So yesterday was Bloomsday. Like Robyn I struggle with reading Joyce. (Actually I just struggle with reading…).
I am just a bit too young to have dressed up as a woman to go to the segregated screening of Ulysses. Have read some but never finished Ulysses. But for an insight into Joyce I like Roaratorio.
Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake, a John Cage classic is available online.
The piece is a realization of another Cage score, ____,____ ____ circus on ____, which consists of an instruction on how to translate any book into a performance. The book used for Roaratorio is Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, a long-time favorite of Cage’s.
Here I am with nothing to say. If one of you wants to go somewhere, go ahead and leave at any time. What we need is silence, but what silence needs is that I go on talking.
Take an hour of listening time. Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake, a John Cage classic.
Christchurch City Libraries Blog 
My adult children did not believe me when I told them about the segregated screenings of Ulysses. How could they imagine that in 1972 in New Zealand the film was screened to two test audiences, one all male and made up of representatives from churches, and one of married couples. The first group thought it should be restricted to members of Film Societies and to audiences 18 and over. The second group thought the language in the film would be embarrassing in ‘mixed company’, so the film censor decided men and women should be separated during screenings. A former colleague remembers seeing it at University in a theatre with a rope down the centre aisle, men on one side and women on the other. At University. In the ’70s. How biddable were we?
Now it is rated M:contains sex scenes. Perhaps we should organise a segregated showing of the film next year for Bloomsday.