Setting sail with My Fellow Sponges

Thu, Jul 31, 2014

ON FRIDAY August 1 at 9pm, My Fellow Sponges take to the stage at the Róisín Dubh for a gig which should get the weekend off to a perfect start.

The whole opera is enthralling

Thu, Jul 24, 2014

OPERA GETS its turn at the Galway International Arts Festival tonight and tomorrow at 8pm when Atalante and Resurgam combine to present Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo at St Nicholas’s Collegiate Church.

Lisa Dwan - catching ‘the music’ of Beckett

Thu, Jul 17, 2014

GALWAY THEATRE audiences are in for a real treat next week - amid the many fine treats already served up by Galway International Arts Festival - when the Royal Court Theatre come to An Taibhdhearc with Irish actress Lisa Dwan’s acclaimed trilogy of Beckett plays Not I, Footfalls, and Rockaby.

Annie Atkins: Life on the film set

Thu, Jul 17, 2014

When watching a film, one often fails to appreciate the sheer scale of the process and the work that goes into every little detail, every creative intricacy, that fills the screen.

‘I have huge connections to Galway’

Thu, Jul 10, 2014

THIS WEEKEND the Galway Film Fleadh hosts Oscar-winning actress Brenda Fricker as its special guest, when she partakes in an interview with Sean Rocks from RTÉ Radio’s Arena at 3pm on Sunday in the Town Hall Theatre.

‘I’m proud to be intellectually disabled, it’s who I am’

Thu, Jul 03, 2014

BLUE TEAPOT Theatre Company provided one of the big hits of last year’s arts festival with Christian O’Reilly’s heartbreakingly beautiful play, Sanctuary, a production which also enjoyed a successful run at the Dublin Fringe Festival.

Midsummer madness and match-ups

Thu, Jul 03, 2014

AS IT has done for the past couple of years, Galway Youth Theatre and Galway Community Theatre again team up for the Galway International Arts Festival with their staging of Midsummer by Scottish author David Greig.

Kurt and his giant RedBall

Thu, Jun 26, 2014

The RedBall Project has seen some interesting places over the past 13 years, bouncing from cities in the United States to a variety of countries across the world, taking in Abu Dhabi, Taipei, Perth, Sydney, Korea, and Barcelona, and now for the first time resting on Irish soil this summer.

Moonfish and Star Of The Sea’s ‘secret architecture’

Thu, Jun 26, 2014

IN RECENT years, Galway’s Moonfish Theatre Company, founded by sisters Máiréad and Ionia Ní Chróinín, has been winning a burgeoning reputation as one of the most imaginative and exciting around.

Summer Haze

Thu, Jun 26, 2014

TOMORROW PROMISES to be a red letter day for Galway singer-songwriter Chris Haze as his debut album, The World Outside, is officially launched at the Village Venue in Dublin.

The National - mistaken for strangers

Thu, Jun 19, 2014

THE NATIONAL, the greatest band in the world right now, take to the stage in Galway in July. The centre of attention will be vocalist Matt Berninger, a charismatic storm of passion and masculine existential angst, his lyrics matched by the intensity of guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner, and the imaginative rhythms of drummer Bryan Devendorf, while calmly, authoritatively anchoring all this tension and release will be bassist Scott Devendorf.

Author Brian Martin on his new play for Druid

Thu, Jun 19, 2014

DRUID THEATRE Company’s main contribution to this year’s Galway International Arts Festival is Be Infants In Evil, the professional debut of Dublin-born playwright Brian Martin.

‘It surpassed my expectations in all kinds of ways’

Thu, Jun 12, 2014

GALWAY PLAYWRIGHT Christian O’Reilly and actor John Mahoney have lit up previous Galway International Arts Festivals with their contributions, but 2014 sees them joining forces in O’Reilly’s acclaimed new play Chapatti.

We Banjo Three - a band of brothers

Thu, Jun 12, 2014

THE FIRST six months of 2014 have been pretty good for Galway roots, trad, and bluegrass band We Banjo Three, and they are set to cap it all with the release of their new album.

‘A physical embodiment of the big bang theory’

Thu, Jun 12, 2014

THE GENIUS cartoonist Gary Larson, of Far Side fame, has a memorable two-tiered cartoon in which the top half depicts an angel welcoming new arrivals to Heaven with the phrase “Here’s your harp”, while the bottom half features a devil saying “Welcome to Hell, here’s your accordion”.

Dancing with the devil – in Cavan

Thu, Jun 05, 2014

SMASH-HIT play The Devil’s Céilí comes to the Black Box Theatre next weekend, fresh from a sell-out run at Dublin’s Peacock Theatre, and from winning the 2014 RTÉ All-Ireland Drama Festival in Athlone.

Boys keep swinging

Thu, Jun 05, 2014

BEFORE THERE was Conchita Wurst, there was Steven Sharpe. Before the Austrian singer’s ‘bearded lady’ drag persona stole the show at Eurovision, Steven was already rocking the ‘dude in a dress’ look.

The amazing story of The Tailor Of Inverness

Thu, Jun 05, 2014

THE TAILOR Of Inverness, by Matthew Zajac, tells the extraordinary story of Zajac’s father who grew up on a farm in Galicia - then eastern Poland, now western Ukraine - and worked as a tailor in Inverness after surviving the terrors and upheavals of WWII.

Daithí - Setting off on full flight

Thu, May 29, 2014

IT HAS been a long time coming, even Daithí admits that, but he had his reasons. “You only get one chance at a debut album,” he explains. Now the album is here, and Daithí’s music, career, indeed life, may be about to go full flight to the next level.

Eileen Keane - Epic voyages, broken hearts, beautiful music

Thu, May 29, 2014

CONNEMARA SINGER-songwriter Eileen Keane has just released her debut EP Spaces and the life experiences that went into its six exquisite songs are quite something.

“Seven years ago my life changed dramatically when I met ‘the man of my dreams’,” Keane tells me. “He asked me to sail with him to Brazil. We sailed from Dingle under a full moon on September 16 2008, just before the banking crisis hit. With Fungi, Dingle’s famous dolphin, playing in our bow wave, it was a surreal beginning to the adventure of a lifetime.

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