Galway International Arts Festival: 15 events you don’t want to miss

Well out the other side of pandemic, and the Galway International Arts Festival (GIAF) programme this year has heft and depth. Ireland’s largest multidisciplinary arts festival spans local work from accomplished Irish artists and production companies, to international productions.

Running for two weeks (July 17th-30th) across Galway city and bleeding a bit beyond, tickets are often in demand, and there’s a lot to choose from. Here’s some we picked out.

1. DruidO’Casey

July 9th-30th, Town Hall Theatre, Courthouse Square; various times; €28-€85 (sold out)

This is a big one, and sold out, but there are waiting lists. Those who remember DruidShakespeare, DruidSynge and DruidMurphy know this will be special, when the Galway Druids take on Sean O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy born in the fires of Irish rebellion and war a century ago. The Plough and the Stars, The Shadow of a Gunman, and Juno and the Paycock are presented as a nine-and-a-half-hour epic play cycle at Town Hall Theatre. Director Garry Hynes marries the plays set against nation-forming events, with a cast of 18 performing 40-plus roles, to explore conflict, national identity, the human toll of war and contemporary parallels. After DruidO’Casey’s festival premiere, it will feature in Belfast, Dublin Theatre Festival, then New York and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

[ Druid & O’Casey: ‘The plays deal with the tenements, poverty... problems we are still deep dealing with’ ]

2. The Saw Doctors

July 21st and 29th, Big Top at Fisheries Field, University of Galway; doors open from 7pm; €45 (sold out)

Having last played GIAF in 2004, the band return fresh from Glastonbury. Many Galwegians and para-Galwegians of a certain vintage (and more recently those taken by Tolü Makay’s meditative version of their original N17) are looking forward to the Tuam shams’ gigs in the Big Top on July 21st, with a second added on the 29th (the first one sold out in 20 minutes). Will the roof blow off the enormous blue tent in Fisheries Field as the crowd of 3,000 sings along to I Useta Love Her, their humorous 1990 ode to ephemeral young lust, bellowing the famous lines rhyming “Sunday mass” with “glory of her ass”?

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3. Kettama

July 23rd, Big Top at Fisheries Field, University of Galway; 6.30pm; €35

Of a different Galway flavour in the Big Top is house and electro producer Kettama’s first hometown gig since 2019 and international attention for his debut Bucklyn Bridge. The Big Top’s belting line-up also includes Pavement, The Coronas, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Bell X1 and Kaiser Chiefs (after two failed attempts to perform at the festival due to the pandemic).

Or, catch singer-songwriting royalty when Martha Wainwright plays Monroe’s Live (July 25th), as part of its eclectic line-up (James Yorkston and Nina Persson, Stomptown Brass, Jenny Greene, KT Tunstsall, Something Happens). And there’s pop, rock, indie, folk and electronic artists at Róisín Dubh, including Susan O’Neill, All Tvvins, Junior Brother, Ailbhe Reddy.

4. David Mach

July 17th-30th, Festival Gallery, William Street; 11am-6pm, late opening to 8pm Thurs-Sat; free

The Turner Prize-nominated artist known for imposing, provocative large-scale collages built from mass-produced materials, from car tyres to newspapers and coat hangers, returns following previous GIAF visits which cut a dash. March is premiering a new site-specific large-scale work, The Oligarch’s Nightmare, commissioned for the Festival Gallery, where it will dominate the central exhibition space (plus some maquettes, montages and sculptures) and is likely to be a big draw throughout the fortnight.

Tucked behind the GPO, the gallery is a pop-up, temporary space, first constructed by GIAF in 2019 in an unused former phone exchange, and has since been used by the arts festival, Tulca visual arts festival and others. A permanent civic arts space was announced in March 2021 as part of the redevelopment of the 0.7-acre An Post site linking Eglinton Street and William Street. And yet it’s still a temporary, tenuous, precarious cultural space. Even after Galway City Council being shamed year after year over the lack of a proper municipal gallery, the festival is still in a temporary set-up. This in a city with a proud cultural reputation. Gotta wonder, will the showcase art gallery for 2024′s festival still be camping in borrowed lodgings?

5. The Pulse

July 17th-22nd, Festival Theatre, Kingfisher, University of Galway; 8pm; €25-€37.50

From the Australian circus company Gravity & Other Myths, The Pulse involves more than 60 acrobats and Orfeó Catalá, a choir of 30 women, in the festival’s biggest ever indoor show. Described as monumental in scale, with performers uniting and dividing, becoming a towering human being “of muscle, bone and voice”, it had a great reception in Edinburgh last year. The festival – which has, by dint of need and sustained lack of municipal provision (see above), become expert at building temporary venues – is currently creating a 1,000-plus seater black-box-style theatre at the Kingfisher (the university’s gym), the largest indoor setting it’s ever put together.

6. Not a Word

July 17th-22nd, Bank of Ireland Theatre, University of Galway; 6pm; €15-€18

This is a new physical theatre show from Galway’s Brú Theatre (who made the evocative Ar Ais Arís in 2021), merging mask, music and movement. Actor Raymond Keane performs an ode to a self-exiled labourer, directed by James Riordan, with live music from Ultan O’Brien (of Slow Moving Clouds) and mask design by Orla Clogher. It excavates the forgotten Irish navvies in Britain, emigrants who helped build a country not their own, drawing current parallels with migration and the concept of home.

7. Life & Times of Michael K

July 25th-30th, Black Box Theatre, Dyke Road; 7pm; €25-€35

Sounds intriguing: an ambitious, epic theatrical staging of JM Coetzee’s novel, adapted by Lara Foot and presented by South Africa’s Baxter Theatre and Handspring Puppet Company (best known for creating the beast in War Horse and puppet refugee Little Amal; they say this show has challenged their own principles of puppetry). It follows Michael K, a simple man on a journey through war-ravaged South Africa to return his mother home to die. Via puppetry, performance, film and music.

8. Bedbound

July 14th-29th (no shows July 19th and 24th), Bailey Allen Hall, University of Galway; 7pm; €25-€37.50

Colm Meaney is back on the Irish stage after 40 years, with his daughter Brenda Meaney, in a new (Landmark Productions and GIAF) production of Enda Walsh’s savagely funny play, about a once-flamboyant furniture salesman and his daughter, confined to a small bed. Long-time festival associate Enda Walsh also figures in the latest iteration of Rooms, the series of immersive theatre Walsh has created with festival director Paul Fahy. This time it’s Cloakroom, in 1972: a young woman (voiced by Zara Devlin) working in a dance hall cloakroom and her search for real love (The Shed, July 17th – 30th).

9. Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers

July 21st, St Nicholas’ Church, Lombard Street; 8pm; €22-€25

An opulent masterpiece of early Baroque, in magnificent St Nicholas’s, the largest medieval parish church in Ireland: sounds like a heavenly match. Acclaimed vocal ensemble Resurgam, with local choirs Cois Cladaigh and Collegium and an ensemble of children’s voices, plus virtuoso period instrument group the English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble perform one of the greatest works of sacred music ever written. The rich ensemble includes consorts of violins, recorders, the brilliant cornetti, and the burnished sonorities of sackbuts, underpinned by a lavish continuo section of chamber organ, violone, harp and theorbo.

10. Going solo

Various times, venues and prices; see giaf.ie for more information

There are music and comedy solo performers obviously, but a cocktail of others too. The wonderful comic actor Helen Gregg is in You’ll See… from Branar’s Marc Mac Lochlainn, a bonkers concept: a version Ulysses for children (and all those who haven’t read it yet). And Clare Barrett performs in the hugely funny and life-affirming Every Brilliant Thing, a Decadent production of Duncan Macmillan’s play about what makes life worth living. It’s directed by Andrew Flynn who’s obviously busy right now as he’s also directing Galway Youth Theatre Meat ensemble in Meat and Salt, a fairy tale by Marina Carr based on Shakespeare’s King Lear. And though there are two performers, the focus is kind of solo in the dance coming-of-age of choreographer Micheal Keegan-Dolan. He performs with Rachel Poirier in the idiosyncratic, skilful and funny How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons (the Teaċ Daṁsa and Gate Theatre show from last year).

11. Volcano

Various days and times, The Mick Lally Theatre, Druid Lane; €15-€50

One of the most memorable theatrical experiences of the ever-fluctuating great unpleasantness that was Covid. Luke Murphy’s show, blurring lines between theatre, dance and psychological sci-fi thriller, premiered at GIAF 2021 for tiny, restricted audiences of just eight people, and won Best Production in that year’s Irish Times theatre awards. Now many more lucky people will get to experience this extraordinary work, in the intimate Mick Lally Theatre. A four-part voyeuristic dance thriller, it explores the struggles of power, time and trust in four 45-minute episodes (it makes sense whether you see one, some or all of them in the omnibus version).

12. Wordspace

July 17th-30th, Blackrock, Salthill Promenade; 8am-10pm; free

A site-specific seaside installation with audio, at Blackrock on the prom in Salthill. This is Grafton Architects’ (Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara) take on the Proteus episode for Ulysses 2.2, the final site-specific installation in the year-long centenary celebrations of James Joyce’s novel, from ANU, Landmark Productions and Museum of Literature Ireland. With recorded excerpts read by Olwen Fouéré directed by Louise Lowe.

13. On the streets

Various times, venues and prices; see giaf.ie for more information

Watch an enormous Dragon as French spectacle company Planète Vapeur brings a giant creature to Galway on the middle festival weekend, or take to the streets yourself: pop on headphones and join Guru Dudu’s Silent Disco Walking Tour, throwing embarrassment to the wind as you groove down Shop Street.

14. Onomatopoeia

July 17th-30th, Festival Printworks Gallery, Market Street; 11am-6pm, late opening to 8pm Thurs-Sat; free

Diana Copperwhite’s big bold compelling oil paintings feature in the Festival Printworks Gallery, among a strong and varied visual arts programme across the city, from Lorraine Tuck’s photography focused on her own family, to Ruby Wallis’s photography, collage, film, print and sound work. You can also see B+ (Brian Cross) celebrating hip hop with photographs installed outdoors at Galway City Museum; and All the Dark Places site-specific exhibition curated by Alannah Robins at Interface, in Connemara, an hour from the city.

15. First Thought

Various times, venues and prices; see giaf.ie for more information

The talking festival within a festival mainly on festival weekends, curated in collaboration with historian Catriona Crowe, features a terrific range of conversations. Largely based in the University of Galway’s O’Donoghue Theatre, several of its academics feature, including economist John McHale (in conversation with John Fitzgerald), historian Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh (on the Decade of Centenaries, with Diarmaid Ferriter and Anne Dolan), and writer-in-residence Jessica Traynor.

Plus Lindsey Hilsum and Fintan O’Toole on Ukraine v Russia; the hospital manager who “Doesn’t do Trolleys” (Grace Rothwell from Waterford General Hospital); Katie Hannon discusses of Irish neutrality with Conor Gallagher, Catherine Connolly, Fintan O’Toole and Diarmaid Ferriter; plus many more.