Theatre at Dublin Fringe Festival
Big emotions. Bold ideas. Brilliant artists.
This year’s theatre programme brings new voices, urgent stories, and unforgettable performances to stages across the city — from the intimate to the epic, the poetic to the political.
If you’re looking for the kind of theatre that makes you feel something, start here
Octopus Children - FELISPEAKS
My Nigeria happened in Longford town.
Follows Young Felicia coming of age as a queer, ‘Black Irish midlands culchie’ grappling with their identity, led by a wise guide: The Octopus.
Part poetic landscape, part gig theatre, Octopus Children marries FELISPEAKS’ spellbinding spoken word with choreography, music, and stunning visual design.
Directed by Oonagh Murphy, this powerful, premiere invites everyone into the Black and Irish experience, and encourages anyone on the fringes to step forward unapologetically, without retreating their tentacles.
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GOOD WITH FACES - OISIN KEARNEY
Anne Garrick has tidied her house and bought the good biscuits. But when Liam Hegarty arrives to interview her, will she tell him what’s really going on with her son? A riveting new play about parenting, power, and what it means to care.
HOMESICK - TREASA NEALON
Jason emigrated to Perth three weeks and four days ago.
Jason returned home from Perth three weeks and three days ago.
Unbeknownst to his family, he’s been hiding in his childhood bedroom in Leitrim while fielding their facetime calls and queries about the weather down under. It’s only a matter of time before it all goes tits up.
A one-man show about how grief shapes us, fear paralyses us and sometimes emigrating can mean coming home
ANONN | THE OTHER SIDE - SCAOILTE THEATRE
This can’t be all there is.
An bhfuil tú cinnte?
Seoirse has been pretending to be a spirit medium. But when he actually makes contact with the other side, he’s forced to confront what he has done.
THAT’S SOO POVO - D'GIRLOS THEATRE
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.
BRAMBLES - CARA CHRISTIE
Claire got a job! (Finally.) The catch? It’s in Dublin… so she’s just landed uninvited on her sister Holly’s doorstep.
As Claire digs into their family’s past, Holly’s busy burying her own, while partner Glen just wants to move forward. As old wounds resurface, this sharp, heartfelt drama asks: are we protecting those we love, or just shielding ourselves?
+353 Presents: The Revenger's Tragedy - +353 WITH KEVIN KEOGH
Two men at odds- a grieving everyman seeking vengeance, and the lustful son of the Duke, journey through their private and public relationships with revenge, lust, and shame. We follow protagonist and antagonist Vindice and Lussurioso through this chopped and screwed version of Thomas Middleton’s 1606 play.
In a world where words are weapons and bodies are weaponised, this reimagining acts as an exploration into often self-imploding masculine ideologies of revenge through the lens of drill culture, existing at the intersections of Hip-hop and theatre. Scored by drill beats and a live orchestra, the music aims to create a new and unique world, experimenting with the trappings of drill beats: sliding 808’s, floor shaking drums and hi- hats, combined with live orchestral instruments.
PEA DINNEEN: RAISING HER VOICE - PEA DINNEEN
A trans fantasia devised in collaboration with Ronan Phelan and Paul Prior.
How do you raise a voice? How do you get a whole country to hear it?
Well, with 90s pop bangers adapted to fit a playful, subversive, personal narrative about transgender liberation in the face of an uncaring system – OBVIOUSLY
TENDERWRITE SHORTS & BIG PLAYS - TENDERWRITE
To be TENDER, to show care.
WRITE, to mark, on a surface, typically paper, with a pen, pencil or similar implement.
This series of readings shine a light on new and fresh stories from exciting new playwrights, all aged 16-24. Come experience life through the eyes of our youngest artists. There is love and desire, anxiety and fear, and a great ability to laugh despite the fact that the world is heating up to a point of explosion
ATTENTION - JULES HEAD, GEORGIA BRUCE & TILLY TAYLOR
You stand at the edge of the circle.
You look across at them, standing there too.
You love them. You know they love you.
You’ve stood here every day for the last seven years.
And every day, you’ve stepped inside. With them. Again and again and again.
You look at them. You close your eyes. You hope they step in. You pray they step in.
I love you I love you I love you I /
What if love had a playbook? If we could play it like a sport? Would the rules make it easier?
ATTENTION is a queer athletic play about love; about why and how we choose to pay attention; about the effort and sweat needed to build a life with someone and whether love is enough to save us.
AM I THE A**HOLE? - DAFE ORUGBO & LISA NALLY
All rise. The Court of Public Opinion is now in session.
Can you ever wear white to a wedding?
Does replying ‘k’ constitute emotional abuse?
Should fuckboys pay reparations?
And seriously, who gets the dog in the breakup?
You’re invited to a courtroom drama like you’ve never seen before. Satirical, comedic and experimental, this show turns the theatre-going experience into a game of cunning and manipulation.
Select your role as a member of the jury or the public audience in this immersive performance where the collective gets to decide: who is the a**hole? Am I The A**hole? is a brand-new piece of immersive event theatre, where audiences have some very important decisions to make. They can choose to be a member of the audience that sees the story unfold in its entirety, or they can opt to be a potential juror, going through a jury selection process and give a verdict on who’s the a**hole.
IN A BAD WAY - ISOLDE FENTON
Grá is sick. With what, she’s not sure. Blood clots, maybe? Foreign Accent Syndrome, possibly? Bum Cancer - most definitely; The Ginger One from Desperate Housewives has it. Sat in a GP on Dame Street, she’s with The Doctor (for the fifth time this month) and she won’t rest until she has a diagnosis.
As she spins through her symptoms (all real - definitely real), we unravel a hilarious and touching story of health anxiety, loneliness, and having a body that will not stop keeping score. Ugh.
WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR - COLM KEEGAN & LBS MEN'S SHED
Waiting for things to change isn’t working anymore.
An exploration of mental health and masculinity, told through the voices of men in a doctor’s waiting room. LBS Men’s Shed is a community group who share a shed, along with all that comes with it!
GLASS PLACES - BLUEHOUSE THEATRE
May works in a B&B near St Ciaran’s Holy Well. April works in the Aquadom, the world’s largest free-standing aquarium. They have known each other all their lives.
On December 16th 2022, the Aquadom explodes. One million litres of water flood the streets of Berlin. Fifteen hundred fish are killed. May and April try to pick up the pieces.
YOU'RE SO SPECIAL - JULIA GROGAN
Okay class, please can everyone crawl into a circle?
By day, Miss June teaches babies ballet. By night, she tries to escape the cuddles of her clingy boyfriend, who’s desperate to start a family. Miss June hates babies and she hates parents. She definitely doesn’t want to be one.
ALIENS - CURIOUS INDUSTRIES
I didn’t like it here at first. I didn’t like anything.
Join a real-life mother and daughter on a road trip from Donegal to southern Italy, as they weave their personal stories with those of Italian immigrants in Northern Ireland and present-day migrants, activists, and strangers meet along the way. Blending performance, video, and live music, this show invites you to explore what it means to live between countries, generations, and identities - a meditation on inheritance, migration, and those who live in between: the aliens
THE CHALICE - BRIGID LEAHY
When a medieval chalice is unearthed on an Irish farm, three characters clash over its ownership. An American tracing her lineage insists it’s part of her family legacy but the son of the landowners sees it as his to keep. Tensions spike when a government worker, an immigrant to Ireland, asserts that the state has the strongest claim. A sharp, dark comedy about ownership, identity, and the messy politics of cultural inheritance
HE DIES IN THE END - LIAM MCCARTHY
Matty’s dead, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.
There’s no need to be sad, he says, sure he didn’t have much going for himself in the first place. He’s no big loss... Matty recounts his last day alive, over and over, telling us contradicting stories about a life that was already falling apart.
DONT COPY ME (COPY) - GIFT HORSE THEATRE
Original art is dead, and you’re invited to the funeral.
This is a celebration and interrogation of the myth of originality. None of us are original. We poach stories from legends, base characters on real people, repurpose real life into art.
What does it mean to make work in the present without responding to the past? What does it mean to adapt a text you love? To work with ideas from someone you hate?
Blending lecture, lies, fact, fiction, music, and dance, don’t copy me (copy) is a tongue-in-cheek response to questions of representation, marginalisation, and problematic faves. For theatre virgins and veterans, Gift Horse Theatre presents a brand new play we stole from someone else.
THE DEADLINE PROJECT - JOSHUA MCNUTT and TISHE FATUNBI | ARINOLATHEATRE
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.
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