Music, art, spectacle, performance and literature, and plenty of free events will make up Múscailt, NUI Galway’s annual arts festival which was launched this week.
Múscailt, now in its 14th year, is going under the theme ‘Laugh, Nourish, Love’. Among the highlights will be Galway University Musical Society’s performance of The Drowsy Chaperone at the Black Box Theatre from February 11 to 20. This colourful comedy is set in the 1920s during frantic preparations for a wedding.
Dramsoc will perform the show Overcast Teacups while Colours Street Theatre will début their new show, The Seat, written and performed by James Fleming.
Triko Cirkus Teatar, from Croatia, with performers and traditional musicians from NUIG, will stage Night of the Living Clown, in An Taibhdhearc, on February 27 and 28 and March 1.
A Victorian funfair in the Mechanical Soils Lab (next to the Bank of Ireland Theatre ), which is a Victorian building, takes place on Tuesday February 11 from 12 noon to 5pm. Visitors will be able to learn more about the Victorian art, science, literature, and pastimes - recreated with a sense of fun by the university’s new Victorian Society.
The Mechanical Soils Lab will also act as an exhibition space to display five large paintings by the late Sharon O’Malley and Susanne Keane’s Where Sea meets Sky exhibition of atmospheric, abstract, seascapes.
Throughout the week, artist Joe McCaul will do free portraits in the atrium of Áras na Mac Léinn. The new portraits he paints during Múscailt will be added to the walls and be on show in the atrium until March 1.
The public, as well as students, are welcome to attend Múscailt events. All exhibitions run until Saturday March 1. For a copy of the programme or further information contact the Arts Office (091 - 493766, 091 - 495098, or www.muscailt.nuigalway.ie ).
Tickets will be available from the Socsbox (091 - 492852 ) or [email protected]. Tickets for The Drowsy Chaperone are also available from Town Hall Theatre (www.tht.ie or 091 - 569777 ). Múscailt-Clown Cabaret tickets are available from An Taibhdhearc (www.antaibhdhearc.com or 091 - 562024 ).
