Walshestown woman Sarah Jane Foster was at the centre of a memorable pop gig from singer Cian Ducrot at the Dublin Portal on Tuesday, 27 August.
Sarah Jane — a former footballer with Shandonagh GAA — presented the show along with Joe Callahan from the Portals Organisation. It was broadcast live to New York City, Vilnius in Lithuania and Lublin in Poland with Dublin shoppers stopping to witness Ducrot’s performance. It was also available to stream on Ciright Live, a livestream platform for music performances. Fans were only notified of the gig 20 minutes before but it was a long time in the making.
“We came up with this concept to have live music productions at the portal. We’d been talking about it for months and it just came to fruition with Cian Ducrot. We thought he would be the perfect match for it given the nature of his following being very much online,” Sarah Jane told Topic.
“We had a huge production. I started off with three cameras and ended up with over ten. It was absolutely huge and we broadcast it on Ciright live. It went incredibly well and the feedback we got on it has been insane. We’ve gotten a huge reaction to it.”
Those who have visited the portal will know people on the other side can be seen and not heard. Sarah Jane and the team worked around this by connecting speakers to each portal to transmit Ducrot’s performance. The video of Ducrot’s performance will be available to purchase on Ciright Live in the coming days. It was a very special event according to Sarah Jane.
“It’s so lovely to see the way it brings people together. You have to see the portal to actually connect with it. Cian was interacting with the people through the portal. The way we did the staging was he was able to interact with us but he was also able to interact with the audience in the other country.”
“It was just magical,” she added.
In more exciting news for Sarah Jane, she was recently named global producer of Ciright Live. The Walshestown woman — a former St Kenny NS pupil — said the appointment was “absolutely incredible”.
“We have huge plans to bring more artists to the portal in Dublin. We’ve got really exciting things coming up.”
Sarah Jane is the swiss army knife of television production. Along with her presenting duties and new role at Ciright Live, she is the owner of her own production company, SJF productions, and is producing a podcast called Unfiltered with Sarah Jane Foster. So how does she manage to keep all the plates spinning at the one time?
“With great difficulty! It’s full on. It’s absolutely full on.”
“I’m just managing my time. I’m going to have to manage it better with Ciright Live coming on board and not book too many projects.”
“SJF production is my baby, it will always be my baby. I’ve built up such good relationships with my clients at SJF productions and I value them so much so I’m not just going to abandon my baby. They respect that and know where I’m coming from.”
