With only days to go before Ireland's biggest music festival, the organisers of Electric Picnic threw open their gates on Tuesday for the first preview of the site in Stardbally, Co Laois and among the new attractions is a dedicated theatre area.
LCD Soundsystem, Lana Del Rey, The Chemical Brothers, New Order and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds headline this weekend's sold-out festival and today new hidden areas and festival surprises were revealed.
Among the new sites for the 13th Electric Picnic is The Hazel Wood, a "newly discovered woodland haven in the ancient Stradbally forest", which promises a programme of storytelling through interactive theatre, immersive hauntings, shadow puppetry and visual art.
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Cathy Davey was the first artist to grace The Hazel Wood's wooden stage with an intimate performance and speaking to RTÉ News, Hazel Wood programmer Sorcha O'Reilly said: "We have this incredible audience who are very open and very playful and want to be involved but also there is so much going on at Electric Picnic that they really can't dedicate two hours to a theatre performance.
"So we've shortened the performances to 20 minutes, 30 minutes each to vignettes and we have performances both on-stage and off-stage."
Dive into Electric Picnic
Also this year, Electric Picnic will unveil Ali’s UFO, an intergalactic experience in the woods and deeper into the Stradbally forest again, the long-abandoned city of Anachronica.
Also this year, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra will play alongside 2fm DJ and Electric Picnic co-host Jenny Greene.
