A giant boy will be running through the streets of Galway, with a butterfly net in his hand, trying to catch a minotaur, a wolf, and other giant and wonderful beasts.
This is The Wild Hunt, the Macnas Parade for the 2010 Galway Arts Festival which takes place on Sunday, starting at 2pm at the Spanish Arch. From there it will go up Quay Street, High Street, Shop Street, Eglinton Street, Francis Street, and across The Salmon Weir Bridge, before concluding at the Galway Cathedral.
Building a parade
It’s the final countdown to the parade which is just four days away and the Macnas workshops at the Fisheries Field are a hive of activity. Staff and volunteers are putting the finishing touches to the matadorial style banners; the metal and gauze covered creations which look like large crows; and to the vast array of costumes.
More than 300 people will take part in the parade, including the Young Macnas Ensemble, a 30 strong group of young people from all over Galway city, and many of these participants will be decked in consumes which range from chequered clown pants to punk meets pre-Revolutionary France dresses, to military jackets with outlandish epaulettes.
Over in Macnas’ new workshops in Liosbán the large scale work is nearing completion on the massive creatures and characters which will dominate this year’s parade. Everything has been made from found objects such as metal, wood, willow, muslin, hazel, moss, and “a lot of burnt steel”.
“We have found it a challenge,” Macnas artistic director and parade director Noeline Kavanagh tells me as we sit for the interview on Monday afternoon. “We have to engage and entertain the community and do it on severely reduced funds. The parade will have less volume than other years but it has a strong content and we have good people involved in making it a ‘Wild Hunt’.”
The economic downturn has hit Macnas, like everyone else, but Noeline pays tribute to the energy, enthusiasm, and imagination of the many volunteers for the company who are helping make The Wild Hunt a reality.
“Everybody is hard at work and there is a brilliant well of energy in the company,” says Noeline. “The skills of our artists are fantastic and the volunteers from the GTI, GMIT Cluain Mhuire, and NUI, Galway, as well as from the general public has been brilliant.”
Many of those who volunteer are interested in the arts and would have ambitions to work in the field either as artists or in arts administration.
“It’s great to think that we are helping to nurture the up and coming talent that is out there,” says Noeline. “It’s one of the priorities of Macnas.”
Another effect of the downturn has meant that Macnas has had a reduced time in which to create all the items needed for the parade.
“We just had five weeks to build,” says Noeline. “In the good old days we would have an eight week build. People working here need to have not just one skill but four. You need to be able to play an instrument, build something, and cook.
“We rely on volunteers and we have to remember that we don’t own that person’s time and we could have not achieved what we have without public support and volunteers. We also have to thank Bradley’s, the Galway City Council, the Arts Council, and Tigh Neachtains for their support.”
Parade route
Last year’s parade Orfeo took a different approach to previous Macnas parades. It had different starting points and the public had to go to various locations in the city centre to see one section of the parade join up with another.
Though an interesting idea and approach, it created a number of problems. Many who saw the opening section at the Spanish Arch, did not realise there was more to come in other areas, leading to a belief that the parade was “very short”.
The crowds who did follow the parade from section to section found it difficult to make their way through Galway’s narrow mediaeval streets, which led to much discomfort and concerns over public safety.
Macnas has taken these criticisms on-board and they have informed the structure and pattern that The Wild Hunt will follow.
“I want to assure people that everybody will see everything at this year’s parade,” says Noeline. “We start the parade in its entirety at the Spanish Arch and it continues from there through Quay Street and Shop Street, etc, and on to the Cathedral.”
While the parade will follow a more regular format this year, Noeline is still keen to “re-ignite and re-imagine” how the parade and audience will engage and interact with each other.
“As well as watching the parade go by, the audience will see performers coming through them, at them, and around them,” says Noeline. “You’ll have to be aware of where you are and what could come through!”
Prior to the parade starting, a series of Galway performers, actors, and artists like Midie Corcoran, Helen Gregg, Brendan Murray, Pat Bracken, Hugo Seele, Robbie Smith, Gary McSweeney, and Eileen Gibbons, (no doubt in costume ) and playing various characters will “engage and play” with the audience.
The Wild Hunt
The Wild Hunt is about an eight-year-old boy who dreams he is running around a magical woodland with a massive butterfly net trying to catch wolves, minotaurs, crows, and other beasts who in some way represent people like Picasso, Ted Hughes, Angela Carter, and William Blake.
It certainly has the potential to be a wonderful spectacle that will allow the Macnas imagination run riot and produce a visual and imaginative spectacle for Galway to enjoy. So what are the ideas behind the parade?
“I think a child’s eye view is important and imagination is essential,” says Noeline. “It tells the story of a boy on a wild hunt and each incident and creature he encounters is a reference to elements in our lives that shape us and make us who we are, so it’s not that far from something like Where The Wild Things Are.
“It is also a comment on the fact that we are in a time of economic depression and our institutions, the banks, the politicians, the Church, have failed us and there is a crisis with many people losing their jobs. The parade is not a panacea to that but it is a chance to come together as a community and enjoy ourselves, and that can provide a catharsis, and a release of energy for people.”
Given that The Wild Hunt is about celebrating creativity and imagination, the idea of representing Picasso, Ted Hughes, Angela Carter, and William Blake, through various animals and contraptions makes sense.
Picasso will be represented by a minotaur as minotaurs often featured in his work. Angela Carter, author of The Magic Toyshop, about a toymaker whose giant toys come to life and terrify his family, will be represented by a wolf. The poet Ted Hughes will be represented by crows (in 1970 Hugues published his celebrated collection Crow ). William Blake, the 18th century English poet, artist, songwriter, and mystic will be depicted as an inventing machine.
“Blake was brave and a risk taker,” says Noeline, “and his philosophy of life, his new models of practice, and how he saw the world, were extraordinary, and I thought the best way to capture that in a parade was to depict him as an inventing machine.”
The boy, the minotaur, the crows, and the machine will be among the largest and most spectacular displays in the parade. However there will be many other amazing characters to look out for such as the vagabonds, jokers, cantankerous grannies, wizards, the candlestick maker, the carpet bag sales man, the inventor, the priest, the lover, the trickster, the mapfinder, the acrobats, and the geezers.
The Wild Hunt may be dense with symbolism, allegory, and literary/artistic allusion, but for many people it will not matter if a minotaur represents Picasso, or even the general story of the parade. What is important is, not symbolism, but a parade that is highly entertaining, visually stunning, and full of imagination.
“That’s what they will get,” declares Noeline. “What is great about the parade is that people don’t need to know the background of the story. Those of us who are putting it together do as we have to have a framework and guidelines and know what we are doing and how it all fits together.
“For the public it’s the energy, the performance, and the images that will create a strong parade. What Galway will see are great characters, music, smoke, high energy, wonderful costumes and creatures, and everybody can make up their own story of what The Wild Hunt is about.”
