Macnas, meaning “joyful abandonment”, is based at the Black Box Theatre in Galway. As Ireland’s leading performance company, its productions are known for their exuberance, color, and spectacle. Since its inception in 1986, Macnas has single- handedly changed the nature of public entertainment in Ireland, bringing together a blend of imagination, passion and wit through a variety of settings. Performances are often taken out the traditional theatre setting and brought on the streets, schools, and the community.

A staple in the St. Patrick’s Day parades throughout Ireland, Macnas has toured Britain, Europe, The United States and South America.

In addition to street theatre and international touring performances, Macnas also works to bring the joys of creativity and self- expression to children, running various school and community based workshops. With a workforce in excess of one hundred, from artists to technicians, Macnas also provides workshops and classes for people living with disabilities.  One of the most popular workshops runs for 10 months and involves 2nd and 3rd level students from local and national colleges to gain experience in a work placement. These programs help to devise, develop, and create the floats and costumes for Macnas’ annual Halloween productions, as well as the St. Patrick’s Day Festival and The Galway Arts Festival.

How The Ireland Funds helped

The American Ireland Fund has been supporting Macnas from1989-2006 with grants totalling $20,967, helping maintain the workshops and classes so vital to each production’s development.

What is Macnas?

Macnas' mission is to enable our community to dream out loud. We create bold, brash, inspiring moments for ourselves and our community, devising events whichharness and celebrate collective creative energy. Macnas first came to national attention in Ireland when a 20 metre long representation of Gulliver was washed up on a beach in Dublin, Ireland’s capital city, as part of the Dublin Millennium celebrations in 1988. They reinforced their position as a force to be reckoned with in the Arts in Ireland with a succession of carnival-style parades for the Galway Arts Festival, which attracts huge numbers of people to Galway each July. The development of Macnas’ indoor theatre work has been no less successful. It’s epic productions, Tain, Buile Shuibhne/Sweeny, Balor, Rhymes from the Ancient Mariner, Diamonds in the Soil and The Lost Days of Ollie Deasy have attracted new audiences into theatre spaces with their combination of physical performance and stunning visuals. Macnas has twice won Best Production at the Dublin Theatre Festival while Tom Conroy won an Irish Theatre Award in 1999 for Best Design for the Macnas/Galway Arts Festival co-production of Patrick McCabe’s The Dead School. In 1999 and 2000, Macnas performed at the St.Patrick’s Festival, Dublin creating a site-specific outdoor theatre shows based on ‘The Odyssey’ in collaboration with Els Comediants. Macnas started the new Millennium with a bang by simultaneously performing in Times Square, New York, Merrion Square, Dublin and Eyre Square, Galway as part of each city’s Millennium Celebrations. Macnas combines its international touring of shows and street theatre spectacles with a continuing commitment to its role in developing Community Arts celebrations and training in Ireland. With a workforce in excess of one hundred and five made up of performers, animateurs, designers, technicians and administrators, Macnas is involved in a variety of projects in schools, with people with disability and with Community Arts groups all over Ireland passing on the expertise learned by this unique company over an ever evolving fifteen years.