Arts festival set to dazzle

Box office sales have opened for an event described as “one of the most significant multi-arts festivals” of the summer.

The Clonmel Junction Festival is set to take over the town for 10 days next month and will include performances, shows, and exhibitions.

As well as a high-quality programme of circus, dance, comedy, and music, the festival programme will also feature a wide range of participatory arts activities.

Among the highlights is the Cafés Carte Blanche programme which offers a selection of pop-up cafés curated by different artists with a set of distinct themes.

Members of the public and visiting performers and artists can meet in the cafés and exchange ideas.

This year’s international theatre programme includes Actors Theatre Company’s production of controversial German play The Golden Dragon and the Norwegian feminist fairytale The Girl with the Iron Claw, a play performed with masks and puppets.

Irish theatre highlights include Pat Kinevane’s Silent which tackles the issues of alcoholism, depression, and homelessness with theatrical poise, and Sonya Kelly’s personal story Wheelchair on my Face.

The festival will welcome back the Swiss circus theatre company Nicole and Martin whose magical white tent and accompanying wagons and trucks will be fitting up in the centre of town where they will perform three of Grimm’s fairytales.

Ronan Tully, nephew of the late Eugene Lambert, continues the family puppeteering tradition and will be returning from Barcelona to Clonmel to premiere his new show Circo Islu which is performed in a custom- made “mini big top”.

Royseven, who won song of the year for 2011 with ‘We Should Be Lovers’, will open the festival on July 6. The schedule will conclude on July 15.

At the programme launch, festival director David Teevan said: “The Clonmel Junction Festival has over the last decade established itself as one of the most significant multi-arts festivals of the summer festival season, programming a distinctive mix of high-quality Irish and international theatre, circus, comedy, and music.”