At great personal risk I have to state that I believe a pipe band, a football match, school sports, a beauty competition and late-night bar extensions do not a festival make.
These are the ingredients, take or leave one or two, of your average summer festival in provincial Ireland.
It was refreshing to come across a festival in Co Laois where a unique pageant will be staged on the weekend of July 17th.
The Erkina Cultural Festival will stage it in Donaghmore Workhouse on that date, and those who come along can participate.
Donaghmore is only a few miles from Rathdowney, Co Laois, off the main Dublin-Limerick road and just over an hour from Dublin.
The Erkina Development Association, which recently drew up a development plan for the area, realised it had something rare in the local workhouse, which is virtually unchanged since the time of the Famine.
Mr Paul Keating, executive officer of the association, said: "The local workhouse, where in 1859 there were nearly 1,000 people, is virtually unchanged since those days, so visitors have a unique opportunity to see what a workhouse was like.
"The cells where the inmates lived with their straw bedding and the locked cells for the lunatics and dangerous people are there to be seen.
"Working on the records, a number of people who are involved in local drama here decided to put together a pageant which tells the story of the guardians and the inmates.
"This pageant is based on the minutes of the meetings of the Board of Guardians who dealt with the day-to-day running of the establishment," he added.
"What we do is bring visitors around the building and while they are being shown around, there are a number of incidents. They are brought into a central area where they give their verdict on what they have seen," he said.
The issues, he said, included whether unruly paupers should be prosecuted, how to deal with the distribution of clothes of deceased inmates and the fees for the new gravedigger.
"There is also a section of the pageant where the audience has to decide what to do with the barber who was refusing to shave patients in the fever wing.
"We have tried this out experimentally and have been amazed at what groups who have been here have decided to do. They were at complete variance with the decision of the Board of Guardians.
"In fact all of this helps to put history in perspective, and we believe there is a very wide audience for it, far beyond even the midlands.
"If it works well for us we would like to keep it running and have the actors, who are mainly from the farming community and others who work in various businesses, continue doing the pageant.
"We see it as a chance for some of those involved, especially the farmers with small holdings, to earn some off-farm income over the year," he said.
Mr Keating said that for those not interested in the pageant, the cultural festival has arranged an outing to the local bog where there will be demonstrations of turf-cutting and other rural crafts.
The Erkina Development Association can be contacted at (0505) 46320.