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.

 

Midori’s unique musical talents and lively personality have brought her wide recognition over a 25-year career which continues with a hectic performance schedule of recitals, chamber music performances and appearances with the world’s most prestigious orchestras and conductors. She continues the great work of ‘Midori and Friends’, a non-profit organisation which brings music education programmes to thousands of underprivileged children each year. Her 2008/2009 season included being designated an official Messenger of Peace by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations; a first-ever tour of trio repertoire with two distinguished colleagues, pianist Jonathan Biss and cellist Johannes Moser; and increasing her already extensive commitment to music education in her capacity as Chair of the Strings Department at USC’s Thornton School of Music. Midori makes a welcome return to The National Concert Hall following her outstanding 2007 recital to engage Irish audiences once more with her mastery musicianship.

 

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.

 

Every Monday, good quality stuff.

 

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.

 

 

THE FIRST DUBLIN SHOW EVER starring the world famous, international award winning performers STEVEN BRINBERG and RICK SKYE. Dublin is set to sizzle with sequins and screams this May with the world's most sensational singing superstars BARBRA & LIZA LIVE - enjoy the biggest gay affair in showbusiness when you can expect outstanding musical performances, fine-writing, comedy, characterizations, prolific gossip and spine-tingling vocal mastery. Two Superstars - One Stage. When you hear Steven Brinberg as BARBRA singing 'Evergreen', 'Memories', 'Close To You' for the first brief moment you almost think "My God, is that really her?"(Streisand) It's so captivating. Not only does he have a wonderful take on her and an innate ability to imitate her, he also captures a lot of moments and nuances that leave you breathless. Steven created 'Simply Barbra' in 1993 and played a record breaking five year run in New York winning both a MAC AWARD and a BISTRO AWARD. Having performed at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Centre and the Library Of Congress, he branched out to 28 US States and 8 countries worldwide. Steven has performed as Barbra at special celebrity events (sometimes at the request of Miss Streisand's management) for the likes of Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Joan Rivers and for Barbra Streisand's best friend, Donna Karan. Rick Skye impersonates LIZA with unsurpassable energy and comedy - through clever re-wording of classic hits and mimicry, Liza becomes an icon de force of hilarity and ingenuity. Rick Skye works his way through sharp parodies of such diverse songs as 'Mein Herr', 'Maybe This Time' and 'Sara Lee'. Along with a pair of unquestionably alluring legs, his tribute with a twist includes a 'new' Charles Aznavour song, a screen test for the upcoming musical film 'Sunset Boulevard', a 'Happy Endings' production number and a tribute to 'one of her famous parents'. As THE TIMES reported "Skye's channeling of LIZA the unbowed superstar, is sensational!".

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

Direct from Amsterdam for this IRISH PREMIERE, top Dutch comedian Johan Goossens reads from his personal diary about his years of puberty. Funny, compelling and naive. A Tragi-comic, Hilarious Pathos.

 

 

As described by themselves: "Yes, ladies & gentlemen & boys & girls, The Village on Wexford Street will host the weekly musical extravaganza which sees 6 acts go head to head playing three songs each in a cauldron of excitement. Then we roll out our famous Clap-O-Meter; a gigantic, scientifically homemade replica of The Empire State Building which lights up to the ecstatic reaction of an audience going bananas. The winner then goes forward on a journey through a perilous musical jungle until we are left with the King of the Kong, the grand prizewinner! It’s a Monster!!! "

 

 

This WORLD PREMIERE adapted by Rocket Theatre's Artistic Director, Martin Harris, is a black comedy exploring fate, duty, and love. This brand new show satirises upper-class morality and is full of wonderfully Wildean logic and sparkling wit.

 

This IRISH PREMIERE direct from London's King's Head Theatre and following in the footsteps of the award winning 'Lord Arthur's Bed', THEATRE NORTH return to Dublin with a daring and provocative new show 'NAKED HOMO'.

 

WORLD PREMIERE by Elizabeth Moynihan, Zebbie Award Winner 2009 Irish Playwrights and Screen-Writers Guild of Ireland for Best New Radio for 'The Cider Queens'. Bartie is the only butcher in the town of Swan. Bartie's son Canais arrives home unannounced from Australia after an absence of ten years. Cepta, his twin sister, has had a career change and a spell in prison for unlawful sex with a minor, Rose, her student. It's the eve of Mammy's birthday and she has not returned from her pilgrimage to Loch Derg. Family drama overflows amidst cake and celebrations, with long-held recriminations, accusations and resentments rising to the surface. Elizabeth Moynihan is an exciting new writer to watch and after her success at the 2009 Absolut Gay Theatre Festival with 'Walnuts Remind Me Of My Mother', she returns with another incisive view of family dusfunction in rural Ireland.

 

The EUROPEAN PREMIERE of 'TENNESSEE SUITE' begins with 'THE TRAVELLING COMPANION' - a late self-portrait by Tennessee Williams, set in a New York City hotel, it depicts a standoff between an aging writer, much like Williams, and a young man.

 

 

 

 

 

EUROPEAN PREMIERE. ONE FIRE ESCAPE. TWO MARTINIS. THREE TWISTS. In post 9/11 New York City, two young men discover that random casual encounters are rarely casual and often have little to do with chance.

 

The IRISH PREMIERE of 'WEEPIE' is a startling blend of the savage and the sublime. While this might sound gloomy, the play is not... much of it is hilarious. In November 1994, two nineteen year old, upper middle class students Richard Elsey and Jamie Petrolini were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Mohammed el-Sayed. The victim had been stabbed 16 times in an attack which began as he waited in his car at traffic lights. There was no obvious reason for the murder. The victim was unknown to the perpetrators and there was no racial motive. The killing destabilised notions of respectability and bewildered public and media alike. In an audacious mix of tense drama and hilarious comedy, 'WEEPIE' addresses that bewilderment, pulling apart youthful notions of masculinity in a heady mix of absurd ritual, eroticism, magic realism and hard-hitting drama. Contains Nudity and Strong Language. Not suitable for persons under 16 years of age.

 

‘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.