This year’s Halloween offering from the popular street performance company will involve an enormous newt visiting Galway for a joyful two-day event that’s suitable for all the family and will have lots of spectacle and pyrotechnics as it explores climate change. Its Artistic Director Richard Babingon tells JUDY MURPHY how the giant Alf will make his presence felt in the city.

For four decades, Macnas Theatre Company’s spectacular parades and outdoor spectacles have been entertaining people in Galway and all over the world.

“Macnas has become synonymous with creating quality spectacle for the people of Galway, but it’s a challenge to keep people saying ‘wow’. Change keeps us on our toes,” says Richard Babington, the Artistic Director of this year’s Halloween show.

Turas Alf/Alf’s Journey is not a parade, rather it’s a two-day  event this Saturday and Sunday, when people will get a chance to get up close to the Macnas creations and when children of all ages will be catered for.

“Johnny was talking about doing something fresh this year,” says Richard, referring to the company’s executive director, Johnny O’Reilly, who has been with Macnas since 2021.

The result is a giant newt, Alf.

“He’s a big chap,” says Richard of Alf, who is 20 metres long, five metres high, and incorporates lighting, a soundtrack and special effects.

Alf has travelled to Galway City because his former wetland home along the Corrib has been destroyed by litter. His attempt to find an alternative failed, as it had been dug up to accommodate a motorway.

The inspiration for Alf came from a fossil trackway,  which was discovered in Valentia Island, Kerry, in 1993 by geology student, Iwan Stossel.

This contains the fossilised remains of tetrapods, giant newt-line creatures that lived 385 million years ago.

The Valentia fossils are the oldest animal footprints ever found in Europe, and Valentia is one of only four places in the world where they’ve been discovered.

While those creatures have disappeared into the mists of time, their descendants have a lot to teach us today.

“Newts are part of a group of indicator species and their health gives an idea of the impact of climate change,” Richard explains of these amphibious creatures who live on land and in water.

Richard, who has freelanced regularly with Macnas since 2017, says this show is the result of a creative process that the company began about a decade ago.

Although there was a Halloween Parade last year, the one before that had been in 2019.

In 2022 the group hosted an event in its headquarters at the city’s Fisheries Field, featuring the giant, Con Mór. The previous year, there had also been film screenings of Gilgamesh and a show, rather than a parade.

Covid was partly responsible but there were other factors too, Richard says, and these date to 2015 when Macnas started work on Gilgamesh, an epic production for Galway’s tenure as European Capital of Culture. While the company’s original vision couldn’t be realised, partly due to Covid, this production, with its many different strands, did mark “a diversification”.

And that diversification continues, partly driven by the company’s desire to reinvent itself, and party because of feedback.

“People wanted to see the creations for longer and also wanted more child-friendly stuff,” Richard says.

He points out that making the extraordinary mechanical creations can involve months of work, but people don’t always get to fully appreciate them during a parade.

“We’ve spent months making it and then it’s gone in seconds.”

In 2021, when Con Mór took up residence in the Fisheries Field, that changed.

“People could come and interact with the builds and the giants,” he says.

Families loved it and the aim this year is similar.

Since Macnas moved the parade from Summer to Halloween 11 years ago, the events have become darker in tone, and while they’ve been visually and aurally fantastic, this wasn’t for everyone.

“People with young children were telling us they weren’t bringing them,” says Richard who says there’s nothing scary this year.