It may put some strain on those employed to sell tickets and balance budgets, but the public will be more than spoilt for choice during the fortnight from July 16th to 30th. With two festivals, apart from an abundance of events in the city's small number of venues, street theatre is a feature of both - along with two parades back to back on the same weekend of July 22nd and 23rd.
The Project '06 venture on Saturday, July 22nd is entitled Morning, Noon and Night, under the direction of Paraic Breathnach, and intends to portray 24 hours in the life of a Galway street.
A "torrent of colour and sound" is promised for Macnas's Big River, part of the "official festival", and it will be complemented during that festival's fortnight run by Teatro Pachuco from Mexico, stilted policemen from Spain's Cirq Civil, the Bizarre Street Aquarium presented by Quebec's Les Sages Fous, and giant bouncing kangaroos in the Australian company Icarus's Roo'd.
Galway Youth Theatre presents a triple bill for Project '06 in Galway Arts Centre's Nun's Island Studio, and there will be apocalyptic puppets, rampant rabbits, circus theatre and stagecraft workshops for children (all children's events are priced at €5), along with new writing from Little John Nee with Laura Sheehan, Colm Corless with Diarmuid de Faoite, and a black comedy on the theme of global warming, rendition and love by Darach Ó Scolaí.
Music ranges from classical to jazz to experimental rock to traditional, with Máirtín O'Connor and friends, the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain, the Saw Doctors and a performance by the Maimín Cajun Band at the Project '06 ball on July 30th.
A strong visual arts dimension includes an interpretation by artist Tom Block on the international struggle for human rights in Galway City Library, hosted by Amnesty International and the Irish Centre for Human Rights, while a selection of the "best of Irish art" curated by Padraic Reaney in Kenny's Gallery includes one room dedicated to the work of the late Tony O'Malley.
Also in Kenny's Gallery, the University of Hardie Knox's annual lecture series could provide a sort of metaphor for the energy unleashed for Project '06. Initiated by film-maker and photographer Bob Quinn, it celebrates Knox's desire to "give voice to the independent mind" by seeking out and interviewing "those who neither sought nor welcomed plaudits from academia" and who inspired the wrath or loathing or both of "a coalition of the ignorant".
Quinn's first "victim" is former Sunday Independent investigative journalist Joe McAnthony, best known for his work on the Irish Sweepstakes. In a recorded interview with Quinn, to be shown on July 17th at 1.10pm, McAnthony takes a swipe at corruption, vested interests and even at The Irish Times.
www.project06.com
