Dramatic days with travelling theatre
Ted Turton’s love affair with Ireland began in the 1970s, when the English-born artist moved to Dublin. Galway later became his home and he served as Artistic Director of Galway Arts Festival as well as creating iconic posters for the event. Ted also spent six years with Footsbarn Travelling Theatre, the subject of his new memoir. He tells DARA BRADLEY about his eventful life.
Co-founder of Galway Arts Festival, Ted Turton spent a lot of his childhood in Anglesey.
Warrington in Lancashire, England was his hometown, but he regularly visited the island in north-west Wales. He’d watch the sun go down on the Irish Sea, and say to himself, “I want to go where the sun sets”.
Ted had no familial connection with Ireland. And had never set foot in Ireland before. But a mate, Gerry Solich, a fellow graduate of Wolverhampton Art College who had an Irish mother, convinced him to visit in Autumn 1973.
Ted applied for a job at Kilkenny Design Studios, and while he “didn’t stand a chance – half of Europe applied”, so began the Englishman’s love affair with Ireland.
“I just felt comfortable here,” says the 75-year-old, ahead of the publication of his memoir My Travels with Footsbarn Theatre.
After breaking the news to his parents back in England, Ted returned to Dublin weeks later with £100.
He blagged a job at Historic European Artists, which produced pub mirrors with information on them. And then he was hired by In Dublin, a buzzy, fortnightly magazine edited by John S. Doyle.
All sorts of famous people frequented the publication’s office, from Neil Jordan to Bob Geldof. It was here he first met Ollie Jennings, a key contact who became a lifelong friend after “I burned myself out in In Dublin magazine” and moved to Galway to set up a similar publication, In The West.
“It took off, but it crash-landed very quickly after a few months,” recalls Ted of the magazine’s rise and fall in late 1977.
“I was happy to be in Galway, but I was floundering,” he admits. Moving from England to Dublin wasn’t too difficult, but going from Dublin to Galway “was an enormous leap”, he says.
“Galway City was not much more than a small town. Everybody knew everybody and everybody knew everybody’s business.”
It was a happening place, though. And by spring, 1978, from his kitchen in Number 9, St Mary’s Road, Ted and a group of creatives founded the Film Society at UCG; Galway Wholefood Co-Op; and the first Galway Arts Festival.
He says Ollie Jennings, who later went on to manage the Saw Doctors, “steered everything because he had the know-how, but it was a group effort” with the likes of Mary Coughlan, Joe Boske, Rosie O’Connell, Kieran Corcoran, Bob Quinn, Ted’s German girlfriend, Gabi Froese, and others all involved.
The first festival was “miniscule”, says Ted. And he cringes when asked if the first poster – a menu listing events as starters, main course and afters – was his design.
“Yes. Along with all the spelling mistakes . . . Spanish is spelled wrong!”
Pictured: Ted Turton with his new memoir about his travels with the renowned Footsbarn theatre troupe, which was founded in Cornwall in 1971. PHOTO: JOE O'SHAUGHNESSY.