Lifestyle

Galway actor lands star role in new film on War of Independence

Published

9 years ago

September 12, 2014

Tara Breathnach in a scene from Nightingale Falling in which her character, May, is forced to make critical and difficult decisions when she rescues a British soldier during the War of Independence.

Lifestyle – Judy Murphy meets Galway actor Tara Breathnach who has graduated from TV soaps to the big screen in Nightingale Falling

Money can buy you many things, but goodwill and support are not necessarily among them. However, goodwill and support were demonstrated by the bucketful when the independent film, A Nightingale Falling, was shot with almost no money last year in Offaly.

A Nightingale Falling, which lists Galway actress Tara Breathnach among its stars, goes on nationwide release this Friday, having already wowed audiences at Galway Film Fleadh and at last week’s inaugural Sky Road Film Festival in Clifden, where it was named best film. But none of it could have happened without extraordinary support and backing from local people in Offaly, who did everything from controlling traffic to supplying extras for the drama, according to Tara.

She’s had a whirlwind couple of weeks, attending the Clifden premiere as well as one in Offaly. The Spiddal-based actor also travelled to London where she was working on a two-day shoot for the BBC soap, Holby City, where she had a guest role.

But she is not complaining. Far from it. Tara, who is originally from Knocknacarra, has made a deliberate decision to base herself in the West of Ireland, and is happy to commute to Dublin, London or elsewhere when work demands it.

She will be best known to audiences locally as the devious Tina from TG4’s Ros na Rún, a role she played until a year and a half ago, when she was written out of the series.

“The thought of leaving was terrifying, but at the back of my mind I’d been wondering about going,” she says.

However, left to her own devices, Tara would have been reluctant to leave the safe environs of the Irish-language drama, so “being pushed was good”, she adds with a laugh.

Since then, she has played Ann Boleyn in a BBC docu-drama series and her most recent BBC work was with Holby City, playing a guest character who may return.

Tara has also found theatre work in London, and was understudy for Dervla Kirwan in the West End’s staging of Conor McPherson’s highly acclaimed play, The Weir, recently. Unfortunately for Tara, Dervla was in rude good health for the duration.

Closer to home, Tara landed the role of May Colingwood in A Nightingale Falling after fellow actor Muireann Bird saw her in a play at Dublin’s Focus Theatre last year. Muireann had been cast in the film, set during the Irish War of Independence and based on the novel by Clare writer and musician PJ Curtis.

Muireann and Tara both knew about each other from Galway but had never worked together, although both moved in the same professional circles.

“We had both worked on the Jack Taylor series [the TV3 adaptation of Ken Bruen’s detective books] but not on the same episodes,” says Tara.

After seeing Tara on stage, Muireann advised her to email a CV to the film’s co-producer Garret Daly, which the Galway actress duly did. That was in April. The film was due to start shooting in June, but the producers had not found anyone suitable for the role of May until Tara came along.

A Nightingale Falling was mostly shot in Daingean, Co Offaly, as well as in Tyrrellspass, Co Westmeath. Daingean was a perfect location for a period film thanks to its old buildings, including a barracks, courthouse, industrial school and a residence which provided the ideal backdrop for this historic drama, set during the War of Independence.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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Connacht Tribune

Using herbs to gently combat life’s ills

Published

7 hours ago

March 30, 2023

Denise McNamara

Health, Beauty and Lifestyle with Denise McNamara

Patricia McGettigan grew up in a house in Inverin where flowers and herb would be used as remedies for common complaints. Once married, she moved first to Donegal and then to the UK and anywhere she set up home she would grow herbs and use those to create teas and tinctures.

These she would dole out to family and friends for complaints ranging from sore joints, constipation, stomach issues, sleep.

A trained beauty therapist, holistic masseur with training in aromatherapy and dealing with gut problems, it was during the pandemic that she decided to immerse herself in training in herbalism and get qualified with the Herbal Study Academy.

Accredited by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners, it is an online school founded by Tuam-based herbalist Patrick Murphy which allows people to pick and choose what aspects of herbal medicine they wish to learn about with a view to living healthier or to practice in the field.

“While I’ve always done it myself, I decided to get really deep into it because I love it, it’s an utter passion for me,” explains Patricia.

“The things is, everybody knows a bit about it, they just forget what they’ve learned when they were small when their granny or grandad would reach for the old-fashioned cure.”

Patricia practices from her home in Inverin where she does consultations with people before deciding which herbs and teas would suit them best. A consultation costs €50.

“They come in and have a chat as long as they want so we can try to get the cause of the problem. They might have a headache but it could be a stress headache, the problem could actually be coming from the gut as a result of die but it manifests itself as a headache.

“You have to start slow and give time to let herbs work. It’s better for the body to get to the root cause. It’s easy to treat a symptom, it’s harder to find out why the body is reacting the way it does.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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Country Living

Mini moans but still a tonic as ‘summer time’ says hello

Published

7 hours ago

March 30, 2023

Francis Farragher

The season of light has arrived to our shores.

Country Living with Francis Farragher

As one ‘shoves on’ in life, there tends to be an increasing attendance at anniversary masses of friends and family — at the back of the mind, there’s always the nagging feeling at such occasions, that you’ve moved up in the queue.

Regardless of the intensity of one’s religious fever though — or the lack of it — there is always something special about remembering the passing of a loved one: gone but not forgotten, is probably the best way to sum it.

The great and warming tradition of the chat with neighbours after the preacher has finishing his words still persists, and especially so across rural Ireland, and inevitably the conversation seems to switch to the weather.

Last Sunday morning as I walked out from Brooklodge Church in Ballyglunin — a lovely little prayer place nestled in one corner of the old Blake estate — I was reminded that I shouldn’t have praised February too much over recent weeks, as March was always waiting in the wings to deal with such buds of early spring optimism.

The theme of the advice was to never count your chickens before they hatch, because if we enjoyed a good spell of weather in the late-winter, early-spring period, nature’s scales would soon balance things out. There were also murmurs too about the price of bales of silage.

For those of you not of a rural hue, these are essentially big bales of grass wrapped up in plastic to preserve them, a commodity you couldn’t ‘give away’ in February as we all looked forward to an ‘early spring’.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

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Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

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Galway in Days Gone By

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

7 hours ago

March 30, 2023

Stephen Corrigan

Young participants during the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Athenry on March 17, 1996.

1923

Capital of Connacht

Retail shopkeepers in County Galway towns complain very justly that they have to go to Dublin and cross-Channel for their goods, whereas in the all too few instances in which they can purchase in the county town at wholesale rates, they find they can do much better as to price and quite as good as to quality.

Has Galway ever considered what it would mean to the town if the wholesale trade were developed to any extent within its walls?

It would mean that instead of crowded streets on Saturdays and occasionally on Wednesdays, we should have eager, active businessmen thronging our thoroughfares every day of the six; that we should have streams of vehicles coming to and going from the city; that business would be stimulated, employment increased and prices reduced.

It would mean that shipping in our harbour would grow and expand, slowly and, perhaps even painfully, at first, that coastwise traffic would be developed, and that Galway would in course of time become in fact, as well as in the name, the capital of Connacht.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

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