Matt the Hat says literary festival ‘write’ up his street

Date Published: 19-Apr-2012

Mattie Hynes looks distinctive probably because he almost always wears a black hat, and anyone who didn’t know him would incorrectly guess that he is an actor.

It’s an honest mistake for people to make in this the culture capital of Ireland and while Mattie isn’t a regular on the stage, he is very familiar with the back stage areas at various art events as a sound technician and hospitality workers for Cúirt.

Next week will be his 17th year working with Cúirt, the annual international festival of literature which Mattie declares is his favourite week of the year. It is when he meets and greets some of the biggest names in literature today, some of them politicians and often controversial figures.

But Mattie says he is equally looking forward to meeting the regular patrons to the festival, some of whom he had got to know from meeting them year after year. Next week, the foyers and bars of various hotels around the city will be locations for reunions of old friends. There’s one group of teachers who travel from Switzerland to Cúirt every second year, he says.

“They love the intimacy of the festival and that unlike other literary festivals, they can meet the writers and poets afterwards. . . and of course they enjoy the atmosphere of the week, the music and the friendliness,” he says.

Mattie doesn’t mind that he works in the background of Cúirt, but he was a bit shy of doing the interview because he doesn’t like being in the limelight. And yet, mention Matt the Hat to any local person and they immediately know who you are talking about, which makes Mattie an iconic figure in his own home town.

Mattie is from Rahoon, where his 93 years old mother, Margaret, still lives and where she continues to bake her popular porter cakes! 

 After finishing his education in the Bish, he went to work in O’Connor’s TV repair shop, which used to be located in Sickeen, Woodquay before it moved to Middle Street. He was a field engineer which involved travelling the highways and byways (“mostly boreens” says Mattie) of the county fixing televisions. Ah, those were the days when the TV repair man was God!

“It was also the days before mobile phones and after I would finish a few jobs, say in Gort, I would look for a public phone box with the wind up phone and ring the office to see if there were any more calls I had to make in the area before heading home,” Mattie recalls.

He remembers being aged only nine years when he got backstage in St Patrick’s School after seeing the play, Shadow of a Gunman, in which a relation was taking part. Little did he know that this area of the auditorium was to be his future workplace.

“We always went to plays, amateur productions but I never took part in them. . . I don’t know why. Funny enough my first acting experience came many years later when I played a mobster in Mobs i Meiricea, a six part series for TG4, but that was it.”

He says he has always been associated with the arts in one way or another so it is hard to put a time on it, but he claims Macnas had something to do with it!

“I worked on about 10 to 12 Macnas parades for the Galway Arts Festival doing various jobs and for much of that time I was still working for O’Connor’s. But next week will be my 17th Cúirt where I mostly do hospitality – the green room. And what happens in the green room stays in the green room!” he says with a twinkle in his eye before there’s any question put to him about celebrity guests at the festival.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.