You should see it right in front of you now, a stately brick facade with an ornate stone archway framing a set of bright red doors, and the name Belltable Arts Centre carved directly into the stone above. If you take a look at your screen, you can see how it looked back in two thousand and seven, before a massive and highly controversial renovation.
This building has lived several wildly different lives. It opened in nineteen seventeen as the Coliseum Cinema, run by local merchant Michael Gough. His daughter Lena, a trained opera singer, used to belt out arias between screenings. In nineteen twenty-eight, the Coliseum made history by showing Limerick's first ever talkie, which was the term for those early motion pictures with synchronized sound, specifically a film called The Jazz Singer.
But the glory days did not last. By the nineteen fifties, locals were calling the deteriorating building a flea-pit. It shut down after a bitter strike, and in nineteen fifty-three, the auditorium was bizarrely converted into a shirt factory. Just imagine the sound of sewing machines whirring exactly where orchestras once played.
The venue was reborn as an arts center in nineteen eighty-one. The name Belltable was a diplomatic compromise. The owners wanted to honor Henry Hubert Belltable, a Belgian army officer who founded the local Holy Confraternity. A portrait of the stern officer hung in the venue for years, silently judging the avant-garde performances taking place. Avant-garde, of course, means experimental and unconventional art, something that probably would have baffled a nineteenth-century military man.
And experimental it was. During the Belltable Unfringed festival, acts like Cirque de Legume performed here, ending their show with a stage covered in what they called a grocery store massacre. But the real drama happened off-stage. In two thousand and thirteen, the center went into liquidation after a one million euro refurbishment went three hundred thousand euros over budget. The redesign was a source of local amusement. The artistic director joked that the steep new seating forced actors to look up at the audience, calling it Vatican Two theatre, a clever reference to the modernizing church reforms that flipped traditional hierarchies.
Thankfully, the theatre reopened in two thousand and sixteen. Playwright Mike Finn, whose classic play Pigtown premiered here in nineteen ninety-nine, calls it a hothouse for local talent. Oh, and it might also be a hothouse for the paranormal. Staff have reported a Grey Lady ghost walking up the stairs and vanishing into an empty, locked room.
Whether you are looking for local talent or a basement cafe coffee, just remember the venue is open Monday from twelve PM to five thirty PM, Tuesday through Friday from nine AM to five thirty PM, and closed on weekends. Take all the time you need to appreciate this quirky space, and whenever you are ready, we can head to the next stop.
