Tibetan singing, street parades, the triumph of emergency stand-ins - Arts Editor Deirdre Falvey dips into some Galway Arts Festival events.
More than one week gone, another to go in this year's Galway Arts Festival, the last programmed by outgoing director Rose Parkinson. The streets were lively through the balmy evenings, buzzing with activity and buskers. Only Eyre Square, an overgrown building site for the second summer running, detracted from the city's atmosphere. Elsewhere, wandering down Shop Street late on Friday night there were long queues of young people - gosh, don't they look a bit young for a night club? - they do indeed, but not too young for Harry Potter mania.
On Saturday afternoon, as Druid continued its historic Synge marathon at the Town Hall Theatre (see Fintan O'Toole, above), an absorbing 10-and-a-half-hour experience including breaks, the sun shone outside on both festival good-timers and anti-abortion campaigners with their shock tactic banners.
Also inside on Saturday afternoon, in the bowels of the Radisson hotel, journalist-cum-cartoonist Joe Sacco (or graphic novelist to give him a posher title) hosted a lively Q&A session after a slide show of some of his work. The celebrated artist's best-selling cartoon books about his experiences from Palestine to Gorazde bear witness to the experience of conflict and war for people on the ground and are startling in their use of cartoon images for conflict reportage and commentary.
He talked about how different the approach to reporting is when you are drawing your story rather than writing about it. The information you need to know, the experiences you need to ask people about, the detailed knowledge of how things look to draw, say, a storyline involving landmine searches, is quite different to writing the phrase "they were looking for landmines".
His stories often feature himself, as observer. He was refreshingly frank about the whole notion of objectivity. "I'm very biased. With journalism you're supposed to be objective and give both sides, but both sides don't necessarily have the same moral weight." He might have worked differently had he been doing it primarily for a European rather than for an American readership - which for the most part gets the Israeli experience, he said. But "I don't mind being biased. It's important to be honest. The Palestinians also do things I abhor."
Sacco was interesting, too, on the difference his medium makes when introducing his work to those he wants to trust him with their experiences, or whose lives his work depicts; a comic book, even one as complex and multi-layered as his, is accessible even to those who can't speak or read English prose.
The world premiere of Mother Courage and her Children in Purgatory, outdoors on Friday in Fisheries Field, got a mixed reaction. Some people loved the show - a co-production between Teatro Del Silencio and Karlik Danza Teatro - which had striking imagery and oozed high production values, but it must have mystified the non-Spanish (or French or Arabic) speaking audience members, at least. Festivals are all about taking chances - whether in the programming or as an audience member - but this one demonstrated the risks involved in booking a world premiere.
Tibetan singer Yungchen Llamo sang a cappella on Saturday night at St Nicholas's Collegiate Church - a beautiful and atmospheric setting for the packed-out concert. Even apart from the music, the vision of Llamo, bejewelled and in a long white dress, with below-waist-length hair hanging down her back, framed by the church's beautiful stained glass window, was spectacular. Her lengthy song intros were delivered in a shy-child whisper, so you had to strain to hear what she said - but when she sang, that powerful voice ringing around the aisles didn't even seem to have come from the same place. The audience lapped up the Tibetan exile's performance, and at the back of the church a Tibetan support group sold gorgeous Tibetan wall-hangings and jewellery.
Playin' aRound was a show featuring two clowns for children of all ages in Druid Lane Theatre, written by Mark Doherty (whose magical Trad was a huge success - for adults - at the festival a couple of years ago). Doherty and Mikel Murfi did a great double act as the two clowns with clearly defined characters who spend a day playing a game of golf. It was well put together and beautifully performed with great expression, humour and without a word - instead using whistles, gestures and self-generated sound effects. It went down a bomb with the children - and charmed the adults.
Sunday afternoon's parade by Macnas was vivid and colourful, almost gentle in tone, with the inventive design and costumes that are the street theatre company's trademark. The theme was "Áit Ait", a quest to find some mythical long-lost place, and if the "plot" wasn't immediately apparent as a concept in the parade itself, it didn't matter - the spectacle delighted the thousands who had lined the streets for the annual feast of colour. One half expected incoming festival artistic director and parade veteran Paul Fahy to show up on the final float, covered in glitter and waving, but sadly he didn't feature in the parade this year.
Later that evening, due to some unspecified row, two-thirds of Michelle Shocked's trio never made it to the stage at the Radisson for her gig. The venue manager Pearse Doherty - who is also a former Saw Doctor - and Galway drummer Barry Duffy stepped into the breach and filled it terrifically for a classy gig. Shocked got a great reception and, delighted at the end of a show that might have turned sour, said with feeling, "I knew Galway would be good crack . . . thanks for letting me be myself."
But the hottest ticket on Sunday night was for the Warwick Hotel in Lower Salthill, where Doherty's former bandmates, The Saw Doctors, were whooping it up for the third night in a row, as only they can, watched all the while by their manager Ollie Jennings, founder of the arts festival and its former director. "I useta love her, useta love her once . . . ," they roared on stage, and the shoulder-to-shoulder audience responded.
The Warwick has had a long association with the arts festival, as both a venue and as accommodation for festival artists. The venue base in Galway has broadened over the years and the hotel no longer dominates the music schedules, but you can't beat it for hot, sweaty atmosphere. Sunday's gig wasn't an arts festival event at all, but a party thrown by "Doc" (Dermot O'Connor) and Sandra Butler to celebrate 21 years of running the iconic nightclub, which they started when they were still at college. Years later (in 1994) they bought the whole hotel. The place was full of Galway arts and music heads for the hooley - another Galway institution with long-standing festival connections.
The festival continues until Sunday.
www.galwayartsfestival.ie
