An army of junk drummers, make-up mystics and animal artists spent yesterday preparing for last night’s annual parade in Galway. There was no raining on their parade
THE THEME of this year's Macnas parade at Galway Arts Festival, This Fierce Beauty, is "energy" – artistic, political, social, ecological. Appropriately, its artistic director, Noeline Kavanagh, is the epitome of energy. For weeks she has been dashing from pillar to post, supervising rehearsals, conferring with the composers of the specially commissioned soundtrack, double-checking everything to the last button and brace. Now the time has come for a stream of junk drummers, punk cabaret artists, inventors, philosophers, mystics and enigmatic animals to pour through the city's winding medieval streets.
" This Fierce Beautyis about transformation," she says. "Visceral energy, lifting you up from the dirt. Like that Yeats poem: 'I must lay down where all the ladders start/ in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart'. There's no lecturing here. Although we do have a giant cockroach. And when you look at his face, you just know he's a politician."
7 AMThe day begins badly. You've heard the expression "rain on my parade"? Double it. Add a grey sky, dripping trees and the monotonous chundling of mechanical street sweepers. Such is the situation as Sunday struggles to life around Eyre Square. If I belonged to Macnas, I'd be tempted to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.
10 AMAt the company's offices on Fisheries Field, however, they're just getting on with it. The wheeled carts that will carry the enormous figures for which Macnas is renowned have moved in from the company's warehouse at Liosbán, where a team of welders, painters and general make-and-doers have brought Kavanagh's ingenious ideas to full metal life. The monstrous dog was inspired by Patti Smith and Shane MacGowan – punk, drunk and angry. The rhinoceros in the wheelchair, his bronze eyes glaring balefully downwards, represents the poet William Blake. The cockroach is resplendent in top hat and, well, cockroachy feeler things. When the parade gets going these figures will be fully animated: eyes swivelling, hands moving, tails – if appropriate – wagging.
11 AM"Come on, now. I want to see the biggest leg-over since John Wayne!" Kavanagh is putting the animal sweepers from The Upside-Down Circus – a group of Galway adults with learning disabilities – through their paces. They're Macnas veterans: some of them have been taking part in the parade for 10 years. Each member of the group wields a large animal head on a pole, which they shake, wiggle and wave with gusto. "Animals: jump!" comes the command from their whistle-blowing team leader. "No, wait a minute," says Kavanagh. It would be funnier, she decides, if he were to bark his commands in another language. He switches effortlessly to Catalan, causing much merriment (and some delightful confusion) among his troupe of sweepers. Welcome to Planet Macnas.
12 NOONFor the costume department, whose nine members have been slaving over hot sewing machines for the past month, most of the work is already done. Forget school productions of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, and think Project Runway: this is seriously intricate fashion-designer chic.
“Over the past three years, working with Noeline, we’ve developed a definite style,” says head costumier Triona Lillis. “It involves a lot of distressing on the fabrics – a kind of steampunk vibe.”
On one side of the room Mags Lynagh is revamping a corset with the help of coloured zips, a wide bronze belt and a meticulous row of safety pins around the neckline. Out in the hall, Cherie White is doing something to a ballet-style skirt attached to something that’s half cotton shirt, half straitjacket. What is she using to make it shine like that? She waves a triumphant rubber glove. “Vaseline and dust, with a coating of PVA afterwards to help it survive the weather,” she explains..
Lillis laughs: “Cherie is just . . . muck girl.”
3 PMAt Fisheries Field, the military operation that is make-up is in full swing. Ordinary-looking people go into the Macnas offices: extraordinary-looking people come out. A skinny Pierrot, all in white, wiggles his Salvador Dali moustaches and raises a quizzical eyebrow in salute.
“It’s a surreal day. You’re always waiting for the Scud missile to fall,” says make-up maestro Hilary Kavanagh. “We’re the only department that doesn’t have anything done in advance, because our work all has to be created on the spot.”
Make-up is one of those details that, to the untrained eye, might seem like an optional add-on. Not at Macnas. “You have to pay attention to every little detail, or the audience senses it,” says Kavanagh. “I have ridiculous chats with Noeline about the shade of the lipstick. And it does make a difference.”
5 PMThe rain has eased off, the sun has put in a few sporadic appearances and the artistic director of the Galway Arts Festival, Paul Fahy is getting ready to lead the parade on its merry way. By the time he has been transformed into The Navigator, he'll be eight feet tall. "I have this amazing pair of boots with 10in heels, skin-tight black trousers and a French-style frock coat with great big cuffs. They've made me this amazing pair of metal gloves with about 100 components in each glove. And they're going to go to town on the hair," he says, patting his trademark silver ponytail. "It will be sprayed black, and I'll have giant telescopes and whips and all that sort of stuff."
7 PMAs afternoon turns to evening the star of the show – an 18ft effigy of a young girl, the Mistress of Invention – is finally unveiled. She is held up by a boom with a universal joint, and six operators are working her face and head from below. "Who better to lead us into this unfamiliar land than a 13-year-old girl, representing the next generation?" asks Kavanagh. "And she has a beautiful hybrid collection of young ballerinas around her who are inspired by invention, and by strong women, and by particular energies that are about getting a grip on things."
8.45 PMSlowly but surely, the parade has been getting a grip on the city. The Spanish Arch is crammed to bursting with performers, carts and excited crowds of spectators. A toddler in pink leggings dances an impatient little jig, to the delight of a gaggle of American teenagers. Suddenly, This Fierce Beauty's soundtrack unfurls out of nowhere. The Leonardo da Vinci dragon opens its diaphanous wings. The Girl blinks her beautiful blue eyes – and they're off. Soon it will all be over for another year.
But for 60 miraculous minutes, magic walks tall in Galway, and the city is truly transformed.
