The Idea
Sunday Night at The Lark is a live variety show, broadcast to the world. Two proof of concept shows, one room, a house band, and the best acts we can put on a stage, with a view to a full series in January. It's an old school Sunday night television format, reworked for a 400 seat venue and a global livestream.
The show is two things at once. In the venue, it is a proper night out, doors at 6, a warm atmosphere, live music, comedy, dance and conversation, home by half eight. On the stream, it is viewing for the Irish abroad, an hour and a half from home for the price of a drink.
How We See It
There is no show like this being made in Ireland right now. The Late Late owns Friday. Nobody owns Sunday. The Lark has the venue, the cameras, the crew and the campus to make broadcast quality entertainment ourselves and put it straight into people's homes.
The tone of the show is warm, live and a bit loose. Not polished to death. If a string breaks or a joke dies, that is part of the night. The audience in the room is part of the show, and the audience at home should feel like they are in the third row.
The Room and the Set
The Lark is a 400 seat concert hall on the IIMS campus with eleven 4K cameras built into the room.
Set design: theatre style, travel curtain, wings all TBC.
- House band on a riser upstage, on camera all night, driving the pace of the show.
- Traveller curtain on the mid truss for scene changes and act reveals.
- Projector screen flying in at the balcony line for the Portal segment, VTs and graphics.
- Wide flat wing panels facing the audience with par can uplights, acts entering side stage.
The Show
Ninety minutes, on air 6:30pm, off air 8:00pm, with a fifteen minute interval at 7pm. Eight or so acts a night, opened by the house band, chorus line dancers. The mix each night is music first, with comedy, dance, spoken word and one conversation piece. Acts are a blend of established names, touring artists routing through Ireland, and the best emerging talent in the country.
Every act gets a broadcast quality multi-camera recording of their performance. For emerging artists that is worth more than a fee. For established acts it is a Sunday night audience they may not get anywhere else.
The Portal to the Irish Abroad
Something that no one else is doing. Each show we have a live link to an Irish community somewhere in the world, a bar in Boston, a GAA club in Dubai, a session in Sydney. For that section of the show, we are all in the one room.
There are over 70 million people worldwide who claim Irish heritage. The Portal is our way of connecting people. It gives the stream a reason to exist and gives us a different city to talk about every single show.
The Stream
Every show goes out live at €5 a ticket with a 48 hour replay window. The venue caps at 400, the streaming cap does not. A modest online audience doubles the revenue of a sold out room, and the replay window catches every time zone across the world.
The stream is not a camera pointed at a gig. Eleven cameras, a vision mix, dedicated broadcast audio, graphics and VTs. It is made as television, delivered over the internet.
What Success Looks Like
- Two shows delivered on time, on budget, at broadcast standard.
- The venue selling through in Fingal and north Dublin, and Sunday at The Lark becoming a habit.
- A growing stream audience, with the diaspora finding the show and coming back.
- Two broadcast quality shows and every individual performance in a library we own outright.
- The Lark proven as a venue that can originate its own programming, not just host other people's.
Moving Forward
These two shows are the proof. Everything after them builds on what they establish:
- A full series launching in January 2027, with sponsors and partners on board, sold off the back of real audience numbers rather than a pitch.
- The performance library cut into clips and specials, working for the show all year round.
- The Portal grown into a proper network of Irish communities abroad, each one a future audience and story.
- The Lark positioned as a self contained production campus with venue, cameras, crew, accommodation and rehearsal space under one roof, making its own shows and offering the same to others.
Sunday Night at The Lark is not a one off run of gigs. It is our first show out of a building that intends to make many more.