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.

 

Heineken Green Spheres gig. Gig is free but you have to register in advance.

 

In the Tragic Overture, Brahms is at his most heroic, anguished and profound; following that, the eagerly awaited return of Arabella Steinbacher to perform Dvorák’s Violin Concerto with its intensely beautiful slow movement and dancing, flamboyant finale. Wagner described Beethoven’s 7th Symphony as ‘the apotheosis of the dance’; music of maximum drive and exhilaration . .

 

Inspired by mirrors, kaleidoscopes and labyrinths, MonStreS is a fascinating dance show for children, families and schools. Set in a circle of mirrors, and with playful human creatures, MonStreS, is a dance experience which has been created especially for children by French company, La BaZooKa. The show draws on 1950s fantasy films and includes music from Six Pianos by Steve Reich. Join us in a riveting exploration of dance, reflection and lights. A one-off experience!

 

Re-embrace your 80s child - get your flux-capacitor at the ready and get set for a Bueller Day Off as we prepare you for a joy ride through the ages.....Now that's what I call music!

 

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.

 

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.

 

"Brilliant entertainer who provides a cocktail of outrageous comedy and eye-popping magic!!"

 

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.

 

It’s NOT creepy or kooky, mysterious or spooky. It’s Tony Stockwell demonstrating his belief that those who have passed can communicate with us, delivering their messages of love and reuniting them with their relatives. The remarkable star of Living TV’s Street Psychic, Psychic School and Zone Reality TV’s original ‘Psychic Private Eyes’ endeavours to give proof beyond doubt and evidence of the afterlife which can change some lives forever. Deeply compelling, often startlingly accurate and always humorous- an evening with Tony is like an evening with NO other. This evening of mediumship promises to be full of fun and laughter and will be a celebration of the reunion of our world and the next.

 

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.

 

This outrageous and hilarious parody of the 1990’s disco scene introduces us to four bouncers who portray over twenty different characters as we join them for a night out on the town. We meet giggly girls and lads preparing for the big night out, sleazy DJ’s, rugger buggers and drunken slobs! The evening’s events are set against the tatty glitzy glamour, flashing lights and pulsating beat of the night-club scene. But beneath the comedy we also get a glimpse of just how empty some of these characters lives really are. Back by popular demand after a successful sellout tour!

 

Boy George (born George Alan O'Dowd; 14 June 1961) is a British singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by rhythm and blues and reggae. His 1990s and 2000s-era solo music has glam influences such as David Bowie and Iggy Pop. He also founded and was lead singer of Jesus Loves You during the period 1989–1992. Being involved in many activities (among them songwriting, DJing, writing books, designing clothes and photography), he has released fewer music recordings in the last decade. On 11 May 2009, Boy George was released from prison at HMP Edmunds Hill in Newmarket, Suffolk, four months into a fifteen-month sentence for the assault and false imprisonment of a male escort in his East London flat. He was tagged and placed on a curfew for the balance of the sentence. In December 2009, Boy George had a successful run of concerts at the Leicester Square Theatre in London's West End.

 

Foals are a 5 piece band from Oxford, England. They are currently signed to Transgressive Records in the UK and Sub Pop in the USA. They released their debut album Antidotes on 24 March 2008 in the UK, and 8 April 2008 in the USA.

 

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.

 

Regular event. Hip-hop, soul, funk.

 

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.

 

 

 

Repair is a duet structured around a series of interruptions, revealing a dancer exploding with extravagance, exuberance and vulnerability. It is an intimate piece that seeks to acknowledge the extravagant drama inherent in precise gesture and succinct physical behaviour. Repair is set on a stagewithin- a-stage, housed inside large curtains and accompanied by a live sound score. The result of a three-way collaboration between Shick, visual artist Barbara Kilpatrick and composer Elise Kermani, the work reflects a devotion to detail and an interest in revealing the nuance of persona and mood. Vicky Shick has been performing, teaching and choreographing in New York since the 1970s. As a member of the Trisha Brown Company, she received a New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award for performance. She was named a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellow in 2006 and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2008-09.

 

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.

 

Jonathan Ansell, who won the heart of the nation as lead vocalist in X-Factor runners-up G4, has been cast in his musical debut, starring in Bill Kenwright’s production of Jim Steinman and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Whistle Down The Wind. The musical shows how powerful love can be when the innocence of childhood collides with the cynicism of the adult world. In a stunning combination of multi-award-winning songs, powerful all new staging and epic storytelling, Whistle Down the Wind is a record breaking theatrical sensation that is both mesmerising and moving.

 

Price includes light lunch. TOM HICKEY is one of Ireland's best-loved and most distinctive actors. A founder member of the Focus Theatre, he has been a regular on the stages of The Abbey and The Gate for many years, creating some of the major roles in Irish drama. MICHAEL HARDING received the Stewart Parker Award for new writing in 1990 and he has continued, ever since, to be lauded for his work both as a playwright and novelist. His plays have been produced by The Abbey Theatre, as well as internationally, and he was elected a member of Aosdana in 2000. Michael writes a column for the Irish Times every Friday - Displaced in Mullingar - chronicling small town life in the Irish Midlands.

 

‘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.