Dublin Fringe Festival 2021: 160 performances, 30 events, 16 venues

Dublin Fringe Festival's lineup for 2021, including more than 160 performances of 30 events at 16 venues, is announced today. Running from September 11th to 26th, the festival returns to Project Arts Centre, Bewleys Cafe Theatre, Smock Alley and Samuel Beckett Theatre, among other venues, as well as featuring outdoor stages at city landmarks, plus shows designed to be experienced at your place, or near home for audiences outside Dublin.

Last year’s festival managed to squeeze between the worst of the lockdowns, and after an unprecedently challenging period for live performance, the 27th edition of Dublin Fringe sees the team pulling together a festival of firsts, with 26 world premieres plus three Dublin premieres.

Themed around Superflux, “a surging flow of possibility brought about by the energy of change” of the past 16 months, the Fringe remains committed to showcasing new ideas and new voices. “These brilliant artists are activating the city with acts of joy and intimacy”, sending up “a flare to adventurous audiences”, says the festival’s head, Ruth McGowan.

The event “negotiated the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 with both flexibility and tenacity”, according to Maureen Kennelly, the director of the Arts Council, which is the Fringe’s core funder. “Notably, the festival brings that same inventive spirit to its 2021 programme, encouraging audiences to seek out arts adventures across the city made by artists setting out to challenge and entertain us in unique spaces.”

DFF2021: A taste of what’s on

• Masterclass A world-premiere international collaboration between Irish theatremakers Brokentalkers and global Fringe veteran Adrienne Truscott, skewering the cult of the great male playwright.
• You Are Magic by Alicia Eggert A live pop-up interactive sculpture activated by touch, celebrating the power of collaboration.
• Speak Softly Go Far A trio of "covert theatre experiences" from Maia Nunes, Hannah Mamalis and Oisin McKenna, commissioned by Fringe and the Abbey. The audio encounters will be experienced alone, in public space near home, inviting you to let an artist occupy your mind.
• Minseach (She-goat) Sibéal Davitt (TG4's Glas Vegas) creates a bilingual dance memoir.
• Rescue Annie Live theatre show from Lauren Shannon Jones and Eoghan Carrick about a dead woman; it begins in an intimacy workshop and ends with an out-of-body experience.
• Tonic by Fionn Foley and Rough Magic A new outdoor all-singing, all-dancing musical comedy satirising Ireland in the aftermath of a cataclysmic doomsday event.
• You're Still Here Murmuration's show performed in a tent in Dublin Castle's grounds, following a family when a prodigal son returns home with all the siblings living together again.
• The Veiled Ones by Junk Ensemble Dance theatre for young people featuring an ensemble of dancers and musicians from all over Europe, exploring the identity of witches, and grandparent-grandchild relationships, loosely informed by Roald Dahl's The Witches.
• The programme, divided into six strands, also includes Film Reads: The Breakfast Club, Dreamgun's outdoor comedy in Dublin Castle; Abundance, an ode to queer joy by Glitterhole's Beth Hayden and the live artist Matthew Bratko; Narcissus, a play about queer friendship and life-changing nights out; Malaprop's new play, Where Sat the Lovers, about when a family member falls for conspiracy theories; and a strand of art made for and by young people.
• Weft is a project to develop talent and build networks with emerging and early-career black artists and artists of colour in Ireland. Through the Arts Council's Open Call Award, it's in partnership with Hot Brown Honey, Origins Eile and the theatremaker Dylan Coburn Gray.
• Comedy in the Fringe includes Joanne McNally's new show, Paul Currie's absurdist stand-up, Sarah Devereux (aka the Dirt Bird) devising a make-and-do workshop, and rising stand-up Ian Lynam's first show, Autistic Licence.