One of Europe’s leading arts festivals, Dublin Theatre Festival incorporates theatre, music, dance and family events, as well as artist talks, public discussions and artist development programmes, with performances taking place in venues and locations across the Irish capital and the greater Dublin area.
DTF strives to be widely accessible and is proud to once again offer 10% off tickets for selected festival productions at 10 euro for under 30s, unwaged and freelance artists and arts workers. Register here.
The festival has always facilitated and encouraged dialogue between Irish based and international artists. This year it offers a very strong international programme alongside a stellar line up of new Irish work.
Irish National Opera, Ireland, presents
Breathwork
28-30 Sept | 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 7pm, 8pm & 9pm
€16.50 (Full price ticket inc. €1.50 booking fee)
Beware! The well is poisoned. The sea is infected. Everything has been consumed. Lamentation is too late. Guilt has no positive outcome. An opera about a dystopian world affected by some form of destructive force.
Christiane Jatahy, based on the book Torto Arado by Itamar Vieira Junior, presents
After the Silence
29-30 Sept | 7.30pm | 1 hr 45 mins (No Interval)
€31.50 (Inc. €1.50 booking fee)
After the Silence follows the struggle of three women for their community, their land, their freedom, and their culture.
Irish Society of Performance Designers in association with Once Off Productions present
The Next Four Years Film Installation
30 Sept - 7 Oct | Playing on a Loop | 55mins
Free | Ticketed
Featuring some of Ireland’s leading designers in conversation about what matters for the future, as well as sonic and visual inserts created in response to the exhibition theme, this film which was the centerpiece of Ireland’s representation at the 2023 Prague Quadrennial will be available to view in the foyer at Project Arts Centre.
Gosia Wdowik, Nowy Teatr, Poland, and Campo, presents
She was a friend of someone else
3 & 4 Oct | 19:30 | 60mins
€26.50 (Full price tickets inc. €1.50 booking fee)
Despite immense protests, the women of Poland were simply denied their rights. It could be an activist success story but She was a friend of someone else is a story with too many beginnings, too few endings – and an exhausted narrator.
Gosia Wdowik explores the link between burnout and activism: the fear that rights are not acquired forever, and the moment one stops paying attention, they risk disappearing.
YESYESNONO PRODUCTIONS by Sam Ward presents
We Were Promised Honey!
3-6 Oct: 7pm | 7 Oct: 3.45pm, 7.45pm
€20-€26.50 (Full price tickets inc. €1.50 booking fee)
A lone performer tells the story of the future of the audience; what’s going to happen to them in the decades, centuries, millennia after the end of this show. There’s a baby born in a lighthouse, someone on fire in the middle of the desert, two lovers reunited in a flooded city, a spaceship on the edge of a black hole. Everything has already been decided. This is the story of the end.
One Two One Two presents
The Building Project
6 Oct | 5pm | 60mins approx.
Free, Ticketed
This is a live exploration of the issue of housing. The thought experiment started with bringing artists into a theatre and asking them what they would need to live in that space. As a collective, they will perform the results of the experiment. This project is intended to illuminate a very urgent issue by asking questions and entertaining you.
Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere, Campo, present
Out of the Blue
6 Oct: 7.30pm | 7 Oct: 2.30pm, 7.30pm | 60mins | €20-€26.50 (Full price ticket inc. €1.50 booking fee)
After their acclaimed performances Mining Stories (Dublin Theatre Festival 2019) and Pleasant Island, Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere present the final part of their trilogy on mining. This time they focus on a completely new industry: deep sea mining. With resources on land becoming increasingly scarce and overexploited, mining companies turn towards the ocean.
Kate Heffernan presents
Guest Host Stranger Ghost
7 Oct: 1pm | 60mins | Free, Ticketed
Three acquaintances rent a house owned by an elderly woman now living her last days in a nursing home – and try to find a space for themselves amongst the stuff of her entire life. A story about people living in someone else’s home, Guest Host Stranger Ghost is designed to be performed on the sets of other people’s plays.
Youth Theatre Ireland presents
Young Critics Panel
8 Oct: 1pm | 60mins | Free, Ticketed
One of Youth Theatre Ireland’s most popular and innovative programmes, Young Critics brings together young people from youth theatres across the country on a journey of critical discovery: learning about how and why theatre is made, seeing incredible shows and voicing their opinions.
Róisín Stack presents
No Woman is an Island
10-12 & 14 Oct: 7.45pm | 13 Oct: 12.15pm (Baby friendly performance), 7.45pm | 60mins
€15-€26.50 (Full price ticket inc. €1.50 booking fee)
No Woman is an Island is a meditation on geographies of the self. It maps the internal and external spaces in which we live our lives while walking a wonky line through cultural theories and histories of female solitude.
A play on the performance lecture, Róisín Stack’s wry fragmented text explores the worth and nature of ‘doing’ and who we are when finally left alone.
Shaun Dunne and Project Arts Centre present
This Solution
11-13 Oct: 7.30pm | 14 Oct: 2.30pm & 7.30pm | 15 Oct: 6.30pm | 80mins approx.
€20-€31.50 (Full price ticket inc. €1.50 booking fee)
A porn set.
A private dance class.
A perpetual agreement.
Cash in hand.
Based on a true story, This Solution is a new documentary-theatre hybrid from Shaun Dunne that fuses revelatory testimony with new writing, dance, and original music. Inspired by a young Irish man’s experience of the gay porn industry, this genre-bending new work looks at consent and contracts, regret and rebirth, uniting a compelling team of contemporary artists,
