Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Footsbarn Travelling Theatre Company created a lasting legacy in Galway when the group performed here during the early days of Galway Arts Festival. It’s been a while since the French-based company have featured in the festival programme but they have returned to Galway in recent years and will be here again in September when they will present Remember in an intimate setting at the city’s Black Box Theatre.

Remember is a new show, set in a dystopian and technocratic world, where live art is restricted and creativity and emotion are frowned upon. But one family who run a secret theatre disguised as a travelling tearoom, have dared to rebel. They re-enact lost plays, songs and poems, allowing people to taste the forbidden fruit of quiet resistance, rediscovering the joy of shared stories.

Remember will be at the Black Box on Wednesday and Thursday, September 17 and 18.

Oisín Flores Sweeney’s debut play The Empty Nest, presented by Blood in the Alley is at the Town Hall Saturday, August 30. This comic drama looks at how couples cope once their children leave home; their dreams, disappointments, longings and uncompromising opinions. Directed by Geoff Gould, it stars actor and director, Joan Sheehy (An Cailín Ciúin) and Irish Times Theatre Award nominee Séamus O’Rourke (Standing in Gaps and Leaning on Gates). The Empty Nest was a critical and commercial hit when it toured last year.

Also on August 30, the Black Box Theatre will host a dance show curated by Galway Dance Artist in Residence, Magdalena Hylak. This triple bill will explore human connection, impermanence and the body’s expressive capacity.

Venerations from Mufutau Yusuf is a poetic and interdisciplinary reflection on mortality, inspired by the writings of Emily Dickinson and Samuel Beckett.  In Unreeling, Fearghus Ó Conchúir offers a solo piece born from isolation, dancing to reveal the invisible threads that connect and sustain people. In Standing, Magdalena Hylak and Roberta Ceginskaite engage in an instinctive, wordless duet, an intimate conversation in motion shaped by Lionel Kasparian’s atmospheric sound score.

Pictured: Footsbarn will stage their latest show, Remember, in an intimate setting at the Black Box in September.