Tiger Dublin Fringe 4th to 20th September

The Dublin Fringe, as it turns twenty, has become the Tiger Dublin Fringe thanks to Tiger Beer a most welcome new title sponsor. It also has a new director Kris Nelson, who is Canadian, and in creating the programme for this year’s Fringe he states in his director’s message he could not help “but bring something from one home to another.”

He has included Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq from Cambridge Bay who performs her live score of the documentary classic “Nanook of the North”, from Toronto Evan Webber & Frank Cox-O’Connell return with “Ajax”, the second half of Fringe 2010 hit “Little Iliad” and from Vancouver comes the Chop with “How to disappear completely” where a lighting designer reveals the tricks of his trade while somehow recounting how he granted his mother’s dying wish.

Tiger Fringe begins with three shows opening on Thursday 4 September including Sonya Kelly’s “How to keep an alien” which recounts her madcap bureaucratic global odyssey as she tries to obtain an Irish visa for her Australian partner. Her “Wheelchair on my Face” was a fine example of her ability to transform the mundane into the exhilarating so I am glad that it is with Sonya Kelly that  my Fringe will start.

The following day, Friday 5th September, the first of two outdoor free events takes place. The location is George’s Dock where the photographer and performance artist 2 Fik will create “2 Fik does Strongbow (and Aoife)” using more than eighty characters from Daniel Maclise’s vast painting The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife which of course hangs in the National Gallery. This happening is due to place over 8 hours and the resultant photo will be exhibited in Filmbase from 12th to 20th September. Then keeping up the sense of out-of the-ordinary happenings on Saturday 6th September, Ulysses Opera Theatre perform Tom Lane’s Harp, a River Cantata , a large scale, free outdoor concert, which is an Ode to the Samuel Beckett Bridge and the retelling of the Dagda myth using musicians and performers from all over Dublin together with opera singers, drummers and dancers and which somehow will take place utilising “the bridge, the river and its north and south banks”. Tom Lane’s composition is inspired by the frequencies of the supports or “strings” which will make the bridge itself into Ireland’s largest musical instrument which will tell the story of the Harp of Dagda on a massive scale.

There is a blast of events in the following days but these struck a particular chord with me as I looked through the very well presented brochure: At Sea by Just the Lads, Pilgrim by The Gonzo Theatre Company, Megan and James’ Hootenanny by Megan Riordan and James Walmsley, Tardigrade by Philip Connaughton, Reckoners by 15th Oak and Conor O’Toole’s Manhood by Conor O’Toole. There are many, many more. Some of the locations are out of the ordinary for example Drury Street Car Park and for the Fringe their debut on the stage of the Abbey at the Peacock. It is worth remembering that some of the smaller or more unlikely venues may contain the proverbial theatrical acorn…last year Dick Walsh performed in the International Bar, as I write he is in Beijing with Pan Pan Theatre Company. So be not afraid and stride boldly into the unknown and the unlikely.

by Frank L