Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Reunion, by Mark O’Rowe, features Venetia Bowe, Cathy Belton, Simone Collins and Robert Sheehan. Photograph: Kris AskeyGalway International Arts Festival has announced its programme for 2024, including seven world premieres, a new visual-arts commission and its biggest music line-up.
Garry Hynes is directing a new Druid production of Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame, with Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan; the Australian circus troupe Circa presents the European premiere of Duck Pond, its reimagining of Swan Lake; and the Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury stages Cultural Exchange Rate, her immersive installation about the never-ending story of migration.
Topics for the festival’s First Thought Talks series include the US presidential election, the world after climate transition, the rise of machines, the possibilities and disadvantages of a united Ireland, and how close we are to a nuclear catastrophe; the discussions will feature the journalists Marion McKeone and, from The Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole; the novelists Colm Tóibín, Andrew O’Hagan, Mike McCormack and Elaine Feeney; the academics and authors Diarmaid Ferriter and Pankaj...
“We are thrilled to work with such an extraordinary number of artists and colleagues from Galway, Ireland and around the world to deliver this programme,” Fahy says. “It is very exciting to produce and host such exciting world, Irish and European premieres as part of one our most ambitious festival programmes to date. There is simply nowhere quite like Galway during the festival.