The mighty Macnas will reclaim the streets of their native Galway and Dublin city this Halloween with their first parade event in four years.
Parade Designer Paul McDonnell introduces Cnámha La Loba below...
Macnas are masters of visual story telling. We begin with the story.
Making a Macnas parade is a long communal process that has stages of rumination followed by stages of seriously intense making, building and creation.
This year's parade Cnámha La Loba is based on the legend of La Loba, a wild wolf woman who collects the bones of animals, humans and gods that are in danger of being lost to the world and sings them back to life by moonlight.
The themes are common to all cultures - reneging on oaths, unkept promises and remembering. We drew inspiration on Slavic folklore and from old archetypical gods from around the world, gods that have existed for so long they pre date the ancient Greeks.
Director James Riordan and I began working together on initial concepts and themes at the beginning of 2023. Over 200 artists, designers, makers and performers from different disciplines collaborated over several months to make the giants and floats and sculptural images, design and make costumes, choreograph, act, create special effects, make soundscapes, write scores, design lighting, rehearse live music - there are a lot of people doing a lot of things.
The parade is an hour and a half long, but the audience might actually see only 15 or 20 minutes. As designers we take key moments from the story and realise it in the parade. What the audience experience is the pitch and flow of the story. This parade is about loss and finding points of beauty in that loss, the audience might not see the detail but we hope they will appreciate the overall theme.
When we began making Cnámha La Loba, it was important for us to be true to the essence of Macnas’s theatricality with an enhanced elegant style and look.
We want to take people away from themselves. We expect over 100,000 people will see the parades in Galway and Dublin. At the moment there is huge displacement and migration all around the globe, and we are awed by the fact that we have all of these people of different ages, race, gender and class, together in one place and in this place everyone is equal and we celebrate that.
It is an honour to be an integral part of Macnas’ legacy.
The Macnas Parade: Cnámha La Loba takes place in Galway city centre on Sunday 29th October, and in Dublin city centre on Monday, October 30th as part of this year's Bram Stoker Festival - find out more here.
