Taking to the streets for a visual fortnight

Paul Fahy has worn many hats in the Galway Arts Festival, but as artistic director he hopes to leave audiences wanting more, he tells Lorna Siggins

When Paul Fahy was clambering up to black out windows in the Claddagh Hall 20 years ago, he never dreamed that he would be doing this job. When the former Galway Arts Festival volunteer, publicist and general man-about-town turned up in various guises in the annual Macnas parade, he didn't think he'd be doing it. In a sense, he still doesn't believe he is doing it, as he thumbs through the programme he has produced for this year.

"Yet it's the job I have always wanted," he says with that inimitable bob of the ponytail and the broad Fahy smile that may have become a fixture since he was appointed artistic director for Galway Arts Festival some 18 months ago.

Speaking a week before this year's opening, he still imparts the enthusiasm of that twenty-something volunteer. There's no sneaking desire to bite his nails to the quick. Yet, as someone who is Galway born, bred and buttered, he admits to feeling a smidgeon of pressure.

"A lot of people said to me, 'ah, you'll be grand, you know it inside out', but it is not until you are doing it yourself that you realise the scale of it all," he says. He had a little dress rehearsal for the first seven months of the post, as understudy to outgoing director Rose Parkinson - and then, he was on stage. "It has to be the most challenging job I've ever done, and the most satisfying."

The fit-ups, the feverish last-second adjustments to costume and set, is something on which Fahy has a particular perspective. Few artistic directors would know how to stitch up a hem or put in a buttonhole, and few would fully appreciate the amount of work that goes into creating oversized witches' hats, drying on the grass last week outside tents in the Fisheries Field. The son of a farmer, with Ballybrit racecourse as "the back garden", Fahy is a milliner himself, having studied art at Galway Regional Technical College (RTC).

IT WAS THE 1980s, Macnas was establishing its street-theatre troupe, and he worked with it and with the Taibhdhearc theatre as set painter and costume-maker, before setting up himself on Quay Street. "Yes, there were just a few years between me and Philip Treacy!" he laughs, with reference to the famous hatter from Ahascragh. However, he didn't stay with threads and materials, moving on and in to the Galway Arts Centre in Dominick Street as development officer.

It was here that he first worked with his immediate predecessor, Parkinson, who also preceded him as press and publicity officer for the festival. "We collaborated on visual arts projects, and on the Cúirt literary festival which the arts centre has produced," he recalls.

The 19th-century building, formerly Lady Gregory's townhouse, was being renovated by Galway City Council, the gallery space was re-opened, and it was a challenging post. Fahy was by this time establishing himself as an arts producer and publicist - and eventually went freelance, working in Kilkenny and Galway.

He staged Kilkenny's first street parade - a celebration of hurling, complete with a DJ Carey - during its millennium festival project. Through Kilkenny, he met Thomastown-based international Irish artist Hughie O'Donoghue and his wife, Clare.

It was around then that he was also chatting to writer Vincent Woods and Monica Frawley about an Irish version of Alfred Jarry's classic farce, King Ubu. "And here I am now with both in my programme, and I am so pleased to have them in my first year," he says.

O'Donoghue's exhibition, The Deep, showing at the Fairgreen Gallery and at the Áras Éanna Arts Centre on Inis Oírr, is central to an extensive visual arts dimension to Fahy's festival, extending over 21 shows.

"It was one of my objectives, and it is the biggest visual arts programme we've ever had, across a number of media including sculpture, performance art, installation," he says.

Securing locations which would accommodate the scale of O'Donoghue's canvas was one of his main challenges. Property developer Gerry Barrett came good with the Fairgreen premises, while it was only natural that O'Donoghue's images of the wreck of the Plassy should travel to the Aran islands - transported on the freight ferry from Galway docks.

"I knew, like other directors, that I didn't want to be just buying stuff in. The festival has earned a reputation as a producer, rather than just presenter, of new theatre, and that's something it has to maintain. I was very aware of the huge mantle on my shoulders in that sense," he says.

The budget was €2.4 million. Therefore, "seed money" has gone into the theatrical productions, and he is already working on next year's plan. Emerging Galway artist Vicki McCormack has been invited to exhibit her multi-media work, and he is careful to point out that she received equal programme billing with the likes of Patrick Pye, Tom Mathews and performance artists, the Icelandic Love Corporation.

He is excited about the physical, visual dimensions to the Woods and Frawley collaboration on King Ubu, and "physical, visual" is a phrase he also applied to the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, making their Irish debut with new work by Irish choreographer Marguerite Donlon.

"Hubbard Street has to be one of the most accessible dance companies in terms of appeal, but also quality," says Fahy. "I expect the reaction will be a bit like when Steppenwolf arrived on stage here first, in that there will be a demand for more."

He also anticipates an enthusiastic response to Spain's Cirq Civil, Australia's Icarus, a myriad of underwater creatures from Les Sages Fous, the Mexican Teatro Pachuco, and of course Macnas, out on the streets. "I am very committed to street stuff - it was one of the biggest differences I made to Kilkenny," he says. "You can't beat Galway in terms of the shape and size, and wonderful audiences, and the idea is to make sure that people cannot be here for these two weeks in July without realising that something major is happening, even if they never buy a ticket!"

Outdoor work in various forms brings visual art onto the street. British artist David Mach will exhibit Hell Bent, a giant figure in the form of a sculptor firing flames 20 feet into the air, above and hopefully not at Galway's new city museum near the Spanish Arch. Over at NUI Galway's Aula Maxima, French artist Frank Morzuch will ply reeds, willow and other natural materials to create a sculptural installation.

"I love the notion of developing creative relations with artists," Fahy says. "In theatre, we did it with Mark Doherty and the award-winning production of Trad, which was produced by Rose in 2004, nurtured by the festival and taken to Dublin, Edinburgh, Adelaide, London. It has been a brilliant calling card, with Culture Ireland's support, which has reinforced Galway on the international map."

THAT "BRANDING" - the dreaded marketing term - is reputed to have been something major sponsors of the festival were concerned about when the Project 06 grouping produced its alternative programme of events for the same fortnight.

"I was one of the first to welcome Project 06, I have had dialogue with people all the time; I am very open to thoughts and opinions," Fahy says, when the sensitive subject is broached. "I see the two events as fundamentally different, in that the festival is, and always has been, curated, whereas Project 06 is open to all participants."

He is aware that Project 06 has proposed establishing a working group to examine some of the issues it has raised which would report back in September, and believes this is a decision for the arts festival board to make. "If Project 06 was planned out of a genuine desire to create another platform, then it is great that there is so much going on. Ultimately, my job is to curate Galway Arts Festival, and I will continue to do so, and in giving me the job the arts festival board is backing my belief in that," he says.

"There has been a certain amount of antagonism in the press and I think that's a pity, but I do think there's room for a fringe. Galway Arts Festival has won some of its best awards at fringe events, after all."

[ www.galwayartsfestival.com ]