Supporting local artists is key as Town Hall reopens

Singers Seán Keane and Mary Coughlan will be among the performers taking to the stage of the city’s Town Hall Theatre this month as it reopens for live shows, having been closed to audiences since March due to Covid-19.

Its sister venue, the Black Box, is also re-opening, with a series of First Thought Talks this weekend and next from Galway International Arts Festival.

Capacity at all events will be limited in line with Government health and safety guidelines, explains Town Hall director Fergal McGrath.

He’s cautiously happy to be reopening, with a limited number of shows between now and Christmas. Doing so is vital to keeping Galway’s cultural eco-system alive and healthy until the pandemic is brought under control, he explains.

“Three months ago, if you’d said we’d be opening the doors with a capacity of 42 to 55 people per performance, I’d have said ‘no way’. Like a lot of people, I thought this was a short-term issue. But now we know it’s longer term and if we maintained that attitude, we’d never open again,” he says of the venues which he runs for the City Council.

“Safety, feasibility and viability,” were Fergal’s criteria for re-opening. He explains that the Town Hall joined other venues to research international best-practice – even checking in with Irish embassies in South-East Asia to see how countries there, which have experience of pandemics, operate safely.

Having shared their findings with Government departments, these safety measures are now being implemented in Irish theatres. Some will be immediately obvious to Town Hall patrons, such as one-way systems, social distancing and spacing between seats in the auditoriums.

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

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