sky in the shape of a W. Cassiopeia Winds: a group of five exceptional musicians whose sheer joy in performing together is contagious. Cassiopeia Winds is an Irish chamber wind ensemble formed in 2010, whose performances are marked by vivacity, panache and

€15 – €18

Kildare Readers Festival: John Bowman & Abie Philbin Bowman

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

With a shared love of history and debate John Bowman and Abie Philbin Bowman are ideal interviewer and interviewee. KRF are delighted to bring you this exclusive interview as they discuss John Bowman's book Ireland the Autobiography:  One Hundred Years in the Life of the Nation, Told by its People. This absorbing and highly acclaimed

FREE, booking essential

Kildare Readers Festival: 10 Books You Should Read

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

10 Books You Should Read continues to be a favourite event at Kildare Readers' Festival. Its format is a simple one - the guests choose five titles each – conversation ensues, as recommendations - and the advocacy of same - volley back and forth. On this occasion KRF thought to have the conversation be amongst the keepers

FREE, booking essential

Kildare Readers Festival: Luke Cassidy’s Iron Annie Cabaret

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

The Iron Annie Cabaret is a celebration of music, theatre and literature. Based on Luke Cassidy’s debut novel Iron Annie, it tells the story of Aoife, a major figure in Dundalk’s small-town underworld, and her fatal attraction to Annie, a magnetic and elusive force that barged into her life. Think Reservoir Dogs meets Thelma and

FREE, booking essential

Kildare Readers Festival: The Alphabet of Birds

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Sunday Mass and sea swimming; bird alphabets and stone collecting; Goya and Monet; the Stations of the Cross and the Sacred Heart of Jesus; bedrooms and bedsits; insomnia and parental love. Writer and artist Sara Baume covers wide ground in this spellbinding audio-visual essay. Ultimately, it’s a show about our obsessions and passions – the

FREE, booking essential
Recurring

SCHOOLS: Fighting Words – Creative Writing Workshop

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge is the Kildare Partner of Fighting Words. We present creative writing workshops for primary and secondary schools. Fighting Words workshops are always free of charge to the participants. These interactive creative writing workshops will be conducted via ZOOM or Microsoft Teams (or from April - in-person workshops in our theatre available)

CINEMA: Limbo

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Omar (Amir El-Masry) is a young Syrian musician stationed upon a fictional remote Scottish island, where he and a group of new arrivals await the results of their asylum claims. Omar shares his accommodation with Farhad, a Freddie Mercury fan who fled Afghanistan; Nigerian Wasef, who dreams of footballing glory; and Abedi, a reluctant realist.

€7 – €9

SCHOOLS SCREENING: Gagarine

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

A beautiful tale of community, friendship and dreaming big. Teenager Yuri lives at Gargarine, a housing project on the outskirts of Paris. He dreams of becoming an astronaut just like his and the building’s namesake, Yuri Gagarin. When the building is condemned for demolition, Yuri, along with his friends Houssam and Diana, embark on creating

€6

MUSIC NETWORK PRESENTS: Kit Downes’ Dreamlife of Debris

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Kit Downes piano, organ Tom Challenger tenor saxophone Lucy Railton cello Sebastian Rochford drums An unmissable opportunity to hear Kit Downes’ highly anticipated and critically acclaimed album Dreamlife of Debris in concert. The wandering mind is a curious thing, and Kit Downes' Dreamlife of Debris explores its tangents and threads, subtleties and secrets in this stunning project inspired by

€15 – €18

EARLY YEARS: I Am Baba

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

I AM BABA a show for babies aged 0-12 months created by Anna Newell presented by The Civic, Tallaght I AM BABA is a theatre adventure for babies created by internationally renowned theatre director Anna Newell and composer David Goodall.  Their shows for early years have been seen on six continents, off-Broadway and in every

€10
Recurring

THEATRE: Arán & Im by Manchán Magan

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

We need to find a way of talking about the Irish language - about the sublime beauty and profound oddness of this ancient tongue that has been spoken on the island for 2,500 to 3,000 years, and is now slipping slowly from our grasp. What can the word for the lonesomeness of a cow bereft

€12 – €15
Recurring

SCHOOLS: Fighting Words – Creative Writing Workshops

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge is the Kildare Partner of Fighting Words. We present creative writing workshops for primary and secondary schools. Fighting Words workshops are always free of charge to the participants. These fun interactive workshops will be conducted via ZOOM or Microsoft Teams by an experienced Fighting Words tutor, Pierina Campbell,  and supported by

Recurring

FAMILY: TREEHOUSE by Ceol Connected

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Join The Whistleberries in the treetops where a toe-tapping, tale-telling, hip-shaking hooley awaits! TREEHOUSE is Ceol Connected's unique big band music and puppetry performance for young audiences that is sure to have everyone singing along. With mesmerising original music and songs by some of Ireland’s finest musicians and performers, you can look forward to a

€2 – €16

FAMILY: My Smile Has Fallen Down

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Where has Mr Hoppity the rabbit gone?  Did he not want to be with his friends anymore? Did he run away?  Has he been eaten by the Bed Monster?! Gagglegoose thinks it might have something to do with Jelly Beans, Mrs Fox is very sure that the Bed Monster doesn’t exist, Mr Fox can’t get

€10

CINEMA: I’m Your Man

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Alma is a scientist at Berlin’s famous Pergamon Museum. In an attempt to secure funding for her latest research, she reluctantly agrees to evaluate a new line of humanoid cyborgs. But Alma has taken on more than she bargained for – the process requires her to live for three weeks with Tom, a robot programmed

€7 – €9

SCHOOLS: Pádraig Kenny introduces The Monsters of Rookhaven

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

In this event for our Whiteboard Programme,  Pádraig Kenny introduces his new novel  The Monsters of Rookhaven and talks about monsters and why they frighten us so much. Pádraig will ask what monsters are, and what frightens you, and why we like scary stories. He reads a short extract and talks about what inspires him

THEATRE: Fight Night

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Winner of Best Actor and Bewley’s Little Gem awards at Dublin Fringe, and nominated Best New Play at the Irish Times Theatre Awards, Aonghus Óg McAnally returns with his smash hit solo show Fight Night by Gavin Kostick for a 10th Anniversary nationwide tour. A gripping journey charting the comeback of Dan Coyle Jr, a

€14 – €16
Recurring

LOCAL ARTS: Newbridge Musical Theatre presents: Music of the Night

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Music of the Night: Musical Theatre’s Greatest Hits After nearly two years of waiting - musical theatre returns to Newbridge! Newbridge Musical Theatre (formerly Newbridge Musical Society) will stage ‘Music of the Night: Musical Theatre's Greatest Hits’ a concert featuring some of the greatest hits from Broadway and the West End at Riverbank Arts Centre. In particular,

€15

SCHOOLS: Science Week Workshops with Super Paua

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Riverbank Arts Centre and Super Paua present Primary School Workshops for SCIENCE WEEK from 8-11 November Choose from three very different workshops outlined below to explore science, storytelling, creativity and activism in your classroom. These workshops will be conducted via ZOOM by Mark Ball of Super Paua, who created The Lonsdale Project - a theatrical

CINEMA: Gagarine

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

The everyday wonders of the world around us dazzle in this thrilling feature debut, about a young Parisian whose dreams are far from Earthbound. Yuri lives in Cité Gagarine, a vast housing project in Ivry-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris. It was opened in the 1960s by the famous Russian cosmonaut, after whom both the

€7 – €9

Gaiety School of Acting presents IMPROV LAB

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

“A scientist and a comedian walk into a lab...” isn't the start of a joke but the premise behind the “Improv Lab” where a scientist, Dr Shane Bergin, and a comedian, Sharon Mannion, solve problems, answer questions and work as a team to solve scientific conundrums in front of a live audience. The questions and

Recurring

THEATRE: Pure Mental by Keith Walsh

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Keith Walsh is Pure Mental. Having finished up a 5-year stint presenting on National Radio, in the pressure cooker that is a breakfast show, Keith has finally found a bit of time for himself.  More importantly,  he’s found time to check in with his mental health. Midlife Crisis? Midlife awakening? Breakdown? We’ll find out. This

€15 – €18
Recurring

EXHIBITION TOUR: Beneath | Beofhód with artist Shane Hynan

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Join Shane Hynan for an informal tour of his photographic series Beneath | Beofhód at the McKenna Gallery. Shane will be available to discuss his work, what it’s about and the wider context in which it was made. Beneath | Beofhód is a long term photographic series observing the raised bogs of the Irish midlands

FREE, booking essential

CINEMA: Wildfire

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Having disappeared from her border town in Northern Ireland a year prior, Kelly (Nika McGuigan) suddenly shows up on the doorstep of her sister, Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone). Kelly’s reappearance upends Lauren’s stable life, slowly bringing to the fore, a deep-seated trauma related to the mysterious death of their mother. Despite their differences, the sisters rekindle

€7 – €9

SCHOOLS SCREENING: Night Forest/Nachtwald

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

New German language film, this engrossing and tense teen drama features great performances and beautiful natural landscapes. Driven by the belief that a legendary cave exists in the Usulenberg mountain, teenage Paul’s dad sets off on an expedition, only to never return. A year later, the boy is struggling to cope with his father’s disappearance.

€6

VISUAL ART: Beneath | Beofhód – panel discussion

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Bogs are many things to many people. They are a latent source of energy, a refuge, a carbon sink and an archive of history. As islands surrounded by pastoral land they’re often undervalued and misunderstood. They are living, breathing ecosystems with the power to absorb and reveal the past, with resurfacing iron age bog bodies

FREE, booking essential
Recurring

SCHOOLS: Fighting Words – Creative Writing Workshops

Riverbank Arts Centre Main Street, Newbridge, Ireland

Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge is the Kildare Partner of Fighting Words. We present creative writing workshops for primary and secondary schools. Fighting Words workshops are always free of charge to the participants. These fun interactive workshops will be conducted via ZOOM or Microsoft Teams by an experienced Fighting Words tutor, Pierina Campbell,  and supported by