"Penelope" Animation Project

"Penelope" Animation Project - Excerpt from Ulysses by James Joyce

Through kinetic captioning, award-winning Irish actor Maria Doyle Kennedy and animator and ‘Joyce geek’ Adam Harvey bring to life an excerpt from “Penelope,” episode 18 of Ulysses. Project creator Catherine Flynn, associate professor of English at UC Berkeley and editor of The Cambridge Centenary Ulysses: The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes, launches the piece in an online event with discussion of the text and its storied performance history.

Maria Doyle Kennedy

Maria Doyle Kennedy is a singer, actor and filmmaker. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she has a fierce love for, and attachment to the writers and creatives of the city recently animating the voice of Molly Malone as part of the talkingstatuesdublin.ie project.

Maria co-runs the independent label Mermaid Records for which she has released 11 albums. Fire on the Roof of Eden, released in May 2021 , was nominated for album of the year by the Irish Times while Hotpress described her as “ one of Ireland’s greatest vocalists and a national treasure”.

As an actor Maria has appeared in over 50 film and tv roles winning her third IFTA in 2022 for her portrayal of Birdy in AMC's Kin series. Other roles include Catherine of Aragon in The Tudors, Jocasta in Outlander and Tannie Maria in the new Acorn show Recipes for Love and Murder.

Following her production of a documentary about Irish artist Patrick Scott, Maria has moved further into filmmaking writing and directing A Different Kind of Day and Colour Code and is currently developing a feature length film funded by Screen Ireland.

MariaDK.com

Adam Harvey

Adam Harvey has used Joyce’s corpus as his artistic whetstone for over a quarter century now. As an actor, he has performed at Joyce events and non-joyce events around the world, including New York City’s Symphony Space and the Edinburgh Fringe, and his collaborators on various Finnegans Wake projects in particular run a diverse range of styles, from Boston Baroque’s Martin Pearlman to punk bassist Mike Watt.

Adam's textual animations – originally developed as part of his performance work – can be viewed on YouTube as well as his website: joycegeek.com.

The Penelope Project Filmed

Maria Doyle Kennedy Penelope filmed Version Ulysses

The Penelope Project Commentary

"Penelope" Animation Project Commentary

Gerardine Meaney, Professor, University College Dublin

Gerardine Meaney is Professor of Cultural Theory in the School of English, Drama and Film. Her current research interests are in gender, ethnic and national identities in literature and culture and the application of new digital methodologies to humanities research.

Katherine O’Callaghan, Lecturer, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Dr. Katherine O’Callaghan lectures on James Joyce, modernism, Irish literature, and the role of music in novels. She received her PhD on the topic of Joyce and Music from University College Dublin.  She is an elected member of the Board of Trustees of the International James Joyce Foundation.

Emily Moell, Co-host U22 The Centenary Ulysses Podcast

Emile Moell received her degree in English at the University of California, Berkeley. A Redding native, she took a few gap years working internationally before studying at Berkeley. She now is a chef at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse.