The Earagail Arts Festival continued its fine tradition of imaginative programming in spectacular surroundings, writes Mary Phelan.
If it's Donegal this year, then it has to be the Flight of the Earls. The northwest is currently awash with commemoration and reflection on this momentous event. So with its usual penchant for coming up with quirky, lateral takes on issues of contemporary social relevance, this year's Earagail Arts Festival chose Diaspora and Migration as its theme. The two-week cultural extravaganza, which brings acts from all over the world to the most remote parts of the country, has a knack of coming up with zany programming ideas, usually hallmarked by the imaginative placing of events in contexts that include the spectacular Donegal landscape as part of the act.
This year was no exception. The idea of showing Jawson a massive screen in a second-to-none drive-in cinema on Downings Beach is the stuff on which Earagail's reputation is made. Given the year that's in it, the fact that the weather proved inclement on the opening evening was not entirely surprising. Donegal downpours are par for the course, even at the best of times. But the no-show of the promised giant screen was something the festival organisers hadn't reckoned with. Instead of the mammoth 50 square metres that had been ordered, the one which actually arrived - half an hour after the show was scheduled to begin - was a paltry 10 square metres. Nonetheless, the following evening's screening was sold out, the evening balmy, and the setting absolutely stunning.
The revival of Thomas Kilroy's The O'Neillafter a 30-year dormancy was one of the central pillars of the drama programme in this year's festival. The 25-strong community cast made an excellent ensemble. Andrew Roddy's Hugh O'Neill was aloof and complex, while Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríghde provided the light entertainment as Thadie Mahon, everyman shopkeeper-cum-spy who knows which side his bread is buttered on. Anne Gallagher vividly captured the spirit and wildness of Róisín, one of the O'Neill women, and the production was ably directed by David Grant, formerly artistic director of the Lyric in Belfast and currently head of drama at Queen's University Belfast. A seamless live score from the Henry sisters, provided an evocative acoustic backdrop to the performance.
If The O'Neillwas a historical drama with a familiar storyline and a traditional linear narrative structure, then Sclavi: The Song of an Immigrant, the other main pillar of Earagail's drama programme this year (and also seen at the Junction in Clonmel), could hardly have been more different. A vibrant recreation of the experiences of emigrants from Slovakia and Ukraine in the US during the depressed 1930s, this was contemporary physical theatre at its best, and at its most challenging. The young, agile, talented cast from the Czech theatre company Farm in the Cave presented a series of mesmerising tableaux with minimal props.
The sound texture of their wonderful, east-European inflected voices, the harmonies and dissonances of their vocables, the sureness of their gaze and their amazing energy, dexterity, discipline and youthful grace meant that this challenging piece of theatre - no more than three sentences were uttered in English, the rest a mixture of Slovakian, Ukrainian and Rutherian - got a warm response from the admittedly rather sparse audience on Saturday evening.
Earagail traditionally brings theatre to a range of smaller venues in isolated parts of north Donegal and this year Michael Harding's Jonathan Swift: Talking Through His Hatand Pat McCabe's Frank Pig Says Hellotoured from Ballybofey to Ramelton and Dungloe. Extra seating had to be put into the Church of Ireland Hall in Dunfanaghy on Monday as Harding made a dramatic entrance, apparently falling from the stage and then disconcerting latecomers by shaking hands with them, before embarking on a commanding recreation of Swift's mental world, complete with a lively and insightful question-and-answer session afterwards.
Musically, this year's festival combined veteran class acts and the shock of the new. Patrick Street had Ionad Cois Locha in Dunlewey packed to capacity and put on such a good show that the absence of Jackie Daly was hardly noted. Troubadour Andy Irvine's vocal chords were as mellifluous as ever, Kevin Burke's flowing bow had its characteristic old-timey inflection, and the audience just loved it.
The impact of the Irish diaspora on musical cultures in unlikely places was also in evidence at the Balor Theatre in Ballybofey when David Greeley, founding member of the Mamou Playboys, played tune after Cajun tune that he had got from French-speaking Denis Magee in Louisiana. The Deluge closing concert featured a Cajun-Irish fusion composition performed jointly by Greeley, virtuoso guitarist Sam Broussard and the legendary fiddle player Tommy Peoples, currently traditional musician in residence at the Balor, which served as a soundtrack to the slide show of images of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by Malcolm McClay.
A bit like the Donegal landscape itself, a centrepiece of this year's visual art was the actual venue - in this case the impressive new Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny, which has just opened. A distinctly contemporary public space, the ambitious €5 million building, an imposing 1,700 square-metre glass and aluminium-clad structure, is both a wonderful piece of modern architecture and a huge addition to the cultural resources of the northwest.
Located directly behind An Grianán theatre and best seen at twilight when the angular structure, the west-facing gilded cladding and the array of twinkling emerald lighting add a sense of wonder and enchantment that is as confident and modern as the new multicultural Ireland, the ambitious complex houses an auditorium, two large and impressive galleries, three multi-purpose workshop spaces and two fully equipped digital media studios, as well as two music rehearsal rooms.
The arts centre currently hosts an array of Migration and Diaspora-themed shows "juxtaposing the roles of guest and host nation" according to Paul Brown, artistic director of this year's festival, dues to close last night in the dramatic outdoor gallery of Magheroarty Beach with local An Cosán Glas collaborating with visual-arts company Walk The Plank to create an outdoor night-time exhibition .
"In this, the 400th anniversary of the Flight of the Earls," says Brown, "these themes are interpreted in the festival context, and given validation as celebratory, documentary or commemorative." Exhibitions at the new Regional Cultural Centre include Faraway So Close, a series of video portraits examining the lives of Irish people living in America, Wild Geese: The Irish in America,a range of exquisite craftwork from the US by people of Irish descent, and Painting in the Noughties, an impressive exhibition of recent abstract and semi-abstract work by 20 leading contemporary artists.
Deoraí, a collection of photographs by New York Timesphotographer Deirdre Brennan, exploring notions of identity, class, memory and loss among the Irish diaspora in New York, is on show at nearby An Grianán while the antipodean emigrant experience is represented in Sidney Nolan: Legendsat the tranquil Glebe Gallery in Churchill. This colourful exhibition brings together Nolan's iconic images of that great Australian legend Ned Kelly, created during the mid 1940s, interestingly juxtaposing them with his later, more painterly Wild Geeseseries.
Some of the Earagail exhibitions continue into Aug
