This year’s Dublin Fringe Festival is celebrating 30 years of showcasing live theatre, music, and dance across Dublin city. With an impressive 75 shows across 29 venues ready to take to the stage, it can be hard to know where to start. I chatted with members of this year’s Fringe Team to get their advice on how to get the most out of this year’s Fringe festival and found out what shows you mustn’t miss!
Executive Director, Elissavet Chatzinota, who first got involved with the Fringe as a volunteer back in 2015, now works closely with the Festival Director on steering the organisation. Chatzinota explains she “works to ensure artists have the support they need to create and engage with the audiences and that the audiences have access to the innovative work being made by the artists.” From her experience with the Fringe, she offers two top tips to help you get the most out of this year’s festival:
Firstly, “Fringe is not just a festival, it’s a community, a family. Choose your shows and get to the venue or meeting point. Even if you book a single ticket, you will never be alone. Talk to our volunteers (they love that!), talk to your fellow audience members, talk to the artists themselves, talk to our team. Performing art is made to be consumed by a group. Be part of the group. Be part of the experience. Find out where people are going next, get to the next show with them, grab a pint, talk to a stranger in the foyer. Don’t be shy! We are all there to be part of it.”
Secondly, she advises, “Get your hands on our brochure. I never go anywhere without my brochure! Grab one (you can find them at the venues, around the city and in our HQ since the launch), get a glass of wine, make your itinerary, book your tickets and then put it in your bag. It serves as an ice breaker, friend maker, companion finder, ticket holder, cheat sheet, notebook, phonebook and of course your personal agenda for the days of the festival. And you never know, you might finish that work meeting a bit earlier and actually be able to squeeze another show in! It would be a pity not to have all the info in hand.”
Assistant Box Office Manager, Jack Quinn, fell in love with the Fringe in 2022 on a study abroad trip. Originally from Philadelphia, Jack moved to Dublin after he graduated just in time to work in the box office for the 2023 festival. With 29 venues at this year’s Fringe, Jack revealed the Smock Alley Theatre, both the main space and boys school, come out on top for him as “gorgeous and intimate places to see any show.” Jack, when asked about what people may not know about the Fringe gave us some helpful advice: “Just because shows are listed as sold out, doesn’t mean more tickets won’t become available later! If you email the box office with your name and phone number we can add you to the waiting list. Most of the time more tickets become available the day before the show so don’t be scared to add your name to the waitlist if a show you really want to see is sold out!”
Finally, I spoke with David Francis Moore, the Festival Director. Moore first got involved in the Fringe when he was creating work using the Fringe Lab, the festival’s year-round art support and development hub for artists to create and rehearse work. Moore then formally joined the Fringe last May as Festival Director. Moore explains his role as Festival Director as being, “responsible both for the artistic policy and the strategic development of the organisation.” When asked what he was most looking forward to at this year’s Fringe Moore noted that “the thing about Dublin Fringe Festival is that it’s so vast and epic” and they’ve “a really exciting line-up of shows across comedy, theatre, dance, music.” Moore singled out some performances he was particularly excited for that I’ll leave you with:
- Illness as Metaphor, Dead Centre
7th-14th @ Project Arts Centre – Space Upstairs
A piece based on the book by Susan Sontag of the same name. The work merges Susan Sontag’s writing on illness and how we as a society think of illness with personal testimonies from both performers and non-performers.
- Television, SexyTadgh
6-13th September @ Project Arts Centre – Cube
With Moore describing Tadgh as “the rising star of music and cabaret” their show looks at how Television culture has influenced who we are as a society. A live cabaret that Moore promises to be an “absolute banger of a show”.
- A night with Wee Daniel, Aoife Sweeney O’Connor
18th- 21st September @ Bewley’s Café Theatre
One of Dublin Fringe’s resident artists and co-founder of Egg Cabaret, their show is an absurdist autobiographical cabaret that looks at the lived queer experience of growing up in rural Ireland, and their unironic obsession with Daniel O’Donnell.
- Trouble Denim, Shane Daniel Byrne
12th-14th September @ Dublin Castle – Chapel Royal
Award winning comedian Shane Daniel Byrne is back after his sold out debut run at last year’s Dublin Fringe for a new comedy show about Jeans, Jackets and Jesus Christ.
- Rosin El Cherif
17th September @ Project Arts Centre – Cube
An Irish Palestinian artist from Galway, creating a multidisciplinary work for the Project Cube. The show brings together El Cherif’s music with spoken word, poetry, and film examining her shared Irish and Palestinian Heritage and how they come together. The event is presented in aid of the Palestinian Children Relief Fund.
