Support for Cork's Heineken Green Spheres show with Passion Pit has just been announced. Joining the Boston five piece on 12 March will be the American band Shuttle and Kildare natives Planet Parade. They join Passion Pit for the next occurence of the Heineken Green Spheres experience further bolstering the series' interstellar credentials.

Cork Opera House in association with Barecheek Theatre Company with the participation of the Cork Operatic Society is delighted to present Ireland's first professional production Rent to the main stage.

The musical went on to win every major best musical award, including the Tony Award, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Rent played its final performance on Broadway on 7 September 2008 after playing 5,124 performances.

Thursday 4 March
What: The Grunts + support
Where: Crane Lane Theatre
When: 8pm

What: Lucy Wainwright Roche
Where: Cyprus Avenue
When: 8.30pm

Frank Twomey and Pakie O'Callaghan are back with a hilarious new show, 'Life After Santa Ponsa', at the Everyman Palace Theatre for five performances, from 9 March to 13 March.

In the final part of the Santa Ponsa trilogy, the lads return from serving time in a Spanish prison having been framed for something they didn't do.

Comedy of the week:
Kevin Gildea, City Limits, Friday 5 and Saturday 6 March @ 9pm.
Kevin Gildea began his comedy career in the sketch group Mr Trellis, alongside Barry Murphy and Ardal O' Hanlon. They co-founded The Comedy Cellar, Dublin's longest-running comedy club.

Tom MCrae has just released his new album 'Alphabet of Hurricanes' to an appreciative critical response this month. He begins an Irish tour by playing in Cork in Cyprus Avenue this Tuesday.

McRae has been quietly moving up the ranks of the most respected songwriters in the world today after releasing four critically acclaimed studio albums over the last nine years.

Power of Dream's influential first album, 'Immigrants, Emigrants and Me' is twenty years old this year. It described the Ireland of twenty years ago through the mouth of an 18-year-old with a particularly mature facility for song writing. While the Ireland that Craig Power described, was one lacking immigrants and mostly focussed more on emigration, it was both very dissimilar and very similar to Ireland now.

Baby Dee must be one of the most interesting characters that has ever been part of the firmament of performers involved in popular music. Her 2008 album 'Safe Inside the Day' was critically lauded and brought her a whole new audience. She has been, by turns, a performance artist, songwriter, classically trained harpist, circus sideshow veteran, and transgender street legend.

Bass Clef is rooted in deepest London and has a very distinct sound and live stage show. He is a dance artist that criss crosses musical boundaries with abandon, armed with his trombone, effects, and percussive instruments of choice. Bass Clef is a rough and ready mix of dance (hall) inspirations – twenty first century urban roots music, Caribbean rhythms, messed up glitch, hypnotic brass and classic 'hands in the air' rave dynamics which all swirl around the Bass Clef sound-system experience.

While Beckett's major works are very well known, and oft-referenced, it is always interesting to see what an artist produced before their most famous works. The End and The Calmative are two novellas Beckett produced in the years before he changed the face of modern theatre with Waiting for Godot. The End and The Calmative will be performed by Conor Lovett and directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett.