“On that stretch from the Fringe office on Sycamore Street to Smock Alley on Exchange Street Lower, past the Project Arts Centre and the New Theatre, there won’t be a night in late September where you don’t experience that electricity that can make city living so special, as audiences and performers flit from pub to theatre to pub…”
September might feel synonymous with a chill in the air, the evenings getting darker, and the understandable sadness that summer is very much over. However, it is also the time for one of the biggest, weirdest, and most diverse offerings in the cultural calendar – Dublin Fringe Festival is about to once again take over the theatres, pubs, clubs, and streets of the city, running from 7 to 22 September. 30,000 spectators will see nearly 500 artists and performers acting, singing, dancing, talking, and doing God knows what else, for 16 days, and we’re going to guide you through the programme, let you know what’s unmissable for your tastes, and hopefully direct you to a few things you wouldn’t otherwise have looked twice at. Celebrating its 30th birthday this year, the Fringe has gone big, with comedy, cabaret, club nights, and pretty much anything else that counts as live performance.
The Dublin Fringe is always a special time, as parts of the city sparkle with the buzz of live performances, fulfilled dreams, and the introspection that powerful theatre and performance can provoke. On that stretch from the Fringe office on Sycamore Street to Smock Alley on Exchange Street Lower, past the Project Arts Centre and the New Theatre, there won’t be a night in late September where you don’t experience that electricity that can make city living so special, as audiences and performers flit from pub to theatre to pub. Dublin has had a tough few years, as anyone reading this will know all too well, but this makes it even more important to celebrate and share in the unique transcendence, beauty, diversity, and inclusion that makes live performance worthwhile.
The Fringe promises to bring audiences the extraordinary, and this of course means different things to different people. It can be a confrontation with a harsh truth, or a brief interlude of joy and freedom from the mundane, or worse, of everyday life. This embracing of diversity is plain in the programming, with shows focusing on broad themes including race, technology, identity, housing, art, and global affairs. For Festival Director David Francis Moore, there are a number of throughlines in this year’s programme, that interact and overlap throughout:
“Healthcare, human rights and personal agency; the complexity of individual identity and societal expectations; tradition; sexual exploration, liberation, and relationships are some of the key ideas that recur across the programme. And a big, big theme is queer resistance, reclamation, and revelry; there’s a lot of work that’s been created and produced by artists from the queer community that speaks to the lived reality of being queer in Ireland today”. This is evident from a quick glance through the bright pink programme, with cabaret and drag throughout, including SexyTadhg’s Television (Project Arts Centre, 1-8, 11-13 September) and Who Robbed Annie Queeries? (11-12, 14 September) from Play Not Funny: Sasha Shame and GoblinsGoblinsGoblins.
In 30 years the Fringe has come along way, from 40 shows in 1995, when it was founded under the banner of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Moore is passionate in evoking the heritage and status of the Fringe, pointing out that playwrights Conor McPherson and Enda Walsh were produced in its early years, and that companies such as Pan Pan, the Corn Exchange, Loose Canon, and CoisCéím have all worked with and been supported by the Fringe in the last three decades. This means that the Fringe has a vital place not only in Dublin’s cultural calendar, but that of the nation, and Moore feels that this is a crucial part of its remit: “It’s vital for us to be in direct conversation with artists all the time, and also to ensure that there are cultural spaces for them in the city that allow them to make work. Now we have FringeLab in the heart of Temple Bar, with studio and rehearsal spaces, and specific programmes like Weft, a programme for black and global majority artists. We also have masterclasses, we have Elevenses on the last Friday of every month, a networking event for artists to come together and meet each other”.
One of the people supported directly by the Fringe this year is Resident Artist Aoife Sweeney O’Connor, whose An Evening with Wee Daniel (18-21 September) has afternoon and evening shows at Bewley’s Café Theatre. Moore describes it as a “semi-autobiographical piece about their coming-of-age story as a non-binary person in rural Ireland, correlated with fascination with Daniel O’Donnell”, partly brought about by his recurring presence in their life.
Moore is also keen to point out that Fringe is about so much more than theatre – there are interactive pieces, site-specific performances, stand-up comedy, and some club nights that take the Fringe way out of the ordinary bounds of theatre. It Was Paradise, Unfortunately (9-14 September) by Raphaël Amahl Khouri and Myrto Stampoulou is a combination of performance and live art. Khouri is “a trans artists who traces the history of theatre, back to the Ancient Greek God of Theatre and Wine, Dyonisus, a transgender figure who has in some ways been erased. He uses this to discuss his own transitioning and becoming an artist, and the relationship between theatre and hallucinogens. It’s a really gorgeous presentation piece, and an interesting and intimate way to explore the journey of a Jordanian transgender artist, and the eradication of trans voices throughout history”.
Similarly, Pagan (12-14 September) by BK Pepper in collaboration with Katsukokoiso is blend of live music and visual art that Moore says “focuses on our relationship to religion, placing instruments in a beautiful space, but in collision with AI, creating a dialogue between them”. There are also dance shows that invite participation from the audience – Tearmann Aiteach/Queer Sanctuary (19-21 September) by Isabella Oberlánder and Fearghus Ó Conchúir is “a dance piece that is queer celebration, and looks at how bodies interact with the space, and the audience are invited onstage to join in, and asked to dress up for it. Fearghus is a great artist whose work has been seen all over Ireland, it’ll be a gorgeous piece”.
He also notes Terra (6, 8-11 September) by the Brazilian artist Alessandra Azeviche, saying that centres on “her quest to explore beauty from the chaos that has emerged in her life as she moves between Ireland and Brazil, and how she understands her identity. She uses an alter ego to dissect her own understanding of her intersectionality, and it offers a new perspective on Afro-Brazilian femininity, which is really especially interesting because we have such a large Brazilian community in Ireland now”.
There is a new piece from Dead Centre, Illness as Metaphor (7-9, 12-14 September), an adaptation of Susan Sontag’s 1978 book of the same name, about how sickness is spoken about in society. Performers with long-term illnesses, including journalist Una Mullally and playwright James Ireland, provide personal testimony, along with excerpts from the book, to examine Sontag’s work in a contemporary context, and bring its vital questions into the 21st century. It follows on from their two recent adaptations of Mark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine.
No conversation, let alone a 16-day multidisciplinary performance festival, is complete in Dublin these days without the topic of housing being raised, and one of the most exciting shows in the Fringe deals with the subject in a fascinating way. Cian Jordan and Allie O’Rourke present A Good Room (6-8, 13-15, 20-22 September), in which the audience meet at a point in the city and are brought to a secret location – Jordan’s bedroom. A combination of stand-up and theatre, Moore says that it is an “exploration of our ideas of and relationship to home, and also the contraction of space in the city, and how our world is getting smaller. It’s a really exciting re-imagining of private spaces for public use”, and it will likely be one of the most intimate, relevant works of the Festival.
Another innovative use of space is found in Bill Harris’s ACCESSOR (19-22 September), which Moore describes as “an audio-based adventure game set in the streets of Dublin, where people are invited to engage with the piece and navigate the city, from streets and lanes and other spaces”. This way of interacting with the city is typical of Moore’s vision of the Fringe – for him the role of theatre and performance is to lift people out of the humdrum and into the weird, the unknown, and the sublime. Of ACCESSOR, he says that “The idea is to the audience members out of the mundane and everyday and into the “fantasmastic” life of the more beautiful. It’s an adventure game but also a meditation on life in the city, what it means to live in the city, and the life that’s in it.
There are new venues in the Fringe’s roster this year, including Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street, which will host Paddy Daddy (10-15 September) by Mark T Cox, which Moore calls a “really gorgeous and intimate cabaret show”, with the audience invited to have a meal in the café beforehand. UCD’s new Trapdoor Theatre will also host a show, Robert Power’s A Version of Life (12-14 September), a metatheatrical work that addresses technology, creativity, and intimacy.
The Abbey’s Peacock Stage will also be hosting performances, with stand-up from Fringe 2023 alumnus Shane Daniel Byrne, Trouble Denim (16-21 September), and, at the opposite side of the scale, Janet Moran’s Afterwards (6-7, 9-14 September), set in a British abortion clinic, with the experiences and perspectives of three different women presented.
Moore is intense in his love for live performance and art, and in his desire to see artists have more stability and security in Dublin. While the Fringe do what they can, there are recurring crises related to funding that show no signs of abetting, as studio leases are often too short-term to allow artists to properly plan and grow. He acknowledges that there are rising costs that must be met, and is full of praise for both the Arts Council and the Dublin City Council, who help fund the Festival. He implores people to canvas their local politicians, and get behind the work being done by the National Campaign for the Arts and Performing Arts Forum. Primarily, though, he wants people to use the Fringe’s 16 days in September to explore the city, imagine new ideas, and allow performance do what it does best, help them come together for a shared experience.
A Day and Night at the Fringe: Friday 20th September
The Fringe is the perfect excuse to start early, stay out late, and experience what the city has to offer. We’ve planned out the last Friday of the Festival, so you don’t have to.
Begin at 1 o’clock and have lunch at Bewley’s Café Theatre, and spend the afternoon with Aoife Sweeney O’Connor in An Evening with Wee Daniel. Then go and meet Bill Harris and play his interactive adventure game throughout the city, ACCESSOR.
When you’ve had a pint and spent 20 minutes queueing for a slice of pizza, make sure you get to the International Bar for Julie Jay’s fully as Gaeilge stand-up set, Smidiríní, or if you fancy something different, head out to the Lir Academy to see Let’s Try Swingin’, which explores the moral and sexual politics of being ethically non-monogamous.
Either way, make sure you finish the night at the Sound House, who host Rathaus’s The Initiation, a night of sexy techno, pop, and performance art.
Dublin Fringe Festival runs from Saturday September 7th to Sunday September 22nd. For full details visit dublinfringefestival.com
Words: Ciarán Leinster
