THE LAND of Giants spectacular, which will be staged on the Titanic and Olympic slipways in Belfast on a 200m stage made from 40ft ship containers next Saturday, is to be made free to the public, it has been announced.
Tickets for Land of Giants, one of the highlights of the Cultural Olympiad events that have been gifted to Northern Ireland through the London Olympics and billed as the “largest outdoor arts event ever held in Ireland”, were to have cost £10 per adult and £28 for a family of four.
But the production will now be free on a first-come first-served basis. So next Saturday night 18,000 people will be shepherded onto the slipways to witness this Cecil B De Mille-type Belfast blockbuster. Thereafter, 500 drummers, singers, actors and performers will entertain them.
Also featuring in animated, abstract, light and real form will be Gulliver, Fionn MacCumhaill, the Titanic and the huge yellow Harland and Wolff Samson and Goliath cranes. It will be an “unforgettable” night of visual, musical, dramatic, acrobatic and pyrotechnical theatrics, according to its associate producer Kathy Hayes.
Award-winning Belfast poet Sinéad Morrissey, who has collaborated with show director Mark Murphy in writing the script for Land of Giants, is equally as enthusiastic. “The story is everything that Northern Ireland has achieved, what we are about to do, and the potential for what we can do in the future,” she says.
Ms Hayes adds, “Land of Giants is about the giant things that Northern Ireland has produced and about the giant things we ourselves can produce in the future.”
The cost is £1.1 million and it is receiving funding from the Olympics 2012 Legacy Trust UK, with support from the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, two Northern Executive departments – Arts and Enterprise – the North’s Arts Council, and Belfast City Council.
Tickets go on offer on Monday and are available from the Belfast Welcome Centre on Donegall Place, Belfast, or online at landofgiants.info or gotobelfast.com
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