Galway International Arts Festival

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

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE...

Stardust

Inquests into the nightclub fire that led to the deaths of 48 people

Common Ground

How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands