The Gap Arts Festival is unique in Europe. Located amongst the high hills and wild mountain landscape of North Wexford and South Wicklow, the kind of people you would expect to meet would include woodcutters and farmers tending their sheep, the views are spectacular and it is a good place for wildlife and tourists, it has its own bit of heaven!
This weekend festival is a miracle occuring, not for the first time, but for the ninth year as Ballythomas National School explodes into a living theatre with everything from classical recitals, art workshops, short films, outdoor cimema, The Gap Gig and many other attractions from Friday to Sunday, inclusive, this weekend.
A first for Ballythomas is that they are bringing in a Grand Piano this year and it will be played by BBC Young Musician of the Year 2018 finalist, Adam Heron, with violonist Christopher Quaid, who is from nearby Clonegal.
One of the country’s leading vocalists, Honor Hefferman, who recently moved to live in the North Wexford area, will give a dazzling evocation of the notorous American socialite/socialist Drothy Parker in the The Whisling Girl. One performance only at 5 pm on Saturday.
Nominated for a Rural Inspiration Award 2019 by the European Network for Rural Development, the Gap Arts Festival is a family-friendly, multi-discipline arts festival, with an open-arms welcome for audiences young and old, and for participants in a wide range of enjoyable, hands-on, art workshops.
Founded in 2011 to bring professional theatre to this rural hillside community between Arklow/Gorey and Tinahely along the Wicklow-Wexford county border, it hadn’t been seen since the fit-ups came with a tent in the 1950s, the Festival has grown year on year.
“There is no village, no crossroads, no theatre, but every year the Gap Festival builds and adapts venues, indoors and out, and presents the best of professional theatre, music (classical and rock), poetry, film, outdoor spectacle, late-night family friendly movies under the stars, – and workshops and projects in photography, film making, painting, poetry, acrobatics, puppetry and dance.” said Festival Director Garrett Keogh.
The Gap Arts Festival 2019 takes place at Ballythomas on the weekend of August 9 -11th see www.gapartsfestival.com
and https://www.facebook.com/gapartsfestival/