The economy is down the tubes and there is a sense of gloom in the air, but this is summer, a time when people should be enjoying themselves, and having a blast that will sustain them into the oncoming autumn. It’s time for Orfeo to go looking for Pan and convince the god of lusty behaviour and music to come out and party.
This is one of the ideas and themes of Orfeo, this year’s Macnas parade as part of the 2009 Galway Arts Festival. The parade, directed by Noeline Kavanagh, takes place on Sunday July 19 at 10am, starting at the Spanish Arch before moving onto Flood Street, Merchants Road, Lower Abbeygate Street, William Street, Eglinton Street, Francis Street, the Salmon Weir Bridge, and onto the Fisheries Field.
The Macnas workshops at the Fisheries Field are a hive of activity as members and volunteers of the internally acclaimed arts/performance company make the final preparations and adjustments to the costumes, props, floats, outrageous modes of transport, and fabulous beasts that will appear in the parade.
The parade’s main character Orfeo is based on the mythological poet Orpheus. In the Greek story Orpheus travelled down into Hades in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue his dead wife Eurydice. For Macnas, Orfeo must travel to the Galway ‘underworld’ to rescue the god Pan and convince him to stop moping around hell, come back to earth, and start living it large around town!
Orfeo will be a 17 feet high creation striding the Galway streets looking for Pan and then taking him around town and in the process encouraging Galwegians to have one hell of a night out.
“Orfeo is a junk poet mechanic and musician,” Noeline tells me. “The musicians in the parade are part of him and are inspired by him. Orfeo is raucous and sensuous and inspirational to all poets, tricksters, and dreamers.”
Noeline shows me around the Macnas workshops, telling me there will be “nothing mechanical” in this year’s parade. Hence wonderful contraptions like the ‘Ranting Poets’ stand and ‘The Musicians Tower’ look like some kind of junkyard Heath Robinson vehicle, made up of sections of different bicycles, long iron poles, pots, pans, lampshades, and scraps of metal, that culminate in a little platform at the top for a performer to stand on.
While the parade’s main characters are inspired by Greek mythology, Noeline also wanted to give the parade an Irish feel. Hence there will be a multitude of animals, such as a horse, a hare, and a giant Irish elk. The creatures will be made up of pieces of hazel and willow, twisted into wickerwork body frames, covered with tissue paper and other materials.
The animals will be large and while not fully competed are already looking very impressive. An array of lanterns as well as a ‘Ship Of Fools’ is also made along the same lines.
Noeline points out that the animals are also a reference to WB Yeats’ poem The Circus Animals Desertion which references horses in “that burnished chariot” and “that sea-rider Oisin”, as well as mentioning “Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,//Old iron, old bones, old rags.”
The use of such materials came about through a mix of Noeline’s favoured materials as well as the practicalities and challenges brought on by the economic downturn and the fact that last year Macnas had to let some staff go.
“You can’t fight the economy,” Noeline says. “The Macnas parade is a massive gig and you have to make your resources work for you, be creative in your thinking, work with what you have, and be innovative as you have no alternative. These are the kind of materials that I like to work with and that influence me anyway. I like recycling objects and re-imagining what they can be. I’m interested in materials that are sustainable, being inventive with them, and turning it all into a spectacle.”
As the parade will be at night, many of the performers will be holding candles while the creatures will be illuminated internally through torches and other battery operated light sources, creating a haunting, supernatural look to these giant beasts roaming the streets. “We don’t need generators,” says Noeline. “This way will be cost efficient, elemental, and exciting.”
While Macnas have held parades at night before, Noeline has her own reasons for holding Orfeo at night as night-time ties in with the parade’s theme of mischievous and raucous behaviour.
“At night people come out and can be lewd and licentious whereas during the day they are polite and restrained,” says Noeline with a laugh. “The nocturnal has a positive energy and freedom, and it can more be intoxicating and exciting under the stars.”
