2025 in art: Our 10 favourite Irish exhibitions of the year
Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone at the National Gallery of Ireland, Kunstkammer in Waterford and Lisa Fingleton in Tralee are among the highlights
Galway International Arts Festival
‘A hug runs all the way through this’: How to Catch a Star, based on the Oliver Jeffers book, returns to the Ark
This puppet show, which has been a huge hit for Branar, draws similar reactions from children all over the world
Mars review: INO’s exhilarating space-travel opera comes from a mind exploding with ideas
Jennifer Walshe’s new opera, created with Mark O’Connell, is like nothing else Irish National Opera has staged
Why the Moon Travels review: Eye-opening show is not just a retelling of Traveller folktales
Galway International Arts Festival: For the audience, there are hints of things we want to hear more about
T5 and Sea Wall double bill review: Two very different responses to trauma pack an emotional punch
Galway International Arts Festival 2025: Simon Stephens’ short one-act monologues are strong, forthright and beautiful
Mikel Murfi’s underwater production is unusual, intriguing and oddly life-enhancing
Galway International Arts Festival 2025: Oh…. is gob-smackingly skilled
Riders to the Sea and Macbeth: A magnificent horror unbalancing nature
Theatre: Druid’s Galway International Arts Festival double bill
Beckett sa Chreig: Guth na mBan review – Beckett’s vision given a haunting, evocative twist
Theatre: Sarah Jane Scaife’s vision builds on the work that Company SJ started in 2021 with Laethanta Sona/Happy Days
Sabotage review: Joyously chaotic festival opener has all the fun of the circus
Galway International Arts Festival 2025: A gorgeous, playful, accomplished start to a festive fortnight
As Galway’s arts festival opens, the city’s long-expected cultural space inches slowly towards planning this year
Artistic director ‘embarrassed’ at how ‘dreadfully inadequate Galway is in terms of cultural infrastructure’
Ready for launch: Mark O’Connell and Jennifer Walshe on Mars, their new collaboration
Galway International Arts Festival stages the premiere of an Irish opera in which four women astronauts embark on a Martian voyage
Garry Hynes: ‘My wife was taken from me in the blink of an eye. My whole life’s changed’
The Druid founder has a reputation as a demanding director. But she has mellowed – and theatre is a consolation after her wife was ‘taken from me in the blink of an eye’
The Guide: Galway arts festival, The Script, Taylor Tomlinson and other events to see, shows to book and ones to catch before they end
July 12th-18th: The best movies, music, art and more coming your way this week
Druid at 50: Joe O’Shaughnessy’s photographic history of the Galway theatre company
An exhibition in Galway charts the company’s remarkable evolution since being founded by Garry Hynes, Marie Mullen and Mick Lally in 1975
A Druid show and a sandwich for 50p: How Mick Lally, Marie Mullen and Garry Hynes began their theatre company 50 years ago
‘We were chancing our arm,’ Garry Hynes says of the company that brought superlative, expansive, intimate, skilled theatre to Galway and then the world stage
An Irish industrial folly spawns a new generation of cutting-edge creativity
Galway International Arts Festival 2025: Interface’s This Too Will Pass, at the Carrolls salmon hatchery, and Funeral for Ashes, by Conor Maloney and John Conneely
A Cork woman in the circus: ‘In transition year, I wrote to a circus dance company asking if I could do an internship’
Gracie Marshall quit school to train to be a performer. Now Sabotage, in which she stars, is on its way to Galway International Arts Festival
Druid Theatre to mark 50th anniversary with Synge-Shakespeare double bill
Presentation in Galway this summer will feature Riders to the Sea and Macbeth
A middle-class millennial at a Kneecap gig: am I just cosplaying at republicanism?
The bilingual west Belfast hip-hop trio take Galway by storm with an act that is in reality more satire than sectarianism
The Map of Argentina review: Sexual desire and forbidden passion in a drama that clutches you to its chest
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Marina Carr’s play features Maeve Fitzgerald as married mother Deb, who has fallen madly in love with another man
Duck Pond review: Bouncy, bendy bodies in a beautiful, acrobatic take on Swan Lake
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: The Australian contemporary-circus troupe Circa bring superlative skill to their take on Swan Lake
Cultural Exchange Rate review: Intriguing, moving and far more than the sum of its parts
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Tania El Khoury’s live installation tells the story of the Lebanese artist and her family
Unspeakable Conversations review: Thoughtful and thought-provoking
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Show explores important themes around quality of life and right to life
Somnium review: Dark story of sexual violence becomes a stunning dream show
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Brú Theatre’s production is absorbing, beautiful and disturbing
Enda Walsh’s Changing Room and Dining Room review: A sea swimmer adrift and a furious B&B-owner
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Two unrelated pieces of theatre-installation differ in tone and execution
Endgame review: Druid’s exquisite production brings a lightness of step to Beckett’s indestructible tragicomedy
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Garry Hynes directs Rory Nolan, Aaron Monaghan, Marie Mullen and Bosco Hogan
Reunion review: Zinger of a play doesn’t flag for a second
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: With an ensemble of excellent actors, Mark O’Rowe’s new ensemble piece is a joy
Welcome to the ‘jungle’: Galway International Arts Festival gets off to a startling start
Life-sized hybrid-creature sculptures set to draw thousands of visitors over next two weeks
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: 15 events to catch this year
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: here are 15 unmissable things to see and do at this year’s festival
Mark O’Rowe: ‘The plays were violent and sexual. But I can’t go back there. Everything has to be new to me’
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: The Tallaght playwright on new play Reunion, his changing preoccupations, and the stress of TV work
Patricia Piccinini: ‘We’re hard-wired to be suspicious of difference’
The Australian artist exhibits a wilderness of imagined creatures for the Galway International Arts Festival. The works challenge our empathy and revulsion
Yvonne McGuinness: ‘I’m much more at ease in the muck of a field with a class of nine-year-olds than I am with a red carpet’
Dublin artist Yvonne McGuinness lives on the fringes of a starry world, thanks to her marriage to Cillian Murphy, but says she feels more at ease in a mucky field than on a red carpet
The Guide: Galway International Arts Festival, Pillow Queens and other events to see, shows to book and ones to catch before they end
July 13th-19th: The best movies, music, art and more coming your way this week
Stewart Copeland of The Police: ‘You can’t beat an old song, but I bang the sh*t out of them’
The composer and drummer’s show, Police Deranged, at Galway International Arts Festival, recalibrates Police songs for a full orchestra
Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan take on Beckett: ‘To understand Endgame is to understand that you can’t understand Endgame’
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: For Druid’s Endgame, Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan are immersed in Beckett. It’s surpringly enjoyable, they say
The best Irish summer festivals in July and August, from music and comedy to literature and science
Schools are out and out of offices are on so it’s time to plan how to get the best out of summer in Ireland
Kettama on his first big DJ set: ‘Within 10 minutes the whole place filled up. My jaw dropped’
What’s Next For?: The producer returns to his home city for a colossal show in the Big Top at Galway International Arts Festival
Ireland’s best festivals in 2024: A handy guide to more than 100 of the best cultural showcases
From huge events such as Electric Picnic and Dublin Theatre Festival to more esoteric gatherings around Ireland
Theatre of 2023: A year split between the muted past and vigorous present
Productions of classics appeared to be aimed at long-time theatregoers, yet this year the Arts Council warned of a decline in young people attending plays
The importance of critical thinking skills to your career
Critical thinking, analysing of information and ability to solve complex problems are essential skills in the modern world
Fintan O’Toole: Ireland can be proud of itself only if it can confront its shameful deeds
Druid’s magnificent new staging of the O’Casey trilogy should be a source of national pride
Galway International Arts Festival 2023: 12 moments we’ll remember
Including The Pulse, Colm Meaney’s Galway tribute, David Mach’s exploding installation, Luke Murphy’s explosive dance, and the epic DruidO’Casey
Time to plan for the Galway Arts Festival and the Galway Races, but where is the plan for the city’s clogged-up roads?
Traffic is a perennial issue in the City of Tribes, and many believe the solution is not to build more roads, but to build sustainability
You’ll See...: Ulysses for kids, with a star turn from the charming, funny, knowing Helen Gregg
Theatre: Branar’s take on James Joyce is surprisingly simple for such a complicated novel – and a great introduction to its appeal
Life & Times of Michael K: A magical staging of JM Coetzee’s sweeping, epic tale
Galway International Arts Festival 2023: Handspring’s astonishing puppetry brings Michael K and his mother to life
DruidO’Casey: A brilliant ensemble cast brings Garry Hynes’ vision to life in back-to-back productions
Galway International Arts Festival: Seán O’Casey’s Plough and the Stars, Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock follow Druid’s Synge, Murphy and Shakespeare cycles
Volcano review: Edge-of-your-seat entertainment – you won’t have seen anything like this before
Galway International Arts Festival 2023: Luke Murphy’s dance-theatre piece about two men going slowly crazy in deep space is tense, troubling and touching
Every Brilliant Thing: An enjoyable, interactive and life-affirming monologue about mental health
Galway International Arts Festival 2023: Clare Barrett is vulnerable and utterly charming in managing the vagaries of improvised audience participation
Not a Word: An evocative, heartrending play about yearning and forgotten lives
Galway International Arts Festival 2023: In the hour-long show there is physicality, mask and music, but there’s not a word
Bedbound: Colm and Brenda Meaney shine as Father and Daughter in Enda Walsh’s most Beckettian play
Galway International Arts Festival 2023: The acting is excellent, but this early play has moments that now strike a crude, adolescent note
Cloakroom: A gorgeous slice of adolescence about to blossom into new possibilities
Galway International Arts Festival 2023: Zara Devlin provides the voice for a ballroom attendant in Enda Walsh’s latest Rooms installation
The Pulse: Jaw-dropping acrobatics, exquisite singing, ferocious skill
Galway International Arts Festival 2023: Gravity & Other Myths’ outstanding show stretches the limits of what a human body can do
How to run a festival: Beware of stilt walkers in the rain
Gemma Tipton offers a beginner’s guide to taking up a new cultural pursuit
The Pulse: ‘Circus meets opera’ show set to demolish fourth wall at Galway festival
In Spain, they bet on weather being on their side. In Ireland for the Galway International Arts Festival, they won’t
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Stardust
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