THE Out to Lunch Arts Festival will return to Belfast next month with programme of live comedy, music, theatre, spoken word and film screenings.
Running from January 6 to 28 at The Black Box in Hill Street, the festival specialises in providing weekday lunchtime entertainment served up with hot food, along with many other evening and weekend events.
Festival director Sean Kelly says:
“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.”
Read more:
- Noise Annoys: Out To Lunch festival artist in residence Myles McCormack
- David O'Doherty on Belfast You Have To Laugh shows and 21 years of musical funny business
- Belfast's Out To Lunch festival putting live shows back on the menu
Music, comedy and film on the menu
The 2024 live music programme will include: Sam Baker, Duke Special, The Scott Flanagan Trio, John Francis Flynn, Dave Acari, the Irish music 'supergroup' Mary Dillon, Donal O’Connor and Neil Martin, Classics for Lunch with Ulster Orchestra, Fraulein, Smoove & Turrell (DJ set), 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, Rattlebag x Tokyo Jazz Joints, 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 and Ciaran Lavery, Kaia Kater, Sign Crushes Motorist, Ashley Campbell and Thor Jensen, Michael & Michelle (Michael Fox and Michelle Dockery of Downtown Abbey fame) and The Swingtime Starlets.
The Out to Lunch comedy line-up features Luisa Omielan, Mark Watson, David O’Doherty, Selena Mersey, Ania Magliano and Sooz Kempner.
Film screenings will include Maestra, Gary 'Pavement' Young documentary Louder Than You Think, Zombies doc Hung up on a Dream and a celebration of Adult Swim's Infomercials.
Words of wisdom
The spoken word and theatre programme will feature author Donal Lyons, Remembering Mairtin Crawford, 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 A Thread of Violence, Becoming Marvellous with Cathy Carson, Frigid by Rosa Bowden, Victoria Geelan singing The Songs of Nina Simone, In The Bad Books, Seedhead Arts presents Nothing, and Historic Pubs of The Cathedral Quarter.
Tickets and full festival info at cqaf.com
