Belfast’s favourite bespoke, boutique winter festival is back from 6-28 January.
The Out to Lunch Arts Festival will be laying on a rich and varied menu of entertainment during the longest, darkest month of the year.
And OTL’s month-long programme of live comedy, music, theatre, spoken word, screenings is served up with a hot food at every weekday 1pm show, fortifying our audiences whether they happen to be on lunchbreak or making a day of it…
A packed live music programme includes Sam Baker, Duke Special: Blood for Ghosts, The Scott Flanagan Trio playing The Beatles, John Francis Flynn, Dave Acari, the Irish music supergrouping ofMary Dillon, Donal O’Connor & Neil Martin, Classics for Lunch with Ulster Orchestra, Fraulein, Smoove & Turrell (DJ set), Bluegrass AND Classic Country for Lunch, The Mud Morganfield Band, The Songs of Joni Mitchell by Zervas and Pepper, Opera for Lunch with Cabaret de Boite Noire, An Evening of the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto by Ruth McGinley, Aja and The Henry Girls.
We present Tokyo X Jazz Joints at Rattlebag - the hottest music new music event in town - plus Brigid Mae Power, Alison Brown, John Craigie, Lumiere and The Wilderness Way Book Launch, Greensleeves Hi-Fi X Explosion Sound System, The Sailortown Sessions (featuring King Cedar, Ferna & Ciaran Lavery), Kaia Kater, Sign Crushes Motorist, Ashley Campbell & Thor Jensen, Michael & Michelle (aka Michael Fox & Michelle Dockery of Downtown Abbey fame), and last but most definitely not least - The Swingtime Starlets.
The Out to Lunch comedy line-up features Luisa Omielan: God is a Woman – The Musical, Mark Watson, David O’Doherty: Tiny Piano Man, Selena Mersey: Madonna/ Whore, Ania Magliano: I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This and Sooz Kempner: Y2K Woman.
Screenings include the acclaimed Maestra at the QFT, Louder Than You Think – the hotly anticipated documentary about original Pavement drummer Gary Young, Hung up on a Dream: The new film about neglected 60s legends The Zombies, and we’ll be celebrating the best of the infamous, unsettling & hilarious Infomercials from Adult Swim.
In spoken word and theatre we present award-winning author Donal Lyons, Remembering Mairtin Crawford, pop historian Tom Holland in Conversation, pop-artist Jeremy Dellar in Conversation: Art is Magic, The Magic of Terry Pratchett with comedian Marc Burrows, Mark O’Connell in conversation about his acclaimed true life crime best seller A Thread of Violence, the hotly acclaimed Becoming Marvellous with Cathy Carson, Frigid by Rosa Bowden, Victoria Geelan singing The Songs of Nina Simone, we welcome the return of OTL favourite In The Bad Books, our friends at Seedhead Arts presents Nothing, and we invite you to join an informative and entertaining trek about Historic Pubs of The Cathedral Quarter.
Festival director Sean Kelly said: “We’re really happy to be able to continue serving up Out to Lunch in the face of severe funding cuts and a backdrop of pretty grim world events. We hope it offers something of an antidote to the times we live in. We’re particularly proud with the variety and number of events we have managed to put together. We really believe in the old cliché that there’s ‘something for everybody’ and so we invite ‘everybody’ to join us Out to Lunch in January!”
Out to Lunch is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Siobhán Molloy, Arts Development Officer at the Arts Council, commented: “This year’s Out to Lunch Festival is sure to draw audiences in from the cold with its inviting mix of local and international acts. The month-long programme is packed with events, talks, live music, theatre and more – plenty of ideas for those last-minute Christmas Gifts!”
The Out to Lunch Arts Festival runs from 6-28 January. Tickets and info at www.cqaf.com
