Story telling by Maria D’Arcy |
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| E-mail: | |
| Phone: | 01 42 93 10 52 |
| Portable: | 06 83 27 23 80 |
| Address: | 75017 Paris, France |
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| Story telling at Shakespeare & Company in Paris. |
Being part-Irish and part-Scottish, Maria has a charming lilt to her voice and enjoys bringing it to life through a collection of famous extracts from the highlights of Irish and Scottish literature. In awe of these masters, her greatest aspiration is to do justice to their compelling genius, bringing these works vibrantly to life.
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Maria D’Arcy introducing guest performers at the Bloomsday Anniversary at the Swan Bar in Paris, June 17th 2009. —photo by David Henry |
Those who have seen her performances would add that if James Joyce, Oscar Wilde or Robert Burns were around today, they would be proud of Maria’s performances of their works. She renders the literary works accessible, irresistible and exuberant. Many spectators say that it’s the first time they have fully understood the piece, for she brings out humanity and credibility, since women are after all a hive of contradictions, just like men. The parts are a celebration of femininity and womanly wiles.
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| A reading of Gerty MacDowell at a Bloomsday festival at the Shakespeare & Company bookshop. |
Maria is a trained Arabian Belly Dancer and has performed to many an Irish audience, appeared on Irish TV and is now delighting The French International set by mixing in the magic of dancing in veils with the opium of pure literature.
Oscar Wilde reworked the famous bible story of “Salomé” into a lyrical, intoxicatingly powerful legend of obsession and desire. A fiery, spoiled young Princess is riveted when she hears the thunderous yet velveteen voice of John The Baptist—and recognizes in him a passionate, frenzied spirit akin to her own. She aspires to seduce him languorously but is so outraged when he rejects, renounces, refuses even to look at her that she vows the kiss him, come what may. A truly perverse way presents itself: an offer of whatsoever she would please for deigning to dance for the lecherous King Herod. She dances the fabled, the entrancing “Dance of The Seven Veils.”
Maria D’Arcy put on a performance of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé on Saint Patrick’s Day 2003 on Bateau Daphné, a boat on the river Seine in Paris.