Rose Parkinson is "wildly excited" to have been appointed Director of the Galway Arts Festival. She isn't from Galway and she's much too young to be one of the "Class of '76", the group of friends which has run the festival up to now. However, she's so much part of Galway, through her work as festival co-ordinator with the Cuirt Festival of Literature, as well as her sterling performances as press officer with the Galway Arts Festival, that it appears as if she is from Galway. There may be less of a break with the tradition of the festival than there might have been.
She already has plans to "change tack", however. "The festival needs to look at itself. There's a lot happening in the arts now that wasn't happening when the festival was founded 23 years ago," she says. "I'd like the festival to be more a creator. I want it to initiate, and to bring artists together from different art forms." Her main interests are theatre, literature and music, she says, and she would like, for instance, to bring composers together with playwrights. Although an observer was sent to the Edinburgh Festival, she wants to get away from hosting events from other festivals, and towards producing original work. Will outdoor spectacle be as important as ever? "It's synonymous with Galway, but it shouldn't be to the exclusion of more text-based theatre. This year there was a lack of that," she says.
"Isn't that the group that did the fireworks for the Galway Arts Festival?"
"Oh, I don't think so." "Strange, because that group also did the Barcelona Olympics and the World Cup Final. They were called Groupe F. too"
You wouldn't know it from the press release - or the response from a PR man at Festival House - but yes, Belfast has attracted the same French outfit to light up their skies as Galway did in July. This should make much of the Spirit of the City Hallowe'en Party, which will open the 18-day festival on October 28th. The executive director of the festival, Robert Agnew, says that his aim is for the festival to move towards being "a less formal festival, a festival that is more fun". This remains a huge hurdle in a city which had the heart torn out of it for 30 years - and (whisper) can have inclement weather in November. If Agnew pulls it off, it would be good compensation for the fact that this year's festival programme lacks the breathtaking daring of those which former director Sean Doran put together. Major highlights of the festival, whose programme was launched this week, have already been mentioned here as part of the Grand Opera House's programme, but other events include the Italian Teatro del Carretto's Snow White and Romeo and Juliet, the Northern Ireland premiere of Messiaein's Tuangalila Symphony with the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Thierry Fischer, flamenco from Seville's Jaleo troupe, and the Quebecois Cirque Eloize. The Guinness Live music programme includes Courntey Pine and Chick Corea. The visual arts highlight had also come to our notice already - in news from the Ormeau Baths Gallery that it will host a Gilbert and George exhibition.
Tel: 0801232-665577; programme details, visual images and ticket reservation facilities: www.qub.ac.uk/festival or belfastfestival.qub.ac.uk
Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell's play, Trust, which premiered in March at the Royal Court in London, is to be produced next month by the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco. Mitchell is currently in rehearsal with director Joe Devlin for his next play Energy, the story of a punk rock band. It is set in 1981 but the Protestant band members know nothing of the Republican hunger strikes that are headline news - and care about them even less. The play is the first independent commission by the Playhouse in Derry, where it opens on September 29th.
Tel: 08015-04264481
Meanwhile, the Royal Court will neither confirm nor deny that they will be producing a new Conor McPherson play called Dublin Carol, starring actor Brian Cox. Let's just say it's extremely likely. His The Weir is still doing the business for them in London.
The project which looked like proving to its members that you can't make art by committee ("It's been sheer hell"; "I don't want to be here", are among the comments quoted on this page last week) finally came up with the goods and planned an "intervention" for Patrick Street in Cork. They planned to deck the main street with streams of razor- sharp barbwire, to be suspended from the cables normally used for the Christmas decoration, for a month. The Echo led with the story of the planned onslaught on the city's main street last Friday, and by tea-time the city manager Jack Higgins, had announced that the plan would not be allowed to go ahead: "In my view," he commented, "the plan wouldn't be decipherable by the man on the street. Very often the artistic element seems to take over from the practicalities of the situation." There is no Plan B so it is uncertain where the £10,000 earmarked for Project Mongrel will go, though the group will publish a document.
A plan has been hatched to develop the Lyric Theatre on its present Stranmillis site. The Lyric is part of the Advancement Development Programme with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which means there was an in-depth look at the management of the theatre. It has been decided not to have an artistic director, but instead an executive producer, and that position has been advertised.
The theatre has applied for Lottery funding for the development and there should be news on that early in the New Year.
