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.

 

Specialising in simple productions and infectious rhythms, like Arthur Russell playing Althea & Donna or Beat Happening playing African music, Brooklyn’s primitivist pop duo High Places play Upstairs @ Whelan’s, May 5th. Mary Pearson and Rob Barber met while Mary was completing a music degree in bassoon performance and Rob was working in visual art, teaching lithography and etching at an art school. Both were performing as solo musicians at the time. Mary relocated to New York from Michigan in spring 2006, and the two soon began collaborating under the name High Places. They released some singles and contributed songs to various compilations. These early and varied works were collected and released in July 2008 as 03/07-09/07 in advance of tours with Deerhunter and No Age.

 

Launch of Splitzo, a collaboration of music/video art by Cortisol Quintet and Mark Linnane. This features an album of new music (produced with Roy Carroll) by Matt Berrill, Colm O'Hara, Justin Carroll, Andrew Csibi and Phil MacMullan, combined with video/animation compositions by Mark Linnane. (Members enter free.)

 

In this work, Shelley Corcoran explores, through video, projection and photography, the psychiatric mechanism of displacement and how it can be both adaptive and undesirable.

 

 

Following a hugely successful season in the Gaiety Theatre in May 2009, where it received an almost unbroken run of standing ovations, and a West End Premiere, Lane Productions are delighted to announce that THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION will return to the Gaiety Theatre by popular demand for a limited run.

 

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.

 

 

 

Ladlane formed in 2004 in Dublin. The band features Eugene Quinn from Templeogue, Dublin on guitar/banjo/vocals, Ray Dempsey from Ballyduff, Co. Waterford on accordion and Colm Keane from somewhere in north county Dublin on fiddle/vocals.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Presented by Hamlet Sweeney.

 

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.

 

In the intimate setting of the Boy's School Studio, sit back and enjoy Dublin's favourite Diva as Kristin Kapelli takes you on a magical journey with a selection of Show tunes from her favourite Broadway shows, Diva songs, power ballads plus fun with her bubbly American wit. Kristin has been performing internationally since an early age. She started out in musical theatre in the U.S. before coming to Ireland. She fronted the successful Tina Turner Tribute Band 'I Can Tina' and was also fronting her own blues band which performed at numerous festivals including the Cork Jazz Festival. Kristin starred in 'The Songs Of Mama Cass' produced by Bill Hughes and Musical Director Ronan Jonston, which received rave reviews from Gay Byrne, Pat Kenny and the HOTPRESS magazine. For five years, Kristin was the Voice of the Tassel Club, Dublin's foremost Burlesque Club and more recently she was part of the Katherine Lynch show in Vicar Street, performed at the prestigious Electric Picnic and starred in the exciting new show 'Burlectro'.

 

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.