Today is the first day of Collaborations 2013. This is a theatre and arts festival run by the Jack Burdell Experience and will take place in Smock Alley over the next two weeks. This is the second year of the festival. There were 16 new theatre productions in last year’s festival which has grown this year to 31 shows, 5 special events which include play readings and panel discussions, and an exhibition.

While The Theatre Machine Turns You On featured a lot of devised work, here the focus is more on New Writing. Two of last year’s productions were selected for Dublin Theatre Festival’s Play On initiative, while one of last year’s rehearsed readings is this year’s full length production.

The festival kicks off today with In Rainbows by Paperdolls at 6pm. They will be performing at 6 and 6.30pm, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. After that, the 6pm slot is generally taken up by double or triple bills of short works-in-progress. There are more short pieces at 7.30pm and longer pieces at 8pm and 9pm. Shows don’t run on consecutive nights and there isn’t something on in all time slots every night, which makes the programme a little difficult to get to grips with. Best to figure out what you want to see and then find out when it’s on. And there is a lot of great show on offer.

Full listings here.