ARTSCAPE:FESTIVAL SEASON is kicking in. Éigse in Carlow starts today, while July's Galway Arts Festival launched its programme this week, with Paul Fahy unveiling a line-up including Philip Glass, Joni Mitchell and Enda Walsh, writes Deirdre Falvey.
Wexford Festival Opera formally announced its line-up for the first festival in the new Theatre Royal, starting in mid-October, although details of the productions were already on its website. Kilkenny, after a weekend splurge of comedy, will be next out of the blocks, with news of its August festival to come in early July.
"Festivals are the heart and soul of the Irish summer," says Arts Council chairwoman Olive Braiden. Proud of its €5 million support for 102 festivals between June and September, the council has added a festival guide to its website, at www.artscouncil.ie/ publications.
Also announcing its programme this week was Clonmel's nine-day Junction Festival, which starts on July 5th. It includes the premiere of Raw, a dance theatre show by young Irish company Fidget Feet, directed by choreographer David Bolger, mixing contemporary dance with aerial skills. The line-up also features Sensazione!, the 2007 Tarrega Prize-winning theatre-and-circus spectacle set in an eco theatrical fairground where the rides are all made from recycled materials. It's coming to Ireland in partnership with Cork Midsummer Festival and Donegal's Earagail Arts Festival.
Irish theatre premieres at Clonmel include Swiss company Nicole and Martin with a mini-circus show, The White Tent; Presumption, by UK theatre company Third Angel; a Californian stilt-walking troupe, the Carpetbag Brigade, with a family show, Mudfire; and The Frost is All Over, a site-specific evening of music and poetry set against a backdrop of still and moving imagery in a disused mill.
Bulmers Original Artists live music at the Junction Festival will include The Blizzards, Cathy Davey and Republic of Loose, as well as Paul Brady, Moya Brennan, The Saw Doctors and Pierce Turner. In world music, there are three double-bills of Celtic, Balkan and Mediterranean folk music, while Malawian band Body, Mind and Soul, winner of the grand prize at the 2007 Music Crossroads Festival in east Africa, will also be in Clonmel for a week.
Comedy comes from Ed Byrne, Neil Delamare, Anne and Kevin Gildea and Abie Philbin Bowman, among others. More details at www.junctionfestival.com.
Heavyweight Kinsale
Meanwhile, there's an impression that Kinsale Arts Week is punching above its weight, writes Mary Leland. This is borne out not only by its nine-day duration, but also by the quotation chosen by chairwoman Mareta Doyle as the defining principle of the event: "It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action." That's Fidel Castro, and this year Kinsale is turning almost entirely Cuban, beginning on Saturday, July 12th, with Ska Cubano and El Guayabero at Charles Fort. (The tone will change somewhat at the same venue a week later when Elkie Brooks gives her only Irish performance this year.)
Photographer John Minihan will offer a Mini Havana show for the week, alternative chamber music ensemble Mestizo will give a lunchtime concert, and there will be screenings and discussions of contemporary Cuban films. There will also be a panel debate on the future of Cuba after Fidel, given immediacy by photographer Brendan Duffy's visual documentation in Cuba: the Last Days of Castro.
Non-Cuban events during the salsa-driven week will include a focus on Neil Jordan, with a production of his only play, White Horses. There will also be performances from Mangiare and the Puppet State Theatre Company of Scotland, readings from poet Maurice Riordan and novelist Salley Vickers, and a concert by the Brodsky Quartet.
A crowded visual arts programme includes Inside Outside, curated by Aidan Dunne, and Will St Leger's Art Raid, produced by thisispopbaby.
Arts Week artistic director Deborah Dignam is opening the event with the help of incendiary specialists Passe Partouts, who will set Kinsale Harbour ablaze.
Belfast goodie bag
The theatrical equivalents of jelly babies, dolly mixtures and humbugs are on offer at Belfast's Old Museum Arts Centre over next weekend, June 13th to 15th, writes Jane Coyle. Some of the North's leading independent companies and writers are lined up to take part in the Pick'n'Mix Theatre Festival, which invites audiences to dip their hands into the sweetie jar and see what they come up with.
Among the goodies on offer is a rehearsed reading by Tinderbox of Where the Shoe Pinches, a play set in eastern Europe during the turbulent mid-20th century. Writer John McClelland has been much missed since he moved to Edinburgh a few years ago and it is good to see him back with one of his trademark thought-provoking pieces.
Prime Cut's creative director, Emma Jordan, will direct a rehearsed reading of Spanish writer Fermín Cabal's acclaimed Tejas Verdes, with a five-strong all-female cast.
Meanwhile, Replay Productions recently organised a three-day music theatre workshop, based on its forthcoming musical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Composer Conor Mitchell and director Richard Croxford will offer a glimpse into the story so far.
Ransom Productions unveils staged scenes from The Owl's Nest, by Andrew Muir; Bruiser previews its next production, a whodunnit, The Case of the Frightened Lady; and Rawlife, Skewiff, Assault Events, Red Lemon, Michael Duke, Claire Lamont, Chris Lee and Ether Theatre Company will also be at the party.
As the Old Museum Arts Centre takes another step towards morphing into the Mac, the vast £18 million (€22.7 million) multi-purpose arts centre in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter, the Pick'n'Mix Festival is a timely reminder of what it does best.
Rough talent
Rough Magic theatre company - whose revival of Stewart Parker's Pentecost and Spokesong continues in Dublin - this week revealed the latest crop of young theatre talent to come under its nurturing wing as part of the AIB Seeds Programme, writes Gerry Smyth.
Directors, playwrights a designer and a producer are among the beneficiaries of the programme which the Minister for Arts, Martin Cullen described as "integral to the growth and success of Ireland's strong theatre tradition". The Minister praised this "long-standing, productive relationship that exists between Rough Magic and the Arts Council. It flourishes with the generosity of companies like AIB".
More creative collaborations, like Seeds should be brokered, he said, because the social and economic benefit of such partnerships was invaluable. Those who will be encouraged to develop and stage their work this time around are: designer Alyson Cummins, directors Des Kennedy and Aoife Spillane-Hinks, playwrights Maria Elner and Ciarán Fitzpatrick, production manager Eoin Kilkenny and producer Lara Hickey.
They will participate in separate but integrated programmes that include mentoring by established artists and international research trips. Mentors will include playwrights Tom Murphy and David Harrower, director Garry Hynes, designer Monica Frawley and Dublin Theatre Festival director Loughlin Deegan. The programme will incorporate placements at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh and London's Royal Court
Theatre as well as the opportunity to see work and engage with practitioners in Avignon, Berlin, Budapest and London.