Galway International Arts Festival and Jen Coppinger

Incantata

A deeply moving story of love and loss, Paul Muldoon’s Incantata premiered at Galway International Arts Festival 2018 starring stars one of Ireland's leading actors, Stanley Townsend (Spooks, Quirke, Waking the Dead).

Incantata was written by Paul Muldoon about the great artist, and his former partner, Mary Farl Powers, who died at the very young age of 43. Muldoon wrote it in the immediate aftermath of Powers’ death and it was a way for him to remember Powers and to celebrate her while coming to terms with losing someone he loved.

This world premiere stage production imagines a whole life that is based on Paul Muldoon’s writing and it goes beyond that too. It’s a story full of love, full of heartache, full of sadness, and with bitingly funny humour too.

Directed by the award-winning Sam Yates, fresh from his West End success with Glengarry Glen Ross (with Christian Slater), Pulitzer Prize Winner Paul Muldoon’s script is full of feeling and depth about two people in love, the times they shared together and the grief that comes after loss.

The production features a haunting soundtrack by composer Teho Teardo, who is well known to audiences in Ireland for his music with Enda Walsh including Ballyturk, Arlington and most recently Grief is the Thing with Feathers; set design by Rosanna Vize; lighting design by the multi-award winning designer Paul Keogan; cutting-edge video design by Jack Phelan and sound design by Sinéad Diskin.

Produced in association with Poetry Ireland.

Galway International Arts Festival and Jen Coppinger are very grateful to Culture Ireland for its support of the US premiere of Incantata.

★★★★ A remarkable piece of theatre The Irish Examiner
'Directed with sensitivity and spirit by Sam Yates, and performed by the astonishing Stanley Townsend, it is a tour-de-force' One Magazine
'Incantata is a passionate exploration of the complexities of a relationship between two artists. It is a vivid onstage testament to their art, lives, love and loss. And who can't relate to that?' Talkin Broadway