Tag Archives: dublin fringe festival

February 11, 2013 · 12:27 am

Festival applications

Even though we’re still in the depths of winter and even summer seems a long way off, application deadlines for the Dublin Theatre Festival and the Dublin Fringe Festival are already looming.

Play On
Dublin Theatre Festival are looking for Play On participants again this year. The programme lasts from March to October and is for both new playwrights and playwrights who have had professional productions of their work staged. Successful applicants will work towards a public reading of their work as part of the Festival next October.

The deadline is this Friday, February 15 but they only accept hard-copies so get them in the post by Wednesday! More information here.

Fringe applications
The deadline for this year’s Fringe Festival is March 8 and as usual there is loads of information about everything you need to know on the Fringe website. They are also running a Pre-Application Workshop tomorrow at 6pm in Fringe HQ.

Show in a Bag
Fishamble, ITI and Fringe are running Show in a Bag again this year, unsurprisingly since it has been a great success over the last few years with shows picking up a number of Fringe awards and nominations and also having long, successful, touring lives after the Fringe. The deadline for this year’s Show in a Bag applications is March 1 and there is an information session tomorrow at 7.30pm, also in Fringe HQ. The application form and more information about how to apply is available on the Fringe website.

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February 6, 2013 · 12:44 pm

January Fringe Fuse

Fringe Fuse at Dublin Fringe HQ

Fringe Fuse at Dublin Fringe HQ

In the last year, Dublin Fringe Festival have moved into Sycamore House, which was the home of the Gaiety School of Acting. It’s a beautiful building with fantastic studio spaces with big windows over looking Meeting House Square. And last Monday it was full of people eager to see the new work that was being made there. It was the night of the first Fringe Fuse, a scratch night run by Fringe for theatre makers to show new work. Tickets were €3 and for that you got four short pieces of theatre and some refreshments! It’s going to be a monthly event, on the last Monday or each month and I would definitely reccomend coming along.

The first piece we saw last week was a new piece by Sonya Kelly (of Wheelchair On My Face fame) called Anywhere Else But Here about going to Austrailia to meet her in-laws. It was performed as a monologue, and was funny and endearing. It had a similar in tone to Wheelchair and Sonya performed it with her usual charm.

The second piece was a work-in-progress play called St. Patrick – The Lenged from The Gonzo Theatre Company. It was a play about the writing of the history of St. Patrick and contained some religious stories that I had never heard of, so I actually learnt something from it!

The third piece In Dog Years I’m Dead, all about turning 30 was written by Kate Heffernan and performed by Marie Ruane. It was performed as a monologue but there are plans to include a male performer as well. (As I said these are works in progress.)

The final piece was That Don’t Impress Me Much by Xnthony. It was performed with a whole lot of enthusiasim and was great fun. It was very difficult from the other pieces and it felt like the audience were just getting into it and then it was over.

The thing that struck me most was that the work was very traditional. There were three plays, with writers and actors (one performed by the writer) and a song and dance routine. This was the first Fringe Fuses so maybe people were playing it safe. I wonder if there were many applications or if people were waiting to see what happened with this first night. The four pieces were definitely in different stages of development but it’s a great opportunity to get up and test out new work in front of an audience. It’s also a brave thing to do and I appreciate the artists generousity to show us their half-finished masterpieces.

The next Fringe Fuse will be on 25 February and the deadline for applications is 15 February. If you would like to apply, email Róise and Emma at emma@fringefest.com with a short description of what you are working on and why you’d like to show it (min 250, max 600 words). More information here and on the Fringe Lab’s Facebook page. Dublin Fringe Festival are also taking applications for the 2013 Festival and all the details are on their website.

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September 26, 2012 · 10:00 pm

Absolut Fringe 2012: White Rabbit, Red Rabbit

I went along to this lunchtime show because I was intrigued by the premise – an actor arrives on stage, opens an envelope and reads from a script that they’ve never seen before. It’s an interesting idea and the Fringe had a list of interesting actors that were taking part. However White Rabbit, Red Rabbit is more than just an interesting acting exercise. The script uses the actor as a way for the writer to connect with the audience. The play was written by Nassim Soleimanpour, an Iranian citizen who had never left his country. He was 29 when he wrote the play and had never left Iran because in order to get a passport, citizens must do two years of military service. The play was his way to travel and experience the world outside Iran. He gives out his e-mail address a couple of times in the script with requests to send him photos and reports of the performance.

It is a play about choice and responsibility. It’s also about rabbits. It’s a play that asks a lot of the actor performing it but there’s also a lot of audience participation. As the actor and audience changes everyday, I imagine the show is very different each time it’s performed. This may have made it a difficult for the Fringe Awards judges – it was nominated for Best Production.

I was there on the opening afternoon and our actor for the day was Stephen Rea. He performed with a slight knowing smile at the audience which said ‘these are not my words’, especially when the words in question were expressions like “super cool” or “groovy”. He took the comedy and the seriousness of the script in his stride. The audience seems a little bit more nervous than he did. I often think that Irish audiences aren’t very good at participating in a piece of theatre, and I include myself in that. We don’t have any sort of tradition of it in this country. We are not generally disruptive people. In these sort of situations, I find myself wanting to be a “good audience member” but not always sure what was required of me.

I really enjoyed the play. It threw up a lot of questions about the world and was about more than just the art that was taking place in that room. I would have liked to see it again, for lots of reasons. I wish I’d spoken up more in the performance.

You can read about Peter Daly’s description of the performance from the actor’s point of view in the Irish Times Festival Hub.

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September 24, 2012 · 9:20 pm

Absolut Fringe 2012: Fringe Awards

The Absolut Fringe is over for another year, and what a wonderful Fringe it was! I had another great year volunteering with the festival and saw as many shows as my budget would allow.

The Fringe Awards happened last night in Meeting House Square, which was a wonderful out-door venue this year, playing host to Briefs almost every night of the festival as well as other acts. All the winners and nominations are listed on the Fringe Facebook page and, as usual, the list includes a whole lot of shows that I didn’t get a chance to see.

I’m looking forward to catching a lot of the winners when they come back again. The Lir Revival is a new award this year and the winners are given the opportunity to restage their winning production at The Lir. This year’s winners are Talking Shop Ensemble’s Death of a Tradesman (which also won the Fishamble New Writing Award for Shaun Dunne) and WillFredd’s Farm (which I tried and failed to get tickets for). I’m looking forward to seeing both of those shows when they are staged sometime between now and the end of the academic year. I have yet to see a show at The Lir so I’m looking forward to that too. I was down there a couple of times this Fringe as a volunteer and it seems like a great venue.

Death of a Tradesman is also part of this year’s Galway Theatre Festival which starts on next Monday.

Two more shows that I heard a lot of good things about but didn’t see myself were Paperdolls’ Constellations and Emma Martin’s Dogs. These two shows are closer to dance than straight theatre and both won big awards on Sunday night. Dogs won Best Production and Best Design and Constellations won Spirit of the Fringe. Paperdolls are definitely a company to keep an eye on!

So they are all the shows I didn’t see; I will post reviews of the ones I did manage over the next couple of days. And then we’ll get ready for the Dublin Theatre Festival which starts on Thursday!

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September 18, 2012 · 9:49 pm

Absolut Fringe 2012: Just in Time

Playground

Playground – a collection of immersive and game-based performances.

Just in Time is one part immersive theatre and one part real-life video game. I took part in one of the last testing stages and really enjoyed the experience. It’s fun to imagine yourself as a time-traveller with a secret mission, hurrying down alley-ways and looking out for clues! The people I saw in Temple Bar at the weekend on the same secret mission, all seemed to be enjoying it as well.

Just in Time, which finished on Sunday, was part of the Playground strand in this year’s Fringe. I took part in another Playground ‘performance’ when I put in my headphones and wandered around Grafton Street as part of the subtle mob As if it were the last time.

There are a couple more Playground shows on this week:

My Fair Mot, which promised to have you speaking like a proper Dub by the end of show, sounds both fun and educational!

The other, The Oh Fuck Moment, sounds slightly terrifying to me, but I’m not a big fan of audience participation and I don’t like telling people about my embarrassing stories so I’m not really their target audience! It’s been getting great reviews elsewhere, including a four star review in the Guardian where Lyn Gardner says it’s nothing to be afraid of!

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September 6, 2012 · 1:34 pm

Absolut Fringe 2012

There are so many exciting shows in this year’s Fringe that it’s hard to compile a short list of favourites. Previews start today and because they’re a bit cheaper it’s usually a good time to try something new. (New shows are starting all the time so there will be previews happening throughout the festival.)

There’s also lots of returning artists who you can rely on for a good show, such as Thisispopbaby, The Company, THEATREclub, Una McKevitt and Talking Shop Ensemble. And there’s the Macnas parades – Rumpus and The Cockroach and the Inventor which are always worth a look, and free! You do need a ticket though, which has to be collected in person from the Box Office in Filmbase.

A limited about of time and money sadly makes it impossible to see everything I want to see, so here is my list of favourites. It’s a long list and I know I’m not going to get to everything.

Elevator
I’m really looking forward to this show. It has the same writer and director as Alice in Funderland, which I really enjoyed earlier this year, and also has songs! The plot, involving the uber-rich and a party that gets out of hand sounds intriguing.

Sparkplug
Last January I saw Little John Nee’s last show The Mothers Arms in Galway and it was one of the most enjoyable shows I saw all year. It had some amazing songs and loads of jokes. I’m hoping for more of the same from this show. And if you are in Galway, you can see The Mothers Arms in the Town Hall Theatre this week.

Anna in Between
I love the poster for this show; it’s both pretty and intriguing. Despite the pretty poster, it sounds like it will be a dark, funny show. With songs.

Farm
This is another show that I don’t know that much about but I am intrigued by. I know the company won Spirit of the Fringe last year and this show sounds ambitious and interesting. It promises to bring the countryside into the city. I want to see how they do it.

Solpadine is my Boyfriend
I love the poster and the pill packet that doubles as flyer and I like to go and see one-woman shows. This one is about growing up which feels relevant to me at the moment – turning thirty and graduating from college (again) in the same year, shouldn’t I start feeling like a grown-up soon?

Show in a Bag
Show in a Bag is back with five new shows this year, with lunchtime and evening slots at 1pm, 6pm and 8pm, all €10. The Wheelchair on My Face, which was one of last year’s shows in a bag, won the Scotsman Fringe First at this year’s Edinburgh festival. These are very good shows at a very reasonable price!

Straight to DVD
I’ve caught pieces of Ponydance’s performances over the years, a little bit at the Fringe Awards in the Speigaltent, the second half of Anybody Waiting? when they were performing it all over the city for Fringe 2010, and I’m keen to see more. Their shows seem to have a great sense of humour.

Flatpack
It’s an opera about Ikea. And like the flat-packed Swedish furniture, you have to put the pieces together yourself. It’s a promenade performance across five rooms that leaves the audience to work out how the different scenes slot together. I’ve never been to an opera before and I would be a little bit nervous of it, but this sounds fun and not too scary!

West Coast Cool
After spending a wonderful year in Galway, I had to include this is a strand of work by companies from the west of Ireland. Geography is the only thing that links them and I think there’s something for everybody among the five shows happening in Smock Alley.

Mirror, Mirror
Fairytales with aerial hoops, silks and pole dancing – what’s not to like!

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit
This is another show that I’m mostly just curious about. Each day a different actor will perform a script they’ve never seen before, by an Iranian who was forbidden to leave his country. And it’s another show that’s only €10!

Believe it or not, I left things off that very long list. There’s so many great things happening that I recommend you pick up a brochure in Filmbase and spend some time looking through. I’ve have a few problems browsing the website so I recommend the physical brochure but I have a lot of problems with the website in general this year!

Often it doesn’t load properly and I just have a big black box in the middle of the screen, which such a waste of space. The text is too big. I’m sure it looked beautiful on the web designer’s huge Mac screen but on my three year old laptop, it’s really too big to be useful. The drop down menus go down below the bottom of the screen, making them very tricky to use. I don’t find the lists useful anyway. For a start, it took me at least three visits to the site before I realised that you have to make you selection and then make press the Go button. (I notice they have tried to make that clearer now.) I thought all the ‘Daring’, ‘Theatre’, ‘Political’, ‘Art’, etc listings were just broken links. I also don’t like the idea of limiting your search terms. I miss last year’s choices of ‘Shows for under a tenner’, ‘Shows to bring your Mam to’, etc. They brought up choices that I might not have seen otherwise and for me, going outside your comfort zone and seeing things you know almost nothing about is what the Fringe is for.

Pick up a brochure, take a risk on something new and step outside your comfort zone! And have a great Fringe!

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May 25, 2012 · 12:14 pm

Three Fund:It Campaigns

The Last Burning (13 days to go)

The Last Burning is a play about Bridget Cleary who was the last woman in Ireland to be burned as a witch. NUIG DramSoc put on the play in 2010 so I haven’t seen it. I have seen a lot of the cast in other things over the past year so I know that they are a talented group of people. Hannah O’Reilly, the director also devised a movement piece called The Waves for DramSoc this year. I really enjoyed that show so I think The Last Burning has the potential to be a wonderful piece of theatre.

Thereisbear plan to tour the show around Ireland this summer and are looking for funding. They plan to bring The Last Burning to Galway, Ballinasloe, Inisboffin, Laois, Limerick, Kerry, Cork and Dublin this August. They have less than two weeks left to reach their target of €3000. You can help them get there or like their Facebook page here.

Tromluí Phinocchio/Pinocchio – A Nightmare (18 days to go)

Moonfish are a Galway-based company who make bilingal shows in English and Irish. Tromluí Phinocchio is a retelling of the Pinocchio story and is as magical and imaginative as you would expect it to be. I saw this show in Galway earlier this year. It’s very visual and has a wonderful style and aesthetic. There are also dark moments and they recommend it for children over 11. The clever way it mixes the English and Irish means that even someone like me, who never got on well with the Irish language, can enjoy the show!

I’m delighted that it will be part of the Absolut Fringe Festival this September because I really want more people to see and enjoy this show.

You can fund them here or like their Facebook page here.

Shadowskin by Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (40 days to go)

Shadowskin is a puppet show for grown-ups, loosely based on the story of Red Riding Hood. All the puppets in the show are being handmade and you can watch their progress on their Facebook page.

It doesn’t say yet when and where Shadowskin will get it’s premier but it looks like it will be worth waiting for.

You can fund them here or like their Facebook page here.

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November 1, 2011 · 12:21 am

Festival improvements

Last week on the Irish Times theatre blog Pursued by a Bear, there was an article suggesting ways to improve the recent theatre festivals in Dublin.

Some of it is very true – shows should not run miles over their advertised time (festival time is too busy for that sort of messing) and maybe people should be encouraged more to try for returns to sell-out shows – but there are a few things I disagree with as well.

Change the dates – I couldn’t disagree more. I love that the two festivals are so close together and that you can completely over-dose on theatre throughout September and October. It makes the city feel really alive and buzzing for weeks on end. One of the arguments in favour of changing the dates given in the article is that “The chances of getting the casual theatre-goer into a show for four consecutive weeks are pretty slim.” I don’t think this is a problem because I think the Absolut Fringe and the Dublin Theatre Festival are targeting different audiences. Of course there is an overlap but I think the people who are interested in both festivals are people who go to the theatre regularly anyway, they are more than causal theatre-goers.

Ticket prices – Both festivals had reasonably priced tickets on offer this year. There were loads of €10 tickets for Fringe shows, particularly for previews, and I thought the Final Call offers from the Dublin Theatre Festival (where tickets for certain shows were available on the day from the festival box-office for €10) was fantastic. The Theatre Festival also had a wide-range of prices this year. At one end, you could see shows for €15 while seats in the Gaiety were €33. This meant people were less likely to be completely priced out of the festival.

Star attractions – I don’t think the Dublin Theatre Festival needs to hire celebrities to improve it’s appeal. Alan Rickman in John Gabriel Borkman last year was a bit of a disappointment and I think it cheapens the festival to rely on star power.

I really enjoy both the Fringe and the Theatre Festival and had trouble coming up with improvements that could be made. However here are a couple of suggestions:

Ticket lucky dip
This could be done for the Theatre Festival or the Fringe but would probably work better for the Fringe because of their cheaper ticket prices and huge range of shows. You would buy tickets for three of four different shows but you don’t know what shows until you get your tickets! Sometimes people don’t know what to see in the festival because of the huge amount of choice. This would solve that; you take a risk and go where you’re told. It might have to be very reasonably priced to encourage people to take that risk.

The Fringe Awards
You used to be able to buy tickets to the Fringe Awards. They were held in the Speilgeltent and featured short performances and winners and losers. I love awards show and I miss being able to go to this one.

If you have any suggestions, you can leave them here or over on the Irish Times blog. You can also give your feedback directly to the Dublin Theatre Festival by filling in their survey.

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October 18, 2011 · 8:51 pm

Absolut Fringe 2011: Eternal Rising of the Sun

Eternal Rising of the Sun, by HotForTheatre

Eternal Rising of the Sun was another one-woman show. There were a lot of them in this year’s Fringe Festival and that’s no bad thing, especially when they are as good as this.

It’s a slightly harrowing tale of Gina, a woman who has been used and abused by most, if not all, of the men in her life. But she’s not giving up. She’s taking dance classes, just for herself, just because she loves to dance. It’s an uplifting show in it’s own quiet way.

The show is written and performed by Amy Convoy and follows the success of her first play I ♥ ALICE ♥ I which won the Fishamble New Writing Award in last year’s Fringe Festival and got another run in this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival. It’s a great script, slowly revealing more about Gina as the story goes on. This is exactly how you can imagine you would get to know the character. Amy also gives a wonderful performance. She plays Gina with a sort of contained energy, like there is a whole lot going on inside that we are only getting a glimpse of.

I hope Amy Conroy keeps making wonderful, moving shows like this one!

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· 8:28 pm

Absolut Fringe 2011: Where Do I Start?

Where Do I Start?

Where Do I Start?

Where Do I Start? was a lunchtime show about idenitiy and finding your place in the world. It was a one-woman show and the performer (Nyree Yergainharsian) introduced the show as if it was a seminar or group workshop about figuring out who you are. This clever opening gave context to the piece, acknowledged the audience and encouraged them to ask the same questions Nyree was asking about her own life. It also gave her an opportunity to give us a sense of why she had made this personal piece of theatre.

Nyree tells her story of growing up as an Irish-Armenian and the life she has lived up to this point. What makes this personal story so interesting and engaging for the audience is the simple, entertaining way she tells it. There is a lot of subtle humour and a sense of vulnerability from the performer.

I saw an earlier verison of this show as part of The Theatre Machine Turns You On last February and enjoyed it very much. This verison had more of a clearer shape to it and Nyree also used more physical movement to tell her story. There is a lovely section about how my mum and dad met for the first time that is told almost like a children’s fairytale, with larger than life characters and physical impersonations. Stories from before we are born often seems like family myths, especially when you hear them all the time when you’re growing up.

It was a very pleasant way to spend the hour and Nyree was a charming and entertaining host.

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