Festi-Full
I will go to five events that are part of the East Belfast Arts Festival. I sat and read through the 52-page program and earmarked lots of pages and then started ordering tickets, learning which had already sold out.
I did not look through the 120-page guide for the Bangor Open House Festival, but I will make it to two of the events that Swing Belfast has highlighted.
The minute I commit to one thing, I learn of something else I’d have preferred. For instance, this weekend a three-person cast is staging a Brian Friel play in four villages in Donegal--you take a bus from village to village. One of the cast members is Tamsin Grieg--a wonderful English actress whom I would LOVE to see in what promises to be an intimate performance. If I headed for Donegal within two hours of learning of tonight’s performance, I could have seen the play. But I’d have to be back by 2 pm Saturday for an East Belfast Arts event. As luck would have it, the Friel play was sold out tonight, the only night this weekend that I don’t have tickets for a local event. David and I are going to see it next weekend, when the cast will be different, but when we can stay longer.
So my First World Problem beef is the lack of coordination among festivals. Here are the festivals I’m aware of in August (and their respective dates):
Féile an Phobail (West Belfast): 2-12
East Belfast Arts Festival: 2-12
Bangor Open House: 1-31
Maiden City Festival (Derry): 4-11
Human Rights Film Festival: 5-10
Stendahl Festival (Limavady music festival): 10-11
ArtsOverBorders (Donegal/Friel and Enniskillen/Beckett: 2-19.
It would have been similar for July. A person can’t possibly take advantage of all that is on offer--you couldn’t even get through all the programmes to understand the daily choices. Having the East and West Belfast festivals simultaneously is a great way to prevent mingling between the two populations. I’d be much more likely to attend something in West Belfast if I didn’t have something of interest in my own back yard. But maybe the idea is each festival is intended only for the local populace--not to draw in others.
At the end of the day, if all these events are well subscribed, then more power to them. All of these festivals are heavily subsidised, so you don’t want the surfeit of choices to lead to empty seats. A Belfast woman told me once that, due to the Troubles, there wasn’t much in the way of community events. Maybe a dance at the church hall. Since the Peace Agreement was signed, Belfast has become festival central and people are expressing their long suppressed need to be together and have fun without fear of a bombing.
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