Testing theatrical water - with no unholy alliances

With its origins in a 2006 alternative arts project the Galway Theatre Festival has evolved into an annual event. LORNA SIGGINStalks to the smaller companies hoping to make their mark this week

SILHOUETTED on the sea’s surface under a full moon, anglers wait patiently for the mackerel gorging on sprat in Galway docks. Little do they know – or perhaps some of them do – that their seasonal pursuit has inspired the title for one of a number of productions in this year’s Galway Theatre Festival.

The Mackralaytors, at Druid Lane Theatre, tells the story of three musicians and a disc jockey named DJ 8Mackral, along with a fiddle-playing cat named Thelonious. They live in a cardboard world in a small and windowless bedsit in the city centre – before such lettings were taken over by voracious developers.

Musician and storyteller Aindrias de Staic, best known for his award-winning one-man show, Around the World on 80 Quid,has penned much of the script, with input from his Latchiko Productions colleagues Colin Callanan, Daniel Guinnane, Thomas Hynes and director/designer Jojo Hynes.

Throughout the production de Staic, who plays a character named Franko, barely moves from his prone position on a sofa, imbibing cans of beer bearing labels with such names as “False Confidence” and “Puke”. His flatmates, who expend most of their energy feeding an electricity meter to ensure that the cardboard washing machine, cardboard laptop and other such low-budget appliances continue to function, are keen to get a billing at a vodka festival.

It’s a small but significant dig at the unholy alliance between the drinks industry and certain cultural events in Ireland, and there are a few other barbs too. For example, Galway race week appears to be “coming early this year”, they say of the vodka festival’s programme.

Rehearsing on a bank-holiday weekend in a vacant first-floor office over Eyre Square, the performers explain how the theatre festival represents the harvest of a year’s work. It’s an opportunity for smaller companies to test original material before a critical audience.

Hard to believe it but the Galway Theatre Festival is only three years old. Many of the companies performing in various venues this week emerged from the Project 06 initiative, which resulted in an alternative arts festival in the city during the middle two weeks of July that year. Although there are still unresolved issues arising from that attempt to create a new arts platform, the spirit of Project 06 lives on, according to de Staic.

Over in the Anno Santo Hotel in Salthill, Sarah Jane O'Toole is also burning late candles as she directs her adaptation of Alexander Pushkin's verse novel, Eugene Onegin,with actors Martin Maguire, Muireann Bird and Féilim Ó hAoláin. O'Toole's company, Anam, has one main aim, "to make considerable effort look effortless". A drama teacher and former Moscow Arts Theatre student, she is a disciple of the Michael Chekhov acting technique, devised by Anton Chekhov's nephew as a range of "movement dynamics" which prompt the actor to explore a character's physical core.

O’Toole’s Pushkin characters reflect the four polarities of earth, fire, air and water, and the productcion aims to “transport the audience into a world of duels, balls and unrequited love” at Nun’s Island Theatre. The venue is the festival’s “hub” this week, with shows also in Druid Lane and the Town Hall Theatre by a plethora of performers, from Fregoli Theatre and Bluepatch Productions to storyteller Clare Muireann Murphy and Little John Nee.

The programme selection is nothing if not challenging. Banjaxed Theatre has chosen no easy option with the late Sarah Kane's highly controversial play Blasted, which was dismissed as a "disgusting feast of filth" by the Daily Mailbut praised by Harold Pinter and others when first performed in Britain in 1995. Tyger Theatre Company has selected Freefall:Heroby Colm Byrne, which focuses on the choice made by a woman trapped on the 83rd floor when the Twin Towers were hit in New York on September 11th 2001.

This year's PJ O'Connor award-winning play, Grenades, by Tara McKevitt, will be performed this Friday and Saturday by Mephisto in Nun's Island, while, on Friday only, Dog and String Theatre will use shadow theatre and puppetry to portray life over 80 in Seeingand Dreamingat the Town Hall studio.

A rehearsed reading series is an integral part of the Galway event, providing an opportunity for writers of all ages and experience, working in English or Irish, to have their scripts aired. Last year, for example, John McManus's The Quare Landwas selected for a reading, and subsequently received a full production, directed by Rod Goodall, which was a hit at this year's Galway Arts Festival.

Another of last year's rehearsed readings, Leopoldville, by Jaki McCarrick, was a winner in this year's PapaTango new writing competition in Britain and was performed in Covent Garden in April.

This year’s readings in the Stage Write event are scheduled to take place at 1pm and 3pm on Sunday in the Town Hall Studio.

At 2pm on Saturday, in Nun’s Island Theatre, the theatre festival will also host a discussion exploring the relationship between visual art, theatre and performance art, as part of a tie-up with the Tulca Festival of Visual Art.

All theatre performances are affordable, as spokeswoman Roisín Stack emphasises, with tickets at €10 and €12, and readings priced at €5.

The Galway Theatre Festival continues until Sunday. For a full programme contact the Town Hall Theatre box office at 091-569777 or see galwaytheatrefestival.com