Search Results for 'Una Taaffe'

Attributed to changing consumer appetites and habits, challenging trading conditions and the rise of hybrid working, the rate of vacancies in Galway's commercial properties has risen in the last twelve months to become the second highest in Ireland.

Sometimes when we look at a old picture of the heart of Galway City and notice something that is there no longer, we strain to remember when exactly that change took place. There are many time-stamped prompts to help us. Maybe it is the sight of cars on Shop Street, some pulled up to collect heavy goods from the likes of O’Connor TV or Naughtons. Or books from O’Gormans. Or the sight of Una Taaffe, shawled up to greet the morning.

The Penny Dinners committee was a name given to a voluntary group who used to provide free dinners for 40 to 80 impoverished children four times per week in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In fact the title was a misnomer, in no sense were they penny dinners. The children could not afford to give a penny for them, nor could the committee provide a dinner for a penny. The funding for these meals came from the people of Galway and also from fundraising productions they put on, mostly in the Columban Hall.

I haven’t walked around the streets of the city for about three months now. Any trip into town left me dispirited in the early days of lockdown, the grass long in the Square, the grey walls even greyer, the colour you associate with that time of year drained from everyplace. And everyone.

AND SO ends another year of theatre-going, a year of big shows, small shows, professional shows, amateur shows, local shows, and visiting shows. Rather than doing a general review of the year past, I shall focus on the shows I enjoyed most from those I saw.

TWO LOCALLY-devised works in progress proved big hits with Tuesday’s Galway Theatre Festival audiences - Conor Geoghegan’s Invisible at Nuns Island and Elaine Mears’ Una at the Mick Lally Theatre. Both are already strong pieces of theatre and certainly whetted the appetite to see them in their finished forms.

BY CAROLINE FORDE (POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER, CENTRE FOR GLOBAL WOMEN’S STUDIES) AND ELAINE MEARS (DIRECTOR, STORIES OF UNA)