Dublin Fringe Festival welcome a new initiative - Home Ground.
This year we invited 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.
Why are we doing it?
At Dublin Fringe Festival we want to celebrate art and culture with the widest possible audience and encourage an environment where everyone feels welcome - but we know that barriers still exist for many potential audiences. We also know that many artforms have historically focussed on white, straight, middle-class and non-disabled perspectives.
These Home Ground performances are part of addressing that imbalance, offering performances to centre and celebrate audience experiences for communities represented in programmed work, particularly those who may not have traditionally been included.
The performances and audiences that are part of the initiative are listed below:
CRAWLER - Jessie Thompson
7th Sept, 21:15, for members of the Working Class Community.
BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE
Following a string of 5-star reviews, this raw, physical duet from Jessie Thompson and Jason McNamara fuses dance, live drums, and electronic sound. Together, they navigate shifting power dynamics and unearth raw connection, anchoring their world in a shared experience. Transcending from the guttural to the godlike, they devour space with adrenaline, mind-bending sound, and extreme physicality. Born through many iterations of choreographic and improvisational collaborations this performance invites you to witness the foundations of their form, the magic within the unknown.
dublinitgirl_vs_dartlinediva- Harry Hennessy
8th Sept, 21:15, f or members of the Queer/LGBTQIA+ community.
BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE
Meet dublinitgirl, genderqueer icon.
Recently, she hung up her 365 party girl boots. Ever since she met her county player, she’s turned into a trad wife. But he has a sordid past: meet dartlinediva, stun-hun extraordinaire. See, she wasn’t too happy when he dropped her for a… well, she wouldn’t want her choice of words in print.
So what happens when Dublin’s messiest queens turn on one another? And shouldn’t they know better by now? Never fight over a man....
This show is a queer feminist discourse expressed through the highly sexualised and highly confrontational language of a twenty first century rap battle.
Lessons on Revolution- Undone Theatre & Carmen Collective
10th Sept, 20:00, for members of Working Class, migrant, and queer communities.
BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE
1968. Three thousand students occupy the London School of Economics in the most significant act of protest in a generation.
2024. Trapped in their cramped London flat, two friends dive into the archives and discover the radical history of 1968 resonating with their desire for change today.
One of the Scotsman’s ‘Best Shows of the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe’, this sell-out, critically acclaimed documentary theatre hit makes its international debut in Dublin.
Variations of Two Disabled Bodies- Bobbi Byrne & Soso Ní Cheallaigh
11th Sept, 18:30, for members of the Disabled & Queer/LGBTQIA+ communities.
BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE
Ever wondered what it would feel like to be in a completely different body?
Bobbi and Soso are very alike.
Bobbi and Soso are very different.
Honest, witty and illuminating, this is a duet with a difference. It’s a rip-roaring tour through the lived experiences and hidden complexities of disability and gender. Join Bobbi and Soso as they explore everything from walking, to falling, to Davina McCall.
At a time when LGBTQIA+ and disability rights are being dismantled, Variations for Two Disabled Bodies is a defiant celebration of disability, the beauty of difference, and the power of friendship.
Hungry Grass/ Stray Sod- Wandering Stories Theatre
15th Sept, 20:15, for members of the Black & global majority & Queer/LGBTQIA+ communities.
BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE
Fresh from its award winning off-broadway debut (BEST PLAY Origin’s 1st Irish Festival 2025), Wandering Stories is coming home to Ireland! Mixing fucked up folklore and heartrending personal stories, let’s take a another look at the tales we tell ourselves.
An Irish bisexual and an Ugandan lesbian meet in a foreign land. One turned up hoping for work, one was forced to flee her home. As they share stories from their past and cultures, strange parallels emerge.
Join us between worlds, stray from the path. The differences and similarities of our stories ripple through time. Don’t forget the lessons our ancestors taught us. Don’t believe it’ll never happen to you. A night of fucked up folklore and heartrending true stories.
The Deadline Project- ArínọláTheatre
18th Sept, 18:00, for members of the Black & global majority & Working Class communities.
BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE
Are you important enough to be remembered?
As the end of the world approaches, two grieving musicians record their music and answer psychological questions for an AI model built for human preservation, all while they question their motivations, relationships, music and grief.
A soft sci-fi folk musical full of quiet apocalypses and loud emotions, this is Once meets Black Mirror for anyone who feels like they are living at the end of the world.
LIBYA!- Farah Elle
18th Sept, 19:50, for members of the Black & global majority & Queer/LGBTQIA+ communities.
BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE
What does it mean to have your heart broken open? Farah Elle invites you into a world scented with jasmine and laced with truth, an intimate performance filled with the warmth of being welcomed home, asking what we bring with us and what we leave behind.
This sensory music and storytelling experience weaves family history, cultural duality, and radical love. Join Farah in celebrating community, healing and restoration, in being bold enough to choose to live with joy and love at the centre.
That's Sooo Povo- D’Girlos Theatre
19th Sept, 13:00, for members of the Working Class community.
BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE
I’m about to flip this kip upside down and inside out.
Gerrup Gerra your ma’s your da.
When Chantelle and Craoí, two working class Dublin drama students, lock horns over The Plough and the Stars, their combined rage brings forth Queen Povo, a drag-drenched larger-than-life entity who forces the girlos and the audience to examine what they’re thinking about when they think of class.
This riotous, razor-sharp debut crashes through class, art, and authenticity with wit, grit, and glitter. A juicy-tracksuit clad call to arms for anyone who’s ever felt too loud, too real, or just too povo.
Cult of Aerobics- Emily Bradley
20th Sept, 15:15, for members of the Queer / LGBTQIA+ community.
BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE
Ever hated yourself? Great! Welcome to the Cult.
Cult of Aerobics is your glitter-drenched gateway drug to self-improvement, groupthink, and really good abs.
Join the charismatic leader on a high-energy journey through aerobics, obsession, and the dark side of perfection. With infectious choreography, biting humour and a suspicious amount of spandex, this immersive spectacle dares you to sweat it out, laugh it off, and maybe – just maybe - finally love yourself. Or at least love your reflection.
We hope these performances in this pilot create space to talk and connect for these communities listed above. While these performances are primarily intended for audience members from key communities to attend, no one is excluded from attending.
Where it Came From: The initiative was generated from an idea brought to us in 2024 by artist Joy Nesbitt to include specific performances for Black & global majority audiences in the festival, inspired by the legacy and concept of BLACK OUT performances, and with the intention of inviting Black & global majority audiences who have historically been excluded from artistic spaces. Given the context and make-up of the festival we are working to create Home Ground, which holds space for the potential of various audience groups represented in the programme to take part.
A BLACK OUT is the purposeful creation of an environment in which a Black & global majority audiences can experience and discuss an event in the performing arts, film, athletic, and cultural spaces – free from the white gaze. A concept birthed by Slave Play playwright Jeremy O. Harris, the inaugural BLACK OUT night took place on September 18, 2019. For the first time in history, all 804 seats of Broadway’s Golden Theatre were occupied by Black-identifying audience members in celebration and recognition of Broadway’s rich, diverse and fraught history of Black work.