FILM-MAKER Spike Jonze and 1980s band The Human League are among the highlights of this year’s Galway Arts Festival programme, published in Dublin last night.
A stellar and varied line-up also boasts Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter, the New York Theatre Workshop and original lithographs by Henri Matisse.
The two-week festival, which opens on July 12th, aims to extend from city centre venues to Inishbofin and Headford and to Tuam in the north of the county.
Celebrated theatre and opera director Sir Peter Hall will converse with critic and author Michael Billington as part of a literary programme involving crime writer Ian Rankin, journalist John Lanchester and US-based Irish journalist Niall O’Dowd.
The Druid Theatre company will premiere Enda Walsh’s new play, Penelope, while new theatre work will be presented by Galway Youth Theatre, Decadent Theatre and Electric Bridget, and An Taibhdhearc will celebrate the work of Máirtín Ó Cadhain.
Contemporary society needs to be carried “not just economically but spiritually and emotionally”, the festival’s artistic director Paul Fahy said. “Theatre throughout the centuries has helped us sustain our democracy, and we need to maintain a platform where ideas are explored and we examine our society through creativity and the arts,” he said.