Kilkenny festival has it all, including dragons

Looking for culture for kids? All signs point to Kilkenny, writes Arminta Wallace

Tales of intrigue and poison. Tiny creatures who live under rocks. A boy who wants to be a bear. A naked wooden puppet. "And a dragon, of course," says Teenagh Cunningham, who has devised the young people's programme at this year's Kilkenny Arts Festival, which opens on Friday. "Because in all good shows there has to be a fire-breathing dragon."

Well, maybe not quite all.

But the range and variety of activities on offer over the coming 10 days is certainly hot enough to set youthful imaginations alight. Theatre, puppetry, film, readings, workshops - you name it, you'll find it. And not just in Kilkenny city but at a total of nine venues around the county, from Kells Hall to Urlingford Library to what Cunningham describes as "a pretty funky building" - the church at the Augustinian Priory at Callan.

"We've always tried to take shows to venues outside of the city itself," she explains. "It can be very difficult for parents to commit to coming into town at one o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon with a gang of kids hanging out of them."

However, one show which is bound to bring gangs of kids to the city's Watergate Theatre is the Comic Trust Theatre Company's White Side Story (Friday 13th to Sunday 15th, 6 p.m.).

"Nobody does that whole mask and mime stuff like the Russians do ... this is a show for everyone, it really is," says Cunningham. "It's about a white kingdom run by white queens, there's snow everywhere, and the masks are fabulous."

Puppet fans are in for a treat, with Banyan Theatre Company's adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes getting three performances at three different venues. "It's a one-woman show, but she's so inventive that as you watch you keep saying to yourself no, no, there must be more than one person doing this."

The above-mentioned dragon makes its appearance in Papyrus Theatre Company's The Little People of the Mist, performed in the city centre at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. daily, which Cunningham describes as a gentle show. "There's a long, long set and tiny little puppets and it's all quite mysterious."

The Kilkenny Arts Festival programme has always included film for young people, so it is a matter of some pride that each of this year's three animated films - showing at the Watergate Theatre at 2 p.m. on Tuesday August 10th, Wednesday 11th and Thursday 12th - will be preceded by a showing of From Darkness, an animated short produced by a Kilkenny-based animation group Cartoon Saloon.

"It's about an Inuit fisherman and it's very, very beautifully done," Cunningham says. "It was shortlisted for an Oscar nomination, though it didn't get it in the end, but it's amazing to think that these guys just ... started doing animation off their own bat in what used to be an orphanage in Kilkenny."

Animation is also the name of the game at the Katapult community theatre project, which has seen a group of teenagers from Kilkenny working over the past few weeks on Dream City (Colliers' Lane, Friday 6th and Saturday 7th, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.). "It will start off in what looks like a video shop," says Tony Fegan, Katapult's training consultant.

"Except that the audience will step in and find themselves in a place that's not quite what it seems." It will combine live performance, video animation and storytelling in an experience which, says Fegan, aims to prove that reality - as experienced by teenagers on High Street in Kilkenny - really is only skin deep.

With a storyline featuring a Kilkenny take on The Blair Witch Project and a tale of the devil in a car-park, Dream City is definitely one for over-eights accompanied by an adult - or vice versa - but next Sunday, some of its young creators will pass on their new skills to an even younger generation by leading an animation workshop at The Barn, Church Lane (11 a.m. - 1 p.m.).

For those who'd like to try their hand at crafts, there is a series of workshops which includes the ancient art of willow-weaving and the not-so-ancient skill of scrap sculpture. Karen Torley, Banyan Theatre Company's master puppeteer, will lead a week-long puppetry workshop, while those interested in instrument-making can opt for a series of two-day workshops in Kells and Thomastown.