23rd. Donegal Bay and Blue Stacks Festival
Donegal Bay and Bluestacks Programme 2023
The 23rd. Donegal Bay and Blue Stacks Festival takes place from Friday, September 29 to Sunday, October 15. Festival events are happening in a variety of towns and villages in the South and South West of the county, including Ballyshannon, Bundoran, Ballintra, Pettigo, Donegal Town, Leghowney, Letterbarrow, Cill Chartha and Glenties, as well as in Ballybofey and Stranorlar.
Among this year’s highlights are Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre’s drive-in bingo themed spectacle, House! - which will be performed in Ballyshannon on Saturday and Sunday, October 7th. and 8th. The show will mark the culmination of a month long aerial dance residency hosted by Fidget Feet and the Abbey Arts Centre in the Ballyshannon Bundoran area over the month of September. The Residency and the House! performances are part of a wider Arts Council-funded collaboration between Kildare (Lead Partner), Tipperary and Donegal local authorities.
A further highlight will be the premier of Kieran Kelly’s new Civil War play, Drumboe, at the Balor Arts Centre, Ballybofey on Thursday, October 12. The play is being staged as part of Donegal County Council’s Decade of Centenaries programme (which has been managed to-date by Donegal County Museum) and is part-funded through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media’s local authorities Decade of Centenaries fund. It will run for three nights until Saturday, October 14th.
Over the same weekend, as part of its on-going partnership with the Frances Brown Literary Festival, the festival will present a special outdoor, theatrical adaptation of Frances Browne’s much loved children’s story, The Tale of Fairyfoot, performed by Aislingí Dance Academy of Ballybofey - with Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre and Inishowen Carnival - in Drumboe Wood, Stranorlar on Saturday and Sunday, October 14th and 15th.
Other highlights promise to be the Donegal Voices ensemble’s performances in Ballyshannon and Glenties on October 6 and 13, New York taxi driver - formerly of Pettigo - John McDonagh’s recollections of a life in the Big Apple – Off The Meter - which he will perform in the Abbey Arts Centre, Ballyshannon; Donegal Drama Circle’s highly anticipated production of Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Leghowney Hall and Fergus Cleary’s hilarious comedy An Island Wake in Cill Chartha.
Full Programme Information is available now on the festival website www.donegalbaybluestacks.com
