Bram Stoker Festival

Now passing into the eleventh year, the Bram Stoker Festival has changed times over from its inauguration as a literary celebration to a full-blown arts weekend festival, incorporating theatre, film, music, and live performance. An homage for Bram Stoker, Dublin's unrivaled king of the gothic novel and the creator of everyone's favorite vampire, Count Dracula. - Inspired by an article by RTE.

“Although his name is inextricably tied to Dracula, the festival is interested in the themes and the tinge of Gothic that exists throughout Bram Stoker's work,” says Festival Director Tom Lawlor. “In recent years, the programme has responded to the cannon of work, rather than just Dracula. We want to expand beyond the vampire trope and explore the elements of superstition within Irish heritage and storytelling that exists throughout Stoker's writing.” - Mentioned in an article by RTE.

Macnas (Irish for 'frolicking') is a performance company based at the Fisheries Field in Galway, Ireland. Its public performances are noted for being "pioneering, inventive and radical" in style. The company has been credited with changing the nature of public entertainment in Ireland and is regarded as highly influential within the field of spectacle performance. Founded in 1986, the company has performed in over 20 countries across the globe. Its parades have been a centre-point of Halloween, St. Patrick's Day and formerly Galway International Arts Festival festivities in Galway city, drawing crowds of up to 50,000 people on to the city streets.

Stokerland is a free pop-up Victorian fun park over the weekend in St Patrick's Park. Families can catch street theatre, Victorian funfair rides and ghoulish games performed by street-performers in the shadow of St Patrick's cathedral. There's also Dracula's Disco on bank holiday Monday at Meeting House Square, and an animation workshop (Sunday) at Brown Bag Films with a director of Disney's Vampirina. - Inspired by an article by Irish Times.