Wallflower and Dublin Theatre Festival
The Dublin Theatre Festival is up and running, and while the programme isn’t as intimidatingly huge as the Fringe Festival there is still lots to see. There’s great new work from Irish companies like Pan Pan, Rough Magic, Rise Productions and Thisispopbaby. As well as great international work from Britain, France, Belguim and Denmark.

Last Thursday I saw Wallflower by Manchester based company Quarantine. In this show, the performers are trying to remember every dance they ever danced. Each dance is logged and as of last week, they had danced over 800 dances at an average of 22 dances an hour. It’s a show about memory and dancing and how a person changes. There are lots of personal stories mixed in with the dances and the dances they remembered are different every night. I really enjoyed it. I was lucky enough to see it again on Friday night as a volunteer and it was really interest to see what stays the same for each show, and how it is structured and shaped.

I also saw The Night Alive on Saturday night which is dark and funny and feels very Irish.

Dead Like Me

I was delighted to find Dead Like Me on Netflix when I joined a couple of month ago. I just finished re-watching it last week and enjoyed it immensely. It’s about an 18-year old girl called George who dies and becomes a grim-reaper. She’s having a hard time letting go of her old life, and accepting that she’s dead but still has a job to do. She has a bunch of grim-reaper co-workers and a stern but kindly boss played by Mandy Patinkin who sometimes wears excellent cardigans.

George is wonderfully grumpy and understandably pissed off with the world. She’s also probably the only inner monologue/narrator on tv that I haven’t found incredibly irritating after about three episodes.

It’s created by Bryan Fuller who also wrote Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies and is currently working on a show called Hannibal. It’s funny and sad and deals with grief and loss and trying to figure out your place in the world. When I first watched it I had recently finished college for the first time, and felt a kinship with George as she tried to figure out her new life. Ten years later not much has changed; I’m still trying to work out what I want to be when I grow up and wondering if it’s better to follow the path or bend the rules. I still want to eat breakfast in Der Waffle Haus. I enjoyed it just as much the second time around and recommend it highly. It’s my kind of show – funny, dark and just the right amount of heart-warming.

March for Choice

I’ve already written about a bit about this already but the March itself was truly magnificent. The speakers were angry and fierce and informative and moving. The sun shone and the crowds were massive. It was the top item on RTE news that night, which is a first and something to be celebrated. It is so galvinishing to be part of something that big and that joyful. We need to keep up the momentum as the General Election gets closer and talk to every politician possible about this issue. Tell your TD!

There’s also a very nice write-up by Lynn Enright over on The Pool.