Kwaidan, with Live Musical Score - presented by Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival

Classification 12A

This Hallowe’en weekend, step into a world where legendary Japanese cinema and Irish creativity unites: Kwaidan. This unique event, fresh from its world premiere at World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, brings four of Lafcadio Hearn’s beloved ghost stories to life with a specially-commissioned new live score, composed by Matthew Nolan and Seán Mac Erlaine..

A household name and cultural icon in Japan, Lafcadio Hearn was an Irish-Greek writer, translator, and teacher who introduced the culture and literature of Japan to the Western world. Kwaidan, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, is one of the most visually-striking films in Japanese cinema, taking Hearn’s timeless stories and transforming them into dreamlike visions. Renowned globally for its atmospheric beauty, artistry, and poetic spirit, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (1965) and won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival.

This Irish premiere of Kwaidan will be accompanied by a haunting live score, performed live by renowned musicians Matthew Nolan and Seán Mac Erlaine, accompanied by Japanese artist Tomoko Sauvage’s mesmerising, water-based sound worlds. Acclaimed actor Conor Lovett (Gare St. Lazare Ireland) will perform a traditional Japanese Benshi-style, English-language narration, directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett (Gare St. Lazare Ireland), adding dramatic and visual depth to the eeriness on screen.

This cross-cultural collaboration is a dialogue between Japan and Ireland and a bridge between the ancient and the new, the living and the dead.

Kwaidan will premiere in Osaka, Japan in early October as part of Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival’s programme of events celebrating Hallowe’en at World Expo 2025.

Supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Dublin City Council.

Matthew Nolan is a Dublin based musician, composer, academic and curator. Since 2015, he has produced new work in collaboration with some of the finest musicians around, both Irish and international. They include Adrian Crowley, Seán Mac Erlaine, Lisa Hannigan, Ernst Reijseger, Rachel Grimes, Chris Brokaw, Erik Friedlander, Stephen Shannon, Kevin Murphy, Jan Bang, Eivind Aarset, Barry Adamson and many, many more.

Seán Mac Erlaine is a Dublin-based woodwind instrumentalist, composer and music producer, recognised as one of Ireland's most forward-thinking creative musicians. Seán's works intersects folk, free improvisation, jazz and traditional music. An accomplished saxophonist and clarinetist, Seán holds a PhD in music (practice-led research around customised live electronics in solo woodwind performance), a first degree honours Masters of Music (Jazz Performance) and a Diploma in Jazz Performance awarded by The Guildhall School of Music, London. Fascinated by performance and movement, he is also a qualified, practicing teacher of the Alexander Technique in Dublin.

Tomoko Sauvage is a Paris-based Japanese composer and artist who is best known for her long-time musical and performance practice on her original instrumentarium assembling water, ceramics and electronics. Her work centers around tactile materiality of vibrant objects and the use of the chance as a compositional method. Sauvage has performed at Barbican Centre, Palais de Tokyo, Maerz Musik, Musée d’art moderne de Paris, Manifesta 13, Roskilde Festival and RIBOCA, and her installation and video works have been shown at Sharjah Art Foundation, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and Maison Tavel.

Conor Lovett studied theatre at Scoil Stiofain Naofa in Cork prior to attending Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. At the same time he joined Gare St Lazare Players Chicago and under Bob Meyer's direction played Joey in The Homecoming by Pinter, Army in Requiem for A Heavyweight by Rod Surling, Karl in Banana For The Boy King by Bob Meyer and Noses in The Three Legged Fool by Anthony Ryan. He and Judy Hegarty Lovett founded Gare St Lazare Players Ireland in 1996 with their production of Beckett's Molloy. Their subsequent Beckett work has cemented a reputation that places them among the foremost Beckett interpreters.

Judy Hegarty Lovett is the director of 19 Beckett productions for Gare St Lazare Ireland.  Among them Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Lessness, Enough, Worstward Ho, Texts For Nothing, First Love, The End, The Calmative, Ill Seen Ill Said, How It Is, Here All Night, Waiting for Godot and Rockaby. In 2006 she directed all seven of Samuel Beckett's radio plays in a Gare St Lazare/RTE Radio One co-production to mark the centenary of the writer’s birth. Judy won Best Director at The Irish Times Theatre Awards 2022 for her production of The Realistic Jones by Will Eno and was nominated for Best Director at The Irish Times Theatre Awards (How It Is Part 2) in 2019 and for Best Production (How It Is Part 1) in 2018.

Presented by Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival
Supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Dublin City Council