Tributes have been paid to Michael Diskin (49), a leading member of the Galway arts community, who died at the weekend after a long illness.
Mr Diskin, manager of Galway’s Town Hall Theatre, was the first paid administrator for the city’s highly successful international arts festival, and spent time as director of Belfast’s Lyric Theatre.
A native of Salthill, he was a graduate of NUI Galway and took a PhD in the politics of Ulster unionism at Glasgow’s Strathclyde University.
He worked as a tax consultant with Craig Gardner, and as adviser to the Japanese embassy in Dublin after graduation, before returning to the west where also worked as manager of the Galway Arts Centre.
Close friend Gary McMahon, formerly of Macnas street theatre company, said he was a “passionate advocate” of the arts, who was “highly respected, determined and with a wicked sense of humour”.
“It was through Mike’s influence that the Town Hall Theatre became the most successful of a slew of regional theatres,” Mr McMahon said.