As a unique arts festival, the Gay Theatre Festival Dublin aims to play a distinctive role in developing a vibrant and sustainable profile on the Dublin theatre scene. Using the skills and experience of principal Directors and Executive Committee built up over the last six years organising the old International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, they aim to resource and facilitate artistic performance thus aiding artists to realise their artistic ambitions. The Festival is staffed by professionals on a voluntary basis. The Gay Theatre Festival Dublin will be centred around the city's Temple Bar area.

 

Members enter for free. Kaleidoscope presents an eclectic musical evening in the relaxed atmosphere of the Odessa Club. In May, we feature music from Europe in the middle ages right through to the music South America and the gripping vocal work of Jennifer Walshe.

 

 

Iconic indie rock band PAVEMENT are set to include a Dublin date in their one-off reunion tour in May 2010. The legendary leaders of 1990s American lo-fi rock have confirmed a single TRIPOD show for Tuesday 4th May, following their announcement in September of a one-time limited run of reunion shows around the world next year. Mark Ibold, Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannberg, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich and Steve West will take to the stage, more than 10 years after their final show together in London's Brixton Academy in 1999. We're assured that a permanent reunion is not in the offing. No new material is due for release. Catch them while you can.

 

Do John a favour, don't ask him for Lady GaGa!

 

A newly commissioned solo exhibition that explores the complex and historical world of spectatorship. Adopting the early special effects technique of matte painting, Sander uses and quotes the visual intricacies associated with illusion, while critically examining the personal motivation of consumers who participate in spectator industries. Tourism, audiences, the traveller and the curious are all characters who take time out of everyday life and pay to see things. The gallery will be transformed into a single, circular screen, providing a constantly changing and looping landscape. Sander contrasts the simplicity of matte painting with the complexity of the current economic unknowns that form the background to many of our lives.

 

 

Drawings and paintings from Ukraine. Ukraine defines itself by opposition to its bordering states. It is not Russia, not Poland, not Tatar… It views its Soviet past as another country, yet the past is omnipresent: the border is porous. To the outsider Ukraine is also a fantastically beautiful space where the borders between the structures of civilisation – houses, tower blocks, railways – are constantly being assailed by nature. Everywhere there is green.

 

 

Weekly event. Indie / Electro / Classic Pop DJs.

 

When a state senator unexpectedly dies in the middle of his re-election campaign, his family and friends gather to pay their respects ... including his secret fiancée, a former erotic dancer, who arrives to claim his seat. Before long the body is misplaced, the public is rallying to vote for the late senator, the president is coming to the funeral, and a crazy group of political advisers is scheming to get their candidate re-elected. Join the Classic Revival cast as they present the Irish premiere of this hilarious American comedy, written by David C. Hyer.

 

The IRISH PREMIERE of the Award Winning Comedy Drama MOTHER/SON sees Jeffrey Solomon triumph in this semi-autobiological tour-de-force. His show may have been about a young Jewish man coming out, but the real thrust of the play - and what makes it such a memorable piece of drama - is its emphasis on how his mother coped with the situation. In a series of brilliantly performed monologues, Solomon alternating between Bradley and his mother, Mandy, as they talked, sometimes argued - usually on long-distance phone calls - about his gay lifetsyle, his boyfriends, and her own feelings in coming to terms with his sexuality. Written and performed by Solomon, MOTHER/SON was inspired by his mother's support for him when he himself came out in 1990. It is a finely wrought celebration of a mother's love for her son and the lengths she will go in order to stand up for him and against unthinking prejudice. MOTHER /SON is a MUST SEE! ***** 5 Stars from Scotsgay who wrote "Brilliant Comedy ... Packs an emotional punch that will knock you from here to the end of the festival ... I dare you to watch it and leave with dry eyes!"

 

Includes light lunch.

 

 

Soul, ska and indie.

 

 

This MULTI AWARD WINNING DRAMA from ISRAEL has toured the world to great acclaim with this same cast for over seven years. When Hans, an outrageous young camp German homosexual and Benjamin, a conservative elderly Jewish man are thrown together.

 

IRISH PREMIERE. UK based Gay Actor/Writer John Martin Stevens brings his new play TWO LOVES to Dublin for the very first time. The play takes its theme from Shakespeare's Sonnets and promises to be a heady cocktail of passion, obsession and sexuality, as it explores a love triangle between a poet, a male youth and the poet's mistress. A poet invites a young man to spend the summer with him and his Mistress to help in the boy's 'education'. It soon becomes clear however that they have very different interpretations of the word education. A game of cat and mouse is played, but do we really know the identity of the mouse? "Some people find it hard to understand that one of the most popular poems in the English languauge "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" was written by a man to a male youth" remarks John the playwright. Sonnet in Italian means song and John has incorporated music into the plot and because of his love of the American Song Book, all the songs are either Ella Fitzgerald or Billy Holiday tracks.

 

The EUROPEAN PREMIERE of 'WHORE WORKS' is brought to Ireland courtesy of New York's Sugar Valley Theatricals and Creative Concepts Productions who are both committed to the exploration of sexuality in the lives of same gender loving men of colour. "This is my first time doing this ..." "I've never paid anyone for sex before ..." Whoring is hard work. And now the competition is getting stiffer by the day with the influx of the newly jobless. 'WHORE WORKS' takes a sharp, witty, hilarious, thought provoking, balls-out look at a black hooker's day-to-night struggle with hating and sometimes loving men who are paying him to, well ... you know. After spending two years researching, young playwright Juan Michael Porter II plays a dancer-cum-hustler, across from seasoned New York actor Bryan Webster, who plays a variety of rich older johns who hire Porter - from an aging record mogul in a hip-hop tracksuit to a manic porn-obsessed sicko with handcuffs to, well, one nice guy who falls in love with Porter and asks to see him exclusively, and not necessary for cash. Will true love ever be found? Contains Nudity and Strong Language. Not Suitable For Persons Under 16 Years.

 

‘It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood’ Over 400 years after it was written, Shakespeare’s dark depiction of ambition, guilt and murder continues to send a shiver down the spine. Macbeth’s sword is still wet with blood when he returns victorious from battle, a loyal servant to his King and a hero amongst his comrades. But when three weird sisters cross his path with mysterious prophecies, Shakespeare’s fearsome tragic hero comes face to face with his most fierce opponent yet – his destiny. Swayed by promises of greatness and the demands of a power-hungry wife, Macbeth swathes his way to power – and moral decay. Rooted in the Irish landscape at the time of Cromwell, this muscular new production from director Jimmy Fay (The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Playboy of the Western World, Ages of the Moon) lays bare the darkest side of human nature. Macbeth continues our commitment to presenting the work of William Shakespeare and follows our productions of Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and The Comedy of Errors. We are delighted that Aidan Kelly will play Macbeth and Eileen Walsh will play Lady Macbeth in this thrilling new production.