Wilde about Joyce: In the theatre piece devised for 2009, Wilde about Joyce, two literary giants of the twentieth century go head-to-head in Writer's Purgatory about their different approaches to Life and Art. This play explores what the younger writer, Joyce, might owe to Wilde, and what it was like to be writing in the wake of the Wildean trauma and Wilde's subversive anti-realism. This original play in the stately Queen's Hall at the State Library, which we re-style as Club Purgatory, will dramatise, in a novel and comedic manner, extracts from the four chapters in Ulysses in which the mercurial showmanship of Buck Mulligan is on display. We ask Buck if he might be a version of Wilde, and Joyce's tribute to him. Shakespeare was a touchstone for both writers and Joyce's theory of Art, expounded dramatically in Chapters 1 (Telemachus) and 9 (Scylla and Charybdis) of Ulysses, are the main foci of this theatre piece. The play also draws in minor ways on Oxen of the Sun and Circe.

The Seminar: Two stalwarts of Bloomsday in Melbourne have their say about some interesting connections between the works of the two men. Philip Harvey will examine the role that betrayal plays in the works of both; Frances Devlin-Glass will discuss Joyce's representation of homosexuality in Joyce's work from his early essay on Salome in 1909, in Dubliners, Portrait and Ulysses.

Dinner with Wilde: Enjoy the Bloomsday Players as they doff their hats to the master of late nineteenth century comedy, Oscar Wilde. We present extracts from the plays of Wilde. The dinner will occur in the gracious surrounds of the Dining Room at the Celtic Club. Spaces are limited and this event will book out early, we think. Dinner will be a choice between beef and fish, and a vegetarian option is available, but you must request it at the time of booking.