Galway International Arts Festival launches programme

Award-winning playwright Enda Walsh, whose latest play, Ballyturk, is the flagship theatre show of this year’s Galway International Arts Festival, is breaking new ground with a theatre/installation piece which is also being premiered at July’s Arts Festival.

Room 303, a 15-minute video piece will have its world premiere in the Absolut Festival Gallery at the Connacht Tribune’s Market Street premises and will run throughout the Festival from July 14 to 27. It’s the latest collaboration between Walsh and the Festival which this year has rebranded itself as the Galway International Arts Festival.

The addition of International to the title is “more reflective of what we present and where we are going, which is bringing stuff on the international stage”, explained Festival Director Paul Fahy. “You can be local and yet international,” he said of the Festival’s artistic approach. Proof of that is Ballyturk, which will tour to London and New York as well as to other Irish venues after the Festival.

The world premiere of Ballyturk was sold out in advance of the Arts Festival’s official launch this week. The show, featuring Cillian Murphy, Stephen Rea and Mikel Murfi, will run from July 10-27, at the Black Box Theatre.