Cairde Sligo Arts Festival is one of two Irish festivals leading projects as part of EFFEA - the European Festival Fund for Emerging Artists. Cairde will be working with Aoife and Mark Carry of Twisted Lane Productions, a Spectacle Theatre company based in Connemara. Twisted Lane aim to excite, intrigue and astonish audiences with the highest quality, one of a kind spectacle experience. Aoife and Mark have been working internationally on large scale circus and spectacle shows since 2014 and have worked with companies like Cirque Du Soleil, Franco Dragone and MGM. They are excited to bring this extensive experience in large scale spectacle into their own work, and to a wider Irish audience.
The artists will be in residence in the lead up to and during the festival, giving them time and space to research and develop the creation of a spectacle performance, inspired by a traditional circus, set in a mature forest.
As part of the EFFEA, Cairde is partnering with two European Festivals; PASSAGE Festival in Helsingør, Denmark – one of Northern Europe’s largest street theatre festivals and Oerol Festival on the island of Terschelling in the Netherlands, which has come to be known as one of the most exceptional landscape arts festivals in Europe.
These connections have been facilitated through Cairde’s connections to ISACS, the Irish Street Art, Circus and Spectacle Network, Promenade, an organisation which supports artists to create art in public and unusual spaces and through the festival’s membership to the EFA, European Festival Association.
Festival Director Tara McGowan says: “We are excited to work with Aoife and Mark who we have been developing a relationship with since their return to Ireland in 2021. We are very interested in their artistic background and experience; their way of working, their connection with landscape and their artistic ideas. The EFFEA award provides a perfect opportunity for us to support them at the starting point of the development of a large-scale piece of work, which will be shown in Sligo and at the partner festivals in Denmark and the Netherlands once it is completed in 2024/25.”
You can follow Galway's own Twisted Lane Productions here: www.facebook.com/twistedlaneproductions/
