Anu and the Dublin Fringe Festival

Miriam Haughton

For the least glimmer of truth is conditioned by politics.

(Foucault 5).

Introduction: Institutional Collapse and Creative Response

When Róise Goan,⁶³ former Director of the Dublin Fringe Festival, spoke at a debate on ‘The Futures of Irish Theatre’ in 2012, she proclaimed ‘it is about truth. Artists coming to us [the Fringe Festival] are interested in making work about truth and fact, yet these are not necessarily the same thing’ (‘The Future of Irish Theatre’).⁶⁴ This public event included responses concerning Irish theatre’s futures by a panel of theorists, theatre managers and practitioners including Róise Goan, Nicholas Grene, Declan Kiberd, Fiach MacConghail, Fintan O’Toole, and Willie White. Goan’s declaration led to a flurry of concern regarding a perceived reduction of myth in contemporary Irish artwork – theatre, film, literature and dance, as well as visual, live and performance arts – and questions about why that might be. Commentary from the panel and the public was varied, but the concluding discourse seemed to support Goan’s assertion. Reasons for this were also varied, but central to the discussion was a general acknowledgement that established Irish systems and myths had undeniably failed society in recent times and could no longer be turned to for support or meaning. Until faith could be restored in the integrity of national institutions, beliefs and ideas, theatre and performance were being led by a consideration of truth(s) – particularly, how society needs the notion of truth to be sought, questioned and valued. Perhaps in later years artistic focus would return to the creation of myth, some asserted, but not until some staple sense of truth(s) in relation to Irish life and experience had been voiced, witnessed, felt and acknowledged.

Yet as Michel Foucault rightly claims, truth cannot exist outside politics. Human beings are political animals according to Aristotle, and Foucault certainly agrees with this notion as his own hypothesis relates to the circulation of power which operates in society to manage society, as outlined theoretically in Discipline and Punish. While Goan’s declaration signals that the call by artists at the present moment is for the enactment of truth, their search for truth and exposure of institutional hypocrisies and failures constitutes a querying of power economies. Truth can never be attained nor proven as the notion itself is a philosophical ideal, but power dynamics can be altered. Perhaps then this theatre of truth indicates another type of new economy taking place. This new economy is informed by a release from the dogmatic authority imbued in the fixed and unyielding laws, religions and even myths central to modern Irish social experience; but also, this new economy is one which converses as much with European and global partners and perspectives as it does with nationalist Irish history and cultural traditions.

This essay explores this milieu of ‘truth’ which Goan claims pervades the work proposed to and produced by the Dublin Fringe Festival (DFF) during her five-year directorship between 2008 and 2012. I employ the phrase ‘milieu of truth’ to acknowledge the general climate of exposure dominating contemporary Irish public and political life, rather than to insinuate that there is a ‘truth’ to be discovered or declared. Irish artists are responding to this climate through their attention to exploring critically and creatively notions of truth and fact, and how these notions operate in public and private experience. The timeframe of Goan’s directorship coincides with the tumultuous fall of the so-called Celtic Tiger and the subsequent bailout imposed by the Troika (European Union, International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank), as well as the publication of the Ryan (2009) and Cloyne (2011) reports and the subsequent exposure of child abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland – a dominant political force in postcolonial Ireland and an organization which the Irish Constitution of 1937, Bunreacht na hÉireann, privileges. In light of such momentous scandals of corruption and collapse in Ireland’s national structures, it may not seem so surprising that the DFF received in recent years a multitude of proposals relating directly to these events, or ones which investigate the very notions of truth, ethics, morality, community, nation and identity. These noticeable paradigm-shifts in theme are also matched in form. This essay explores the development of forms and practices inscribing the landscape of theatre and performance in contemporary Ireland which have emerged in tandem with seismic shifts in Irish national sovereignty and leadership. Indeed, the increasing footprint of collaborative practices and processes, the move from fixed and hierarchical roles of ‘writer’ ‘director’ ‘performer’ to more fluid and perhaps broad-ranging roles of ‘theatre-makers,’ ‘auteurs’ and ‘performance artists,’ and the notable rise of site-specific, documentary and verbatim performance has gathered pace alongside the overt focus on producing content which directly addresses the failures and fallouts of modern and Celtic Tiger Ireland. These trends reflect interventions in form and theme visible in recent Festivals, and the reasons for such shifts will be examined here.

Furthermore, terminology is being challenged as I write this essay and changing roles and hierachies are visible among contemporary Irish theatre and performance companies and artists. Often, the artists presenting work in the Fringe perform multiple roles, as Goan observes, ‘Grace Dyas is a writer/director, Amy Conroy a writer/performer. Louise Lowe is a lot more than a director. Are Brokentalkers writers?’ Goan notes that these artists are best referred to as ‘auteurs’ and ‘theatre-artists,’ though their European contemporaries may be more comfortable with such labels, ‘where the crossover between theatre and performance […] is very separate.’

This essay asserts that artists in Ireland are responding directly and urgently to these national crises, making work in which content and form reflect the wider public mood and movements. The DFF, thus, becomes an appropriate home for these works, as central to the organization’s mandate is to showcase work that is new, eschews established traditions, and maintains a clear dialogue and relationship with the life of Dublin city. In summary, the DFF’s multidisciplinary mandate offers a fluidity of conceptual and artistic space that supports the flux and development of emerging forms in contemporary Irish practice.

Beginning with an overview of Goan’s reflections concerning the histories and identities of the DFF, I also consider DFF’s relationship with other national and international festivals, the impact of funding on its creative aspirations and the quality of its productions, and the festival’s particular role within the city of Dublin and its wider network base. A case study focusing on the production history of a Dublin-based company, ANU Productions, whose work has premiered at DFF delves further into the complex relationships between performance, power, politics and place – dynamics central to the roots of the DFF and its increasing footprint in Irish culture and society.

The Dublin Fringe Festival: Nuts and Bolts

The Dublin Fringe Festival curates a program of theatre, performance, performance art, live art, music, dance, and circus. Central to its mandate is engagement with Dublin city – its streets, people, beliefs, pride and problems. The work it supports is mostly new work from emerging artists, and the festival operates as an incubator from where the next new major company or artist will be nurtured and launched. Since Goan’s tenure began in 2008, DFF has upped its belief in the artists it supports which simultaneously results in upping the risk level to the Fringe (Goan). The present attitude of ‘we are all in this together’ is directly embedded in DFF’s economic model. For example, before 2009 a company/artist had to pay a registration fee, a portion of the venue rental, and a part of the insurance fee, and agree to a box-office split with the festival. Since 2009-2010, the festival has removed the registration and venue fee, maintaining only the box-office split. By sharing the risk, DFF reforged the dynamics of its relationship with the artists it programmed.

Goan’s tenure in the directorial position was led by three key principles: producing a good quality programme; engaging with the city; and supporting emerging artists. These principles, she maintains, were at the forefront of the festival’s roots when it was launched by Jimmy Fay in 1995, Artistic Director of Bedrock Theatre Company at the time. While DFF may appear in recent times as sturdy and successful an organization as the Dublin Theatre Festival (DTF), it was set up in response to the limitations the DTF programmes possessed in the eyes of emerging Irish companies and artists. Companies whose work fell more in line with European theatre-making at the time such as Pan Pan, Loose Canon, Corn Exchange, CoisCéim, Bedrock and others, felt themselves on the fringe of the professional industry approximately two decades ago. Establishing the Fringe to run in the same season as the DTF ensured not only theatre audiences were in target, but the theatre industry, and exposure to international companies, artists, directors and producers.

Goan shrewdly observes that while ‘No festival can be all things to all people,’ the Fringe was established as, and remains, a multidisciplinary curated festival programming cutting-edge work. Over forty presentations were proposed by companies and artists for the inaugural 1995 Festival. From those early years came significant successes, including Conor McPherson’s This Lime Tree Bower (1995) and Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs (1996). Today, approximately 300 to 400 presentations are proposed, with sixty to eighty programmed. Recent notable successes include the premiering of work by Amy Conroy/Hot For Theatre, ANU Productions, Aoife McAtamney, Brokentalkers, Emma Martin Dance, junk ensemble, Shaun Dunne, THEATREclub, The Company and Veronica Dyas – artists and companies whose work has intervened, challenged, and reinvigorated the Irish performance landscape in recent years. Moreover, initiatives set up by the Fringe such as the Fringe Lab, a writers’ room, and an artists’ office contributes to the survival of emerging artists by facilitating a focused work structure, ensuring that artists have a place to work in an environment designed and managed to support such work. Locating emerging artists in this type of hub allows them to tap into an on-going dialogue about their work, the industry, and the future.

Of course, the sea-change in the Irish economy has impacted on DFF’s resources. However, the innovative work the festival is producing is ensuring its survival. While the Fringe is working on a budget reduced by approximately one third since 2008, artistically, this period is considered by the Fringe as a time of growth. Audiences for the international work of this period have risen from thirty per cent to seventy per cent, and audiences for Irish work sprouted from forty per cent to eighty per cent. The ‘milieu of truth’ that is embedded in recent programmes is attracting audiences, and this box office support keeps the Fringe alive. It not only keeps the Fringe alive; it is redesigning and feeding the professional theatre and performance industry in Ireland. The artists and companies previously mentioned were premiered and supported by DFF. Today, they are multi-award winning, touring companies and artists building a tradition of theatre-making in Ireland of strength and acclaim to match the existing canon of twentieth-century Irish drama. The breeding ground the Fringe nurtures has not gone unnoticed by industry either. The ‘Re-Viewed’ element of DTF’s programme (which concluded in 2012) was often packed with the most successful (in terms of critical reception and box-office revenue) and innovative works from the previous year’s Fringe, and indeed, some major national and international theatre houses commissioned work from the artists responsible thereafter. For example, ANU’s World End’s Lane which had premiered at DFF 2010 was showcased as part of the DTF Re-Viewed programme in 2011 alongside their latest production at that time, Laundry (winner of ‘Best Production,’ Irish Times Theatre Awards 2012). ANU has since been awarded an International Artist residency at the Robert Wilson Watermill Centre in New York (2010), commissioned to produce work such as the ‘Dublin Tenement Experience: Living the Lockout’ (2013), and by Home Manchester, Angel Meadow (2014), which received a ‘Best Director’ nomination at the UK Theatre Awards (2014). Also, Hot for Theatre’s production of I Heart Alice Heart I, written and directed by Amy Conroy, was first produced in the Fringe in 2010, after which it transferred to the 2011 DTF Re-Viewed Programme, followed by a run on the Peacock Stage at the Abbey Theatre (2012), an international tour spanning the Irish Arts Centre in New York (2012), the LOKAL Festival in Iceland (2012), the World Theatre Festival in Brisbane, Australia (2013), and a nationwide Irish tour (2013). Indeed, similar successes have also been achieved by the other artists and companies listed above.

Yet, while the population of innovative Irish artists and companies continues to multiply, gather pace, tour internationally, and win critical and popular acclaim, their presence and role in the contemporary Irish socio-cultural landscape is undervalued, both culturally and economically. The Fringe offers affordable events (the average ticket costs between ten and twenty euros) throughout the city every August/September, fostering a climate of celebration across Dublin for the enjoyment of and engagement with residents and visitors, stimulating both cultural and economic capital. However, does Dublin city nurture and protect its artists in turn? Often, in consideration of the remuneration and social protection of artists, the German economic model is called upon as a comparative tool, where artists receive state pensions in acknowledgement of their contributions to the state. Goan explains:

The biggest problem is related to how artists are treated by social welfare. You can’t compare how the arts are treated in Ireland versus how they are treated in Germany. The arts budget for a small municipal region in Germany would eclipse the entire arts budget for Ireland.

Perhaps a comparison between the social infrastructures for artists in Ireland cannot be usefully compared to Germany; nevertheless, there is an urgent and overdue need to begin a serious interrogation of the dialogical relationship between the contributions made by the arts to Irish culture and society, and the contributions made by Irish culture and society to the arts. If the festivals were cancelled, the theatres, cinemas, museums, and bookshops closed, the Irish exchequer would suffer the financial fallout,⁶⁵ and the major socio-cultural penalties that would occur are simply not possible to quantify or qualify. The ‘truth’ of the relationship between the arts and state support remains: the state does support the arts, but not in equal measure to the ways in which the arts support the state.

Staging Truths in Dublin City

Understanding the city, first, is immediately important as the world becomes predominantly urbanized: the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN – HABITAT, notes in its 2006-7 State of the World’s Cities report that, since 2007, more than half of the world’s population live in cities (p. viii). Theatre can help us understand how we live in cities. (Harvie 4)

If a visible drive dominating the emergence of contemporary Irish theatre and performance in the Fringe (and beyond it, but this essay is dedicated to the Dublin Fringe, and thus, the region of Dublin) is the exploration of notions and values of truth, the stage for this search is the landscape and history of Dublin city. Jen Harvie observes in her study Theatre and the City that more than half of the world population resides in cities, examining not only how the ever-changing material, aesthetic and social structures of the city are demonstrated in the theatre, but that ‘theatre is part of urban process, producing urban experience and thereby producing the city itself’ (7).

In recent years, particularly throughout the Celtic Tiger economic boom, the representations or reflections of Dublin City in visual and print arts and media told a narrative dominated by myths fuelled by the ever-dangerous cocktail of insecurity and arrogance. Centuries of colonization result in the mark of otherness, shame and subjugation on a nation and these stains are not easily wiped away. A postcolonial hangover compounded by a poor and struggling Republic set the groundwork for a need and desire to do well, live well, and perform well on national and international stages. When the Celtic Tiger economic boom appeared centre stage, a new, shiny, neoliberal capitalist Dublin city persona became its key protagonist, and like many a hero, its tragic destiny was waiting in the wings. The extraordinary imbalance between these representations of Ireland, and Dublin city in particular, in visual and print media as well as in contemporary theatre and performance did not escape unnoticed, through perhaps, did not provoke the major disquiet in discourse one would expect from such wayward gaps between the life and art teleology. In mainstream news and visual representation, Dublin was akin to a mini New York; evidently, a gross overstatement. However, in contemporary Irish theatre and performance, Ireland’s kitchen sinks in rural cottages remained predominant on the stages, though exceptions did occur; again, clearly, a gross overstatement. Some critics noted that Ireland was caught between the postcolonial and postmodern (O’Toole xi), and indeed, there could be substance in such claims. Regardless, both heightened tropes of representation were based on myths; a phantasmatic identity of glamour and glory emerging from centuries of struggle and sacrifice, and a romanticized pure past not tainted by industry, capitalism and their associate characteristics.

In 2000 Irish playwright Declan Hughes, rightly argued that contemporary Irish theatre and performance throughout contemporary Ireland was trading on totalizing postcolonial and pastoral identities, and not sufficiently engaging with seismic transformations in society, politics and culture. He declares:

You don’t live in Ireland; you know nothing of the country but the last thirty years or so of its literature […] you arrive in Dublin in 1999 […] Why didn’t anyone warn you? The cranes, the plate glass, the extremes of wealth and poverty, the corruption, the vulgarity […] What were those writers doing, obsessing about the Nineteen Fifties, stuck down the country being Irish with themselves? Who the hell do we still think we are? (8)

Thus, representations of contemporary Dublin (and Ireland) were either too much absent in contemporary Irish theatre or performance or fetishized in the name of desperate re-invention. However, to associate a lack of engagement with contemporary Dublin from established playwrights and theatre venues does not mean that a vital questioning of life in Dublin did not occur. As the Fringe has proven through its track record of identifying and nurturing major talent in Ireland, these shifts in society, politics, commerce, religion and culture were at the very nexus of the work of many, including this essay’s case study, ANU Productions.

ANU Productions’ Monto Cycle, directed by Louise Lowe, hit Dublin’s north inner-city streets in 2010. This cycle unearths four time capsules, with each segment reflecting one of four periods of regeneration spanning 1925 to 2014. Lowe is the fourth generation of her family from this area and each phase of the site-specific cycle is directly connected to the histories of her family and community. Part one, World End’s Lane (2010), thrust the spectator into the early 1900s at the exact location of the thriving ‘Monto’ red-light district, the largest of any in twentieth-century Europe. Part two, Laundry (2011), brought audiences into the former Convent and Magdalene Laundry, which had been run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity on Lower Seán McDermott Street (formerly Gloucester Street) until 1996. Both experiences were aesthetically and viscerally reliant on the isolation of the spectator from other spectators, the performative histories of the buildings and sites of performance, and evocation of all the senses – sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Part three, The Boys of Foley Street (2012) mapped the trajectory of the lives of four boys interviewed by RTÉ journalist Pat Kenny in 1975, a time when heroin was recently introduced to the area and part four, Vardo, premiered in late 2014.

According to Harvie, ‘[t]hrough observing changing representations of the city in drama over time we can better understand how cities have changed and what this change means for those who live and work in the city’ (11). ANU reveals and probes both the transformations, and the apparent fixities, within Dublin’s inner city. Through the mode of their viscerally and ideologically penetrative performance installations and aesthetics, they push audiences to critique their own habits and politics of visibility. Indeed, ANU’s work highlights that it is the telling patterns of visibility, and invisibility, which ensures the discrimination and disempowerment of this part of the city throughout centuries.

The first segment, for example, World End’s Lane, offers an explosive account of life for the hidden underclass in the ‘Monto’ during its height in the early twentieth century. Staging encounters between performers and single spectators in the exact location in which a brothel thrived almost a century earlier, World End’s Lane not only shone a nuanced light on the daily experiences of these working-women, but exposed how this area of the city has been strategically subjugated throughout urban planning, politics and civic culture. Prostitution and poverty may not dominate these streets as they did then (though they remain in a worrying capacity), but the booming business of narcotics (demanded and consumed by inhabitants city-wide) ensures this area cannot escape a tarnished reputation marked by distress. Indeed, this is the ‘milieu of truth’ in which ANU performed, which in effect conveyed realities of past and present. Through encounters with each spectator, ANU ensured these experiences and social realities were witnessed by their audiences – who were thus made complicit. The geographical politics and consequences involved in the relationship between demand and supply is one embedded in neoliberal urban societies, ‘showing how demand by the wealthy acting in their own self-interest makes the poor supply, even when to do so is ultimately self-destructive for the poor’ (Harvie 21).

In terms of how Irish theatre stages difficult truths regarding Dublin city historically, one might refer to Seán O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy, and his deployment of tenement experience, civil war, and familial struggle. However, O’Casey’s plays are often observed by audiences from comfortable (or uncomfortable) seats in the Abbey Theatre. One could hand one’s coat into the cloakroom, enjoy a beverage pre and/or post show, and use the space between the stage and the audience to process and filter the images and dialogue in play on the stage. By staging World End’s Lane in the exact location in which a brothel thrived almost a century ago, ANU intervenes not only in inner-city Dublin’s local landscape but in how audiences and spectators receive and read performance, on stage and off, pushing them to consider the relationship between performance and culture in an urgent, visceral, and discomforting manner. Local children and passersby could interrupt and participate in the performances at will, and while the scenic space of The Dublin City Council Arts Office, ‘The Lab,’ may have been designed and dressed, the exterior moments of performance taking place on the streets did not undergo any major production design. Hence, the milieu of truth or sense of exposure that a spectator may realize could ring similar to Goan’s mantra regarding the Fringe dynamic of ‘we are all in this together.’ As a society, ‘we are all in this together,’ or, we should be. Poverty, prostitution, and narcotics do not randomly enter the same locales and flourish for a century. They are strategically marginalized to certain locales for the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. Society becomes habitualized in ‘not seeing’ these places and not entering them, just as major commercial enterprises and infrastructures become strategically located in alternative locales.

Productions such as World End’s Lane also intervene in the perceived ‘truth(s)’ of history. Ireland, both under the control of the British Empire and as a Republic, laid claim to strict Catholic beliefs and practices, manifest in constitutional law and government policy, education, healthcare, and social welfare. Catholic doctrine upholds the relations between man and wife as of sacred value with the family unit operating as the principle foundational structure of society. Surely, in such a Catholic country as Ireland, there would not be custom for brothels, or at the very least, not custom for the largest red-light district in early twentieth-century Europe? Yet, the evidence glaringly present on the city streets reveals that Irish society was sexually active outside of wedlock, though this perhaps entered the realm of public invisibility. Furthermore, the doctrine and dogma of Catholicism in modern Ireland was overtly visible, and thus, naturalized and normalized, masking the violence and devastation such sexual and religious politics engendered and facilitating the geographical politics that informed the daily life, business and experience of the Monto.

However, while World End’s Lane offers a way to interrogate this recent theatrical culture of exploring notions of ‘truth,’ as stated at the beginning of this essay, truth is a philosophical ideal. This theatre and milieu of truth reflects a shift in influences informing the making of theatre and performance. The work of ANU, among many other companies and artists, is embroiled in this climate of immersive and politicized theatre and performance which delves directly into historical and contemporary lived experience, questioning the relationships between people, place, and politics. In this way, perhaps, these performance makers are filling a void left by mainstream spiritual and secular leadership in recent times, whose credibility and respectability are grossly tarnished by decades of revelations of widespread corruption and abuse. While many officials rely on the rhetoric of post-Celtic Tiger futures to skip past the multitude of political, economic, religious and socio-cultural crises of recent times, Ireland’s artists are jumping into this hotbed of fear, anxiety, and discovery. By attracting established and new audiences to their work, previously naturalized and managed patterns of visibility and invisibility are being disrupted. With ANU’s delicately crafted ‘moments of communion’⁶⁶ (Lowe) informing encounters between performers, place and spectators/participants, one is facilitated to look, and see, these staged and unstaged truths of Dublin city, past and present.

The current increase in immersive theatre and performance, site-specific theatre and performance, and verbatim theatre and performance so widespread in recent DFF programmes requires further critical attention. These forms of theatre and performance often result in under-critiqued affective experiences for audiences/-spectators/participants. As James Thompson argues in Performance Affects (2009), ‘[b]y failing to recognize affect – bodily responses, sensations and aesthetic pleasure – much of the power of performance can be missed’ (7). Thompson outlines his theorization of performance affects, maintaining that ‘[p]erformance affects are, therefore, the sensory responses to both social and artistic processes’ (8). In relation to the work of many of the companies and artists premiered by the Fringe, Thompson’s consideration of the ideological and political role performance affect plays in reception is key to this analysis, as it promotes what I call a ‘post-performance efficacy’⁶⁷ that continues to gather momentum following the end of the performance. Moreover, it may potentially provoke a transformative energy and agency amongst those who experience such ‘moments of communion.’ As Thompson outlines:

It [the book] examines how the encounters between people in performance processes can become the site of felt individual responsibility and a moment through which universal claims to right or good can be made. Relationships created through an intense interpersonal encounter are presented as a vital place through which political commitment can be generated, and also through which politics retrieves its necessary ethical dimension. (10)

My argument does not intend to suggest that radical and immersive performances such as World End’s Lane stem from motives within ANU Productions to provoke social or political change or that this or other productions maintain the capacity to incite such individual or collective responses. Rather, by considering the potential impact of a site-specific production embedded with intense personal and political encounters such as may result from ANU’s focus on ‘moments of communion,’ where the present and past experience of the locale intertwine, there exists the potential for knowledge production and sensory reactions which can and do set the path for a personal reaction of discontent, frustration and resistance. As Thompson suggests, ‘[i]n a world of inequality, social injustice and endemic violence, they [forms of aesthetic expression] could be acts of resistance and redistribution, made in an intimate and sensory key’ (11). By asking ‘[…] which show are we part of’ (30), one may acknowledge that the performance encompasses not only the staged encounters, but the wider social and political performances which have informed this site and the surrounding community who live there, as well as far-removed communities who do not. These productions, indeed, include performances of social geography and urban planning, where the politics of staging (in terms of social geography) have been managed by various directors for over a century. The staging is reliant on the action in the Monto not spilling over its designated scenic space, away from its designated audience. ANU Productions, and the Fringe, disrupt these boundaries of performance, politics, space and society, as histories are excavated and presented by the city to the city.

Conclusion

Theatre, in some respects, resembles a market […] an exchange of all kinds of cultural goods and products goes on between theatre and other spheres of social life – other institutions, cultural performances, art forms, and elements of everyday life. (Fischer-Lichte 1)

Yes, the theatre resembles a marketplace – a bustling arena of passersby which facilitates the exchange of stories. These stories may have been sourced from history, literary and theatrical canons, cultural traditions, politics, religion, social concerns, psychological patterns, national and local interest or any other narrative, trope or event. These stories may be told in a style that one can easily relate to the outside world, or performed in such a way that an audience experiences distance and disorientation. Yet the classical consideration of theatre,⁶⁸ as a designated building or place for staging plays, cannot function as a fully competent term for the recent stories staged at DFF; these productions took place in venues, institutions, and streets throughout Dublin that were not always places strictly aligned with the presentation of plays. Whether drawn from local myth, inherited from times past, or imported from the furthest corners of the earth, these stories are imbued with the creative telling and retelling of human imagination and experience. They do not tell a ‘truth,’ or ‘truths’; no artwork can. They are, however, particularly at the present moment, stimulating regional and national dialogue regarding events of false testimony from hegemonic civic and religious institutions, through staging encounters which critically question the performance of stories which claim to represent ‘reality,’ ‘history’ and ‘society.’ From engagement with these Fringe events, exchanges may occur between people whereby ‘stories, rituals, ideas, concepts, perceptive modes, conventions, rules, techniques, actions, behavioural patterns, objects’ (1) circulate to and fro. Fischer-Lichte concludes that these exchanges ‘change the sphere they enter – sometimes slightly, sometimes considerably. And sometimes, in passing, they even change the sphere they leave behind’ (1).

The Dublin Fringe Festival continues to pave the way for emerging, innovative and transdisciplinary arts events which engage with the city and its residents, visitors, and passing trade. Under Goan’s directorship, it has not only survived, but grown, throughout the ‘bailout’ (naturally, I employ this term with heavy irony, as it implies ‘help’), multiple austerity budgets, a change in national leadership (and a disappointing lack of change in national politics), and a multitude of international, national, and regional crises and conflicts resulting in the assassination of community and civic structures and supports. Companies and artists emerging from the Fringe are instigating a paradigm shift in the forms of theatre and performance making in contemporary Ireland, challenging their audiences to participate physically, politically, and personally in their performances; these performances participate physically ‘on the streets,’ and politically and personally in the histories and tensions of Irish society. The idea of ‘a Theatre of Truth’ reflects the mood behind the paradigm shift, not the expectations for any potential outcome of ‘truth.’ The work of the many artists and companies nurtured and premiered at DFF has honed increased attention on the site of performance, the script or testimony being performed, and the creation of diverse encounters between performers and audiences/spectators/participants. Essentially, this theatrical culture is disrupting traditional and tired ways of seeing, and thus, assumed ways of producing knowledge and meaning, thereby pushing for radical interventions in sensory and intellectual reactions of sight and interpretation, analysis and reaction. Perhaps then, this ‘Theatre of Truth’ will be followed by new questions, new conversations and new interventions, on stage and off. Indeed, the 2013 Dublin Fringe Festival Call for Applications declares:

In 2013 the Dublin Fringe Festival will further endeavour to reveal new truths about Dublin city; its landscape, its citizens, its past, future and present preoccupations. The festival will serve as a meeting point between brave and talented artists and an adventurous audience willing to take risks and looking to be inspired. (‘Fringe Submissions’)

Works Cited

Dublin Fringe Festival. ‘About Us.’ Dublin Fringe Festival. N.d. Web. 2 August 2012.

---. ‘Fringe Submissions.’ Dublin Fringe Festival. N.d. Web. 5 August 2013.

Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The Show and the Gaze of Theatre: A European Perspective. Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1997. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1998. Print.

Goan, Róise. Personal Interview. 11 June 2013.

Haughton, Miriam. ‘From Laundries to Labour Camps.’ Modern Drama, 57:1 (2014), 65-93. Print.

---. ‘Mirror Mirror on the Wall.’ Masculinity and Irish Popular Culture: Tiger’s Tales. Ed. Conn Holohan and Tony Tracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 142-158. Print.

Harvie, Jen. Theatre and the City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print.

Hughes, Declan. ‘Who the Hell Do We Still Think We Are’ in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre. Ed. Eamonn Jordan. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2000. 8-15. Print.

Kershaw, Baz. The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention. London: Routledge, 1992. Print.

Lowe, Louise. Personal Interview. 15 May 2012.

O’Toole, Fintan. ‘Introduction.’ Martin McDonagh Plays: 1. London: Bloomsbury, 2003. Print.

Oxford English Dictionary. ‘Theatre.’ Oxford English Dictionary Online. n.d. Web. 25 April 2012.

Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.

‘The Futures of Irish Theatre.’ Madden-Rooney Public Debate. Peacock Theatre. Dublin, Ireland. 21 June 2012.

Thompson, James. Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009. Print.

Wallace, Arminta. ‘Arts Sector Raised 306.8m in Tax Revenues Last Year.’ The Irish Times. 17 November 2011. Web. 26 April 2012.

‘World End’s Lane.’ ANU Productions. Wordpress, n.d. Web. 5 Aug 2013

Extract From: This essay was previously titled ‘A Theatre of Truth? Negotiating Place, Politics and Policy in the Dublin Fringe’ and is taken from Devised Performance in Irish Theatre: Histories and Contemporary Practice, eds. Charlotte McIvor and Siobhán O’Gorman, 2015

Cross Reference: Festivals and Audiences

See Also: Interactions: Dublin Theatre Festival 1957-2007, edited by Nicholas Grene and Patrick Lonergan with Lilian Chambers