Dublin Fringe Festival announces Home Ground initiative for 2026
We are delighted to announce the second year of our Home Ground initiative where we invite artists in the programme to co-create spaces for the communities their work represents. Home Ground facilitates audience take-overs creating safe, celebratory audience spaces for key communities represented in Dublin Fringe Festival shows.
At Dublin Fringe Festival, we want to celebrate art and culture with the widest possible audience and foster an environment where everyone feels welcome. However, we know barriers still exist for many potential attendees. We also recognize that many artforms have historically focused on white, straight, middle-class, and non-disabled perspectives.
These Home Ground performances are part of addressing that imbalance, offering shows to centre and celebrate the audience experiences of communities represented in our programmed work, particularly those who may not have traditionally been included.
The performances and audiences that are part of the initiative are listed below:
The Act of Existing
Croí Glan
9th September, for disabled and queer/LGBTQIA+ audiences
A performance shaped by others.
In this provocative new duet by Philip Connaughton for Croí Glan, performers navigate shifting rules, unexpected choices and uncertain outcomes. Playful, unsettling and revealing, The Act of Existing blurs the line between observation and participation, asking what it means to simply be ourselves in relation to others.
The Boxes
Yves Lorrhan and Inner Man Community
12th Sep, for working class, Black and global majority, and queer/LGBTQIA+ audiences
A raw fusion of dance and physical theatre exploring masculinity from the inside out.
Directed by Yves Lorrhan and performed with members of the Inner Man community, The Boxes puts lived experience centre stage, using movement and voice to break down the invisible walls around masculinity and celebrate vulnerability, connection and transformation.
Chronically Hopeful
Musici Ireland
9 Sep, 18:15, for Deaf and disabled audiences, and ISL users.
I’ve seen the psychiatrist, the gastroenterologist, the neurologist, the ophthalmologist, the homeopathic healer, the chiropractor, the aromatherapist. The Exorcist? Honestly, at this point, I’m gagging for an exorcism.
Created by artists living with chronic illness and invisible disabilities, this immersive performance blends live music, movement, text and striking visual design to reveal the messy reality behind “I’m fine”.
From medical bureaucracy and the cost of simply getting out of bed to the solidarity that makes carrying on possible, Chronically Hopeful is candid, funny and deeply human.
Diversity Training
Neil Green
12 Sep, 20:45, for working class, Black and global majority, and queer/LGBTQIA+ audiences.
It’s time for your corporate-mandated training session!
Diversity Training is a satirical corporate DEI session delivered by some of Ireland’s best comedic talent — sorry, Diversity Workshop Presenters.
Expect scores to be settled, records set straight and plenty of laughs as they tackle today’s increasingly fraught conversations around diversity. You’ll even leave with a certificate for LinkedIn. Don’t worry, it’ll look legit.
GRETEL
TAN & JWY
18 Sep, 21:15, for Black and global majority audiences.
Hansel and Gretel, reimagined for the concrete jungle.
Two young people navigate a city where homes don’t always hold, rules don’t always stick and survival has to be learned.
With a live DJ on stage, this solo spoken word performance combines rhythmic language, bass, silence and sound to create a story that is felt as much as it is heard.
Across the Fence
Thomas Collins
19 Sep, 15:30, for Traveller and working class audiences.
A fence separates Jimmy and Aoife. It’s not the only thing standing between them.
Jimmy is a Traveller man; Aoife is a young settled girl. Through conversations, silences and quiet moments, their relationship begins to challenge the divisions between their worlds.
Rooted in lived experience, Across The Fence is an intimate story about prejudice, trust and the possibility of connection across boundaries.
SPOILED
Caitlin Magnall-Kearns
Home Ground Performance: 17 Sep, 15:00. For disabled audiences.
In East Belfast, content creator EatWithEimear is going live. Tonight, it’s a members-only Q&A — no question too invasive, nothing off limits.
After years of making food content, she’s done performing. She’s ready to talk about the envy, the algorithms and what it actually takes to live your life online.
A darkly comic, digitally native performance that crawls inside the world of content creation and refuses to look away, created with housebound, chronically ill, geographically isolated and caregiving audiences in mind.
Novel Ideas
Grand Stretch
15 Sep, 18:30 For queer/LGBTQIA+ teen audiences.
Here sits a writer who cannot write…
Award-winning improvisation-led theatre-maker Darren Yorke abandons the writing desk and creates a brand-new novel live in front of you, playing one idea forward in real time.
No outline. No draft. No edits. A genuine creative risk for performer and audience alike — and maybe the perfect antidote to perfectionism and creative paralysis.
Pretty Vacant
The Performance Corporation
18 Sep, 19:30. Presented as part of Home Ground and Culture Night, this free, ticketed performance is for local Liberties communities and Culture Night audiences and will be followed by a post-show discussion with An Taisce – The National Trust for Ireland.
Former Eurovision star turned property mogul Carmilla has a bold new plan to “Set the Liberties Free”. Unfortunately, the community simply won’t lie down.
Her slick regeneration pitch quickly descends into chaos as polite consultation gives way to raw greed, box-ticking and Euro-pop bangers.
A scathing, surreal and deeply funny musical satire, Pretty Vacant takes aim at gentrification, developer-led destruction and the people in power willing to play along — asking who gets to hold the keys to Dublin, and who gets locked out.
Traces of a World To Be
Hana Laine Flamm & Emma Hurson
12 Sep, 15:00–17:30 For slow walkers and queer elders. Join us for a slower show that will allow for all paces!
A pub door opens. The year shifts. Dublin’s queer past is waiting inside.
Between 1973 and 1993, Irish queers gathered in pubs to flirt, dance, organise and imagine different futures.
Led by temporal tour guide Hana Laine Flamm, this walking tour and pub crawl brings real oral histories to life inside Dublin’s former gay pubs, uncovering the hidden histories of familiar places. Includes a curated alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink pairing at each venue.
Exhibit A: Imposter
Justine Megan
12 Sep, 13:00, for working class audiences.
All rise for Exhibit A: Justine.
From a Dublin council estate to Trinity College to a big fancy commercial law firm, Justine has learned how to fake belonging: change your accent, fix your posture, pretend you fit in.
With razor-sharp wit and music, Exhibit A: Imposter puts classism on trial and takes aim at the exhausting performance of making yourself acceptable.