It’s Brave. It’s Wild. It’s Bold – and it’s happening from September 6th-21st right across the city in a variety of shapes and forms… That’s right. Dublin Fringe Festival is back, and its 2025 iteration promises to raise the bar even further than before.
From well-loved comics and queer cabaret to live visual art displays and work that grapples with everything from motherhood to club culture to climate change, there’s a perfect offering for every kind of art lover and joy seeker in this year’s programme.
Emer Tyrrell sat down with the newly appointed Festival Director – but longtime aficionado of the trade – Bee Sparks to find out just what the team have in store for us this year.
Dublin Fringe is “unusual in being a fully curated fringe”, she explains. Some work gets programmed by way of invitation from the festival, while the majority secures a place through the annual call-out for submissions. This year’s curatorial call-out to artists pivoted around ideas of ‘urgent pleasure’ and ‘care’. “Everybody at the moment is really in need of joy, but also in need of, kind of ‘ethical joy’, if that’s a fair way to phrase that? You know, the idea that there’s space for joy in resistance, joy in protest, joy in community… So, we wanted to combine those ideas of care and joy and explore how we can be active and ethical in our joy seeking.”
The truly special thing about an interdisciplinary arts festival like Dublin Fringe Festival is the sheer breadth of experiences it offers. “You could plan a full day and see live art, see comedy, see something that feels like it’s really asking big questions about the world, and then go to a cabaret show and dance until one in the morning,” Sparks muses, adding that this is an experience “you just don’t get in a lot of cultural offerings.”
A priority for Sparks as Artistic Director this year has been maintaining this range programmatically, as well as artistically, so that “there’s things you can do from home, there’s big fun nights out and there is work asking those big questions,” to ensure the programme has as many points of access as possible.
As part of this, the festival will offer a number free, outdoor and un-ticketed pieces of work. One such is a live mural painting by eight artists from Minaw Collective – an all-female street art collective – in the outdoor courtyard of The Digital Hub on September 6th. The mural will then be available to view for the duration of the festival. Another is ‘Performing Memory’, a large-scale dance piece about grief and mourning brought to life by Coiscéim Dance Theatre on September 19th and 20th and 21st, in Fairview Park and Wood Quay Amphitheatre respectively.
Another production, ‘Holdings’ will offer a remote art experience that can be enjoyed from the comfort of your home. This piece includes a mail-out and a phone call element, and pokes out ideas of data collection and security, and what it really means to own a home. This experience is available from September 5th to September 12th.
This same focus on access within the festival also extends to the financial, as this year the festival will introduce a ‘Pay What You Can’ night on Wednesday September 17th, applying to all the shows after 7pm. “It’s a really great opportunity if you would like a subsidized ticket,” Sparks says. “But also, if you have a little bit extra that you can use to support others who might not have access to the arts, you can pay a little more so it’s all balancing itself out.”
For the first time, the festival are also trialling a new ‘Home Ground’ initiative. This is whereby one night of a show’s run will hold space for the specific community or demographic that the work speaks to. “So we have nights for working class audiences, for black and global majority audiences, for queer audiences…” Sparks explains. “Those will be popping up across the across the festival, and you can check them all out on the access and inclusion page.”
If you’re an audience member seeking a more traditional live experience, there’s a wealth of diverse possibilities to choose from. You can enjoy brand new comedy shows from the likes of Sinead Quinlan, Tony Cantwell, Michael Fry or Anna Clifford. The more musically-minded can soak up stunning performances by Tolü Makay, Farah Elle or SexyTadhg. Those who prefer dance can delight in performances by Luail – Ireland’s National Dance Company, Jessie Thompson or Emily Terndrup. Theatre heads are also in for a treat, with shows from Oisín Kearney, Scaoilte Theatre, Gift Horse Theatre, Colm Keegan, Bluehouse Theatre and many more running throughout the festival.
The programme also boasts brand new shows from gaeilgeoir Hector Ó Heochagáin, drag queen Shakira Knightly, Egg Cabaret and Felispeaks. And all of this is only the tip of the iceberg! So, be sure to check out all upcoming events by grabbing a Dublin Fringe Festival programme around town or visiting dublinfringefest.com.
Check out 10 Dublin Fringe Festival productions that Bee Sparks believes you should have on your radar here.
Words: Emer Tyrrell
