Great Line-Up Of Entertainment For Siamsa Tíre’s Samhain Festival

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Scoil Eoin pupils on a recent visit to the A Way Home/An Slí Abhaile exhibition at Siamsa Tíre.

SIAMSA Tíre has a great line-up of entertainment planned for the mid-term break as it hosts the Samhain Festival.

Taking place from Monday, October 25 to Saturday, October 30, it promises a family-friendly mix of theatre, arts and crafts workshops, and storytelling, with an enchanting children’s art exhibition thrown in for good measure.

It opens on Monday 25th with ‘I Am Baba’, a theatrical experience created for parents and babies by the internationally-renowned director Anna Newell and award-winning composer David Goodall.

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They will bring babies and their parents on an adventure of lights, songs, and textures as they explore the themes of identity and personhood.

Two children’s workshops take place on Tuesday 26th.  The first is ‘Sculptures from Rubbish’, where children create architectural sculptures from items that most of us throw in the bin.

The second is Robots from Rubbish, where they use the likes of toilet roll, cardboard, and tinfoil to make colourful robot characters.

Wednesday 27th is a day of monsters, both onstage and off.  Barnstorm Theatre Company will stage ‘Alice and the Wolf’, a dark re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood for the digital age.

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Also on Wednesday, Illustrator Olivia Golden will host a Halloween Monster Mash-Upworkshop.  Olivia’s work has featured in more than 30 books for all ages and in this workshop, she will introduce children to a world of Raboos, Slumpires, Fletitches, and maybe even a Zat or two!

On Friday 29th, Designer Minds – a group that aims to expose children to the wonders of science, design, and technology through hands-on activities and experiments – will hold a Spooky Science workshop.

Tralee Pottery Club is running Pottery Workshops on Saturday 30th.  Open to children of all ages up to teens, with one specifically for parents and toddlers, these will be pottery wheel throwing taster workshops where everyone will throw their own pot on a professional wheel, decorate it, and take it home as a piece of art to admire on the mantelpiece.

Irish author, storyteller, lecturer, and broadcaster Eddie Lenihan will also be there on Saturday, telling tales of magic, myth, and mystery for young and old.

Performers from Siamsa Tíre’s National Folk Theatre Training Academy will stage their own celebration of Samhain on Saturday too, with a presentation projected onto the outside walls of the theatre for all to enjoy.

The centerpiece of this year’s Samhain Festival is A Way Home/An Slí Abhaile.  This major commissioned art exhibition for children tells the story of two siblings who get lost in the woods at Halloween.  They meet all sorts of otherworldly creatures that teach them the true meaning of this festival.

Scoil Eoin pupils on a recent visit to the A Way Home/An Slí Abhaile exhibition at Siamsa Tíre.

Siamsa Tíre is also running a special children’s competition to mark the occasion.

One of the illustrators from our ‘A Way Home’ exhibition, Olivia Golden, has provided one of her artworks for children to colour in.

If you send a photo of your child’s completed illustration to Siamsa, your family will be in with a chance to win some fantastic prizes.

There are two age categories.  The winner of the nine to 13 category will win family tickets for Alice and the Wolf (for children aged 8+) and a free place on the Monster Mash Up illustration workshop with Olivia Golden.

The winner of the four to eight category will get a private reading of the folk story ‘A Way Home’ by its author Olivia Hope followed by and a guided tour of the exhibition that illustrates this magical tale.

The winning entries and runners-up will be displayed in the gallery alongside the work of the professional artists.

This competition will be judged by author Olivia Hope and illustrator Olivia Golden. To find out how to enter, click here to go to the Siamsa Tíre website.

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