Break New Ground 2025: Announcement
Break New Ground: Recipient Announced
Dublin Fringe Festival is excited to announce that Mai Ishikawa as the recipient of the 2025 Break New Ground bursary! After reviewing over 100 incredible submissions, we’re thrilled to support Mai’s innovative new work for this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival.
The Break New Ground bursary provides a €4750 award, €750 for mentorship, and €2000 in in-kind support to help bring ambitious live performance ideas to life. And this year’s chosen project promises to be nothing short of captivating.
The many fantastic ideas we read in the application pool for this bursary got us excited for next year’s festival already!
For the Break New Ground Bursary Award 2025, performance maker Mai Ishikawa will be creating a new piece, Constriction: A Surreal Exploration of Motherhood and Identity, for Dublin Fringe Festival, this coming September. Mai’s Constriction is a gripping, surreal theatrical experience about two women—the Mother and the Daughter—on a train, sharing a poignant story of a woman giving up her baby. Part verbatim, part fictional dialogue, the work delves into themes of motherhood, choice, and silence.
About Mai Ishikawa
Mai Ishikawa is a Japanese poet, theatre maker, and translator based in Dublin. Known for her poetic dialogue and movement, Ishikawa blends deep themes with an experimental style, pushing the boundaries of conventional theatre. Her works have appeared in The Stony Thursday Book, Banshee, and Ink Sweat & Tears, and she was shortlisted for the 2024 Westival International Poetry Competition. Mai was also part of Dublin Fringe Festival’s Weft Studio in 2023-4.
Get ready for a bold and thought-provoking performance—Mai Ishikawa’s Constriction is set to make a powerful impact at Dublin Fringe Festival. Stay tuned!