Bloomsday in Chicago – June 16th

Bloomsday

‘BLOOMSDAY IN CHICAGO’ RETURNS ON JUNE 16th, 5 PM
To The Second Floor of The Galway Arms at 2442 N. Clark Street

Our 21st Year

At 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 16th, Puddin’’head Press will present a “Bloomsday” reading from James Joyce’s Ulysses hosted by playwright and author Jeff Helgeson on the second floor of The Galway Arms at 2442 N. Clark Street.

Featuring a sequence of readings presented by local actors, writers, scholars, and devoted James Joyce fans, this year’s salon in a saloon will be a continuation of the regular commemorations begun in 2004 on the 100th anniversary of the day the novel is set, “Bloomsday” June 16th.

Banned in The United States and many other countries, including Ireland, when it was first published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach, the owner of Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris, in 1998 Ulysses was selected by The Modern Library as the best novel of the 20th century.

Following the design of The Odyssey of Homer within the setting of 1904 Dublin, Ulysses is a literary adventure of the highest degree that is filled with allusions, extended passages of stream-of-consciousness, and word-play of every kind.

The complete list of readers and actors of Bloomsday in Chicago 2023 (in order of appearance) will be:

The host, Jeff Helgeson then:

Dave Gecic, Bob Chicoine, Rory Barton, Mick Greco, Kate McDuffi, Sharon Rukin, Sam de Bois, Erik Schiller, Gary Brichetto, Ray Whol, Bob Rashko, Elizabeth Harper, Howard Raik, Jerry Pendegras, Sallie Berg Seeley, Brian Boller, Rory Jobst, Courtney Reed-Harris, Nora Byrd, Kerry Taylor, Lynn Fitzgerald, McKenna Liesman, Leonard de Montburm, Westley Heine, Stephen Bedo, Dan Cleary, and Barbara Button

The Galway Arms
2442 N. Clark Street
Chicago, Illinois 60614
As of 2013, James Joyce House in Dublin has “Liked” WWW.Facebook.com/BloomsdayChicago

$7 cover at the door

See our 2021 presentation on YouTube: Bloomsday on YouTube

Here is a video of Barbara Button performing Molly Bloom at the closing of Bloomsday in Chicago 2022.

Bios of Actors

Rory Barton – writer and performer and preeminent James Joyce scholar in his household who enjoys reading passages of Finnegan’s Wake to his perplexed children, now one and two years old.

Salli Berg Seeley writes poetry and creative non-fiction and has taught Chicago Lit, Multicultural Lit and writing at De Paul University.

Gary Bircetto – Chicago-based actor who has appeared in many theaters and on television, having recently completed reading the copy of Ulysses he purchased in Dublin many years ago.

Brian Boller is a dancer and actor who has appeared in numerous Chicago area productions, including “The Waste Land” at The Chicago Danztheater Ensemble, in addition to being the father of a beautiful one and a half year old daughter.

Barbara Button – actress recently seen at Red Twist Theatre and currently understudying in Bloomsday at Remy Bumpo Theatre, who has also appeared as Mary Tyrone in the Collage Productions presentation of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, as well as in numerous productions in Chicago area theaters, in addition to having performed Molly Bloom’s monologue for “Bloomsday in Chicago” since its inception in 2004.

Nora Byrd – an enthusiastic participant in the Chicago traditional Irish music scene who often sings at sessions in The Galway Arms and also performs with Sharing Notes, an organization that sends musicians to hospitals throughout Chicago.

Dan Cleary – poet and artist, author of The Green Ribbon, James Gerard and Other Poems for the Larger Voice, and A Few Stray Leaves, born and raised in Tipperary, Ireland.

Sam du Bois is a graduate of the Masters in Fine Arts program at Columbia College and a co-founder and editor at Coordenadad Magazine. He won the Friends of American Writers Award and the Nopales con Cielo Award for non-fiction and fiction.

Lynn Fitzgerald – poet and author of Closer to the Earth, Oppenheimer Award recipient and National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar, University of Chicago Carnegie Mellon Fellow and featured reader at poetry venues throughout Chicago.

Dave Gecic – Publisher of Puddin’head Press and host of poetry readings at The Gallery Cabaret, sponsor of “Bloomsday in Chicago” for the past fifteen years.

Mick Greco – lawyer by day and actor for life who has appeared in numerous Chicago theatrical productions and several independent films, as well as in the character of Mr, Leopold Bloom for “Bloomsday In Chicago” on several occasions.

Elizabeth Harper – Elizabeth Harper – author of Love Songs from Psychopaths, Fairy Tales Gone Awry, A Mercenary Girdle, and several chapbooks. Some of her writing can be found on Literature Ape.

Jeff Helgeson – host of Bloomsday in Chicago since its inception for the 100th anniversary of the day on which James Joyce’s Ulysses, playwright and author and university instructor of literature.

Westley Heine is the author of Busking Blues: Recollections of a Chicago Street Musician and Squatter (Roadside Press – 2022). His poems and short stories can be found throughout the independent press. He has twice been featured at The Green Mill Poetry Slam and is the host of the poetry open mic at The Gallery Cabaret. Most recently Page Telegram Press has released his novella Picture Book, and Roadside Press has released a poetry collection Street Corner Spirits, with audio excerpts now available on all streaming services

Rory Jobst is a local actor/playwright/director who teaches at Truman College, North Park University, Roosevelt University and Loyola University.

McKenna Liesman – actress and American Sign Language/English Interpretator who appeared as Juliet in Red Theatre’s “R & J: The Vineyard,” as well as in Chicago Danztheatre’s production of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, in addition to such other productions as Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and “King Lear” in the role of Reagan.

Kate McDuffie is an arts administrator, occasional performing artist, and former arts educator wholikes to talk about her passion for accessibility in the arts and education, recent shows that she has seen, and anything Shakespeare.

Count Leonard de Montbrun – a Chicago-based poet who hosted readings at The Hungry Brain for a number of years and is a retired instructor from the City Colleges of Chicago who has participated in several previous “Bloomsday In Chicago” readings.

Jerry Pendergast – a poet whose work has appeared in After Hours Magazine and Caravel and who regularly hosts poetry readings at number of places within Chicago.

Howard A. Raik – an actor who has appeared in many shows in Chicago and suburbs, most recently in Kirkwood Player’s Alice In Wonderland, playing the Mad Hatter.

Courtney Reid Harris – an actress and vocalist who appeared in The Wasteland and This Is Not A Pipe with the Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble.

Erik Schiller is an actor who has worked in film, television, and theater, working with various companies including Akvavit Theatre and Cascade Productions.

Hugh Schwartzberg – a lawyer in private practice who has served by appointment of several United States Presidents, both Democrat and Republican, and who, as an undergraduate at Harvard, tied for First Place in the Boylston Contest for Oral Interpretation of Classical Literature with his reading of passages from James Joyce’s Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man.

Raymond Wohl is a playwright, actor, and retired Chicago Public School teacher who has hitch-hiked through Ireland, kissed “the Blarney Stone,” and first read James Joyce at the Jesuit high school from which he graduated in Toledo, Ohio.