Experience an Irish Christmas Saturday at RRCA
"A Celtic Christmas" is returning to the River Raisin Centre for the Arts.
The show, which offers Irish Christmas songs, stories and dancing, came to Monroe in the past and was so popular, RRCA is bringing it back, said Mike Trapp, executive director.
"A Celtic Christmas" will take place at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 11. Tickets are $38 for adults, $35 for seniors and $20 for children.
The show is now in its 26th year of touring nationally.
It “recreates the joy and innocence of a night before Christmas in a remote farmhouse in the west of Ireland in the 1950s, when the neighboring families gather around the fire to grace the wintry night with traditional Irish Christmas carols, to raise the rafters with the joy of their music, to knock sparks off the flagstone floor with traditional dances and, of course, stories. They filled the night with the laughter of their stories," said producers.
“A lot of the old ways of life are still around there," show director Tomaseen Foley once told The Monroe News. "Neighbors would gather at night and tell stories, play music and dance."
The cast of the show includes Irish dancers, singers and instrumentalists. The cast plays guitar, uilleann pipes, Irish flute and whistles.
Uilleann pipes performer Brian Bigley has studies the instrument for almost 30 years and also makes the instrument.
Guitar player and music director William Coulter earned a Grammy in 2005.
Soloist and dancer Eimear Arkins has 11 solo All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil titles.
Foley, who lives in Ireland, has offered touring shows for years, including “A Saint Patrick Celebration” and the one-man show “Lines from My Grandmother’s Forehead.”
RRCA is located at 114 S. Monroe St.
For tickets, visit RiverRaisinCentre.org or call (734) 242-7722.
On the Net: www.ACelticChristmas.com
This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Experience an Irish Christmas Saturday at RRCA
