This year the Galway Theatre Festival (1st - 7th October) is celebrating its fifth birthday. Over the last five years, Galway Theatre Festival has provided a platform for emerging Irish theatre practitioners and companies locally and nationally. This year, we are asking for your help to ensure that the festival continues to grow.
What do we do?
Galway Theatre Festival is a not-for-profit, curated event. The Festival is committed to providing a platform for aspiring and emerging theatre companies, with particular emphasis on local, independent theatre. In its short history Galway Theatre Festival has presented several Irish and world premieres and strongly encourages new writing. We aim to produce a theatre event that is equally accessible to both audience and artists.
So why do we need your help?
The most crucial difference between the Galway Theatre Festival and many other theatre festivals is that we provide participating theatre companies with a venue, administrative and technical support all free of charge. We also offer our companies a 60/40 box office split in favour of the artist, and do not charge registration or application fees. This ensures low operating costs for our companies, and increases the likelihood of them walking away with some money to pour back into their future projects. If we are successful in raising our target of €3,500 on Fund It (30% of our overall budget), we will be able to do even more.
A priority for us this year is to increase the visibility of the festival and the companies involved; itself a costly undertaking. This year, for the first time ever, we are producing a festival brochure in place of our usual flyers) that we plan to distribute as widely as we can afford. With the extra funding, we can insure that the festival makes a bigger impact and therefore a bigger investment in emerging theatre for practitioners throughout the county and country. What's more, with more funding at our disposal, we know we can present our strongest ever festival.
And now for a Fund It exclusive … this year's festival line-up.
Blue Teapot Theatre Company (Galway)
Fregoli Theatre Company (Galway)
Lady Grew (Cork)
Mephisto Theatre Company (Galway)
Moonfish Theatre Company (Galway)
Mouth on Fire (Dublin)
Talking Shop Ensemble (Dublin)
Vegabond Theatre Group (Galway)
...we are also producing a 24 hour theatre project that will be performed in Druid Lane as well festival regular Stage Write, a rehearsed reading series. Please keep an eye on our website and facebook page for more information. We hope you can join us in celebrating this year’s Galway Theatre Festival in any way you can.
Galway Theatre Festival gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts Council of Ireland, Galway City Council, Druid Lane and Town Hall Theatres and the Galway Arts Centre.