Dublin Theatre Festival Sets 2015 Programme

This year's Dublin Theatre Festival programme will stage 28 world-class productions, spanning 22 different stages across Dublin city and suburbs. 11 new Irish works will premiere over 18 days alongside acclaimed productions from France, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, the UK and Denmark.

Acknowledged as one of the world's great theatre festivals, the outstanding programme for 2015 includes:

• A 25th anniversary production of Brian Friel's masterpiece, Dancing At Lughnasa directed by Annabelle Comyn

• Fishamble's new drama-documentary about how Ireland fell into the jaws of the Troika. Bailed Out! by Colin Murphy interrogates the bank bail out.

• Rough Magic Theatre Company's new musical The Train about the notorious contraceptive train, set in 1970s Ireland. Featuring music by Bill Whelan and lyrics by Arthur Riordan.

• Wayne Jordan directs a 19-strong cast in his new version of Sophocles' Oedipus at the Abbey Theatre.

• Marking the centenary of Arthur Miller's birth, the Gate Theatre presents a new production of his play A View from the Bridge, directed by Joe Dowling.

• OBIE Award-winners Dead Centre follow the success of LIPPY with the premiere of their new work, Chekhov's First Play.

• Conor McPherson's award-winning play The Night Alive opens the festival in a new co-production with the Lyric Theatre Belfast. A stellar cast includes Adrian Dunbar, Laurence Kinlan and Ian-Lloyd Anderson.

• Enda Walsh collaborates with acclaimed Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy for The Last Hotel, a new opera from Landmark Productions and Wide Open Opera.

• THEATREclub collaborate with women who have exited prostitution to interrogate the underbelly of Irish society in The Game.

• 'Once 10 people know a poem by heart, there's nothing the KGB, the CIA or the Gestapo can do about it. It will survive.' (George Steiner). 10 audience volunteers are taught a poem "by heart" each night in By Heart by Tiago Rodrigues from Portugal.

Speaking at the launch of this, his fourth festival programme, Artistic Director Willie White said: 'Since the end of last year we have been scheduling the 28 productions in the 2015 programme, as well as the complementary events in our Festival+ season, and I believe that the 2015 festival addresses some of the most important stories at play in Ireland right now. We are also building up to celebrating the festival's 60th anniversary in 2017, preceded by the high point of the Decade of Commemorations marked by the centenary of the Easter Rising next year. Dublin is also preparing a bid for European Capital of Culture 2020. So much has changed in the city since it last had the designation in 1991 - we are more confident, more global and more diverse, but there is still a sense that the city is not everything it can be. Now we have an opportunity to think about what will make Dublin thrive into the future. There are exciting times ahead.'

BOOKING INFORMATION

22nd July - Priority booking for Friends of the Festival NOW OPEN
12th August - Box Office opens to the general public

Tickets are already on sale for the festival's opening production, The Night Alive, and for The National Theatre of Great Britain's Tony Award-winning production The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time:

Online: dublintheatrefestival.com
Phone: +353 1 677 8899
In person: Festival Box Office, 44 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

More details of the productions and booking information are below.

PRESS INFORMATION?For further information and reviewing tickets please contact
Sharon Kean on 020 7697 8453 / 07973 843133 sharon@keanlanyon.com?
Production photos available at keanlanyon.smugmug.com password: download

IRISH WORK

This year's festival programme features a wealth of Irish theatre, celebrating Ireland's excellence in play writing and showcasing the new performance styles and forms that Irish artists have adopted in response to the changing environment around them.

Conor McPherson's The Night Alive opens this year's programme at the Gaiety Theatre in a new co-production from the Lyric Theatre Belfast and Dublin Theatre Festival. The cast includes Adrian Dunbar (Line of Duty), Laurence Kinlan and Ian Lloyd-Anderson (Love/Hate).

Dancing at Lughnasa - the Lyric Theatre Belfast stages a new production at the Gaiety Theatre for one week only this October. Directed by award-winner Annabelle Comyn, the cast includes Declan Conlon, Catherine Cusack and Mary Murray.

The controversy surrounding the contraceptive train and the women's liberation movement of 1970s Ireland have inspired The Train, a new musical by Rough Magic Theatre Company, composed by Bill Whelan with lyrics by Arthur Riordan. The cast includes Lisa Lambe, Clare Barrett, Darragh Kelly and Emmet Kirwan. The production features a live band and is directed by Lynne Parker.

Winners of two OBIE Awards and the 2013 Irish Times Theatre Award for their production LIPPY, Dead Centre return to do injustice to a great playwright in Chekhov's First Play, in a multimedia theatre show with a cast including Annie Ryan, Rory Nolan and WBO Middleweight Champion of the World, Andy Lee.

The Abbey Theatre opens two world premieres during the festival dates. A new version of Sophocles' Oedipus by Wayne Jordan is performed by a 19-strong cast. On the Peacock Stage, one of Northern Ireland's finest contemporary playwrights Stacey Gregg sketches an energetic and unsentimental picture of working-class life in Belfast in Shibboleth.

The Gate Theatre marks the centenary of Arthur Miller's birth this year, with a new production of one of his seminal plays A View from the Bridge. The play, which will be directed by Joe Dowling, is complemented by a series of specially-programmed readings, interviews and discussions on Miller during the final weekend of the festival, presented in collaboration with the UCD Clinton Institute.

Enda Walsh's new opera, The Last Hotel, created in collaboration with composer Donnacha Dennehy opens at the OReilly Theatre, Belvedere, following its world premiere at the 2015 Edinburgh International Festival.

The underbelly of our day-to-day lives is exposed in the latest project by THEATREclub, The Game. This tenacious new production, created in collaboration with women who have exited prostitution, explores the act of buying sex, its rules, its language and its power structures.

Creator of Tundra, which opened the 2014 Dublin Dance Festival, Emma Martin / United Fall premiere a new work Dancehall in a co-production with Dublin Theatre Festival at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, with live music by members of Crash Ensemble.

Music and theatre collide in I'm Your Man, an intimate and poignant new show from the writer of Alice in Funderland, Phillip McMahon, and Mark Palmer, songwriter from the bandLife After Modelling.

Theatre Lovett reveal The True Story of Hansel and Gretel - a musical fable that looks at how far the boundaries of parental love can stretch, suitable for audiences aged 12+.

Writer of the enormously successful I ? Alice ? I, Amy Conroy brings her latest work Luck Just Kissed You Hello to three festival venues, Project Arts Centre, Draíocht Blanchardstown and Mermaid Arts Centre. This production by HotForTheatre and Galway International Arts Festival is a beautiful and fiercely funny play that asks what it takes to be all that is expected of you.

Pan Pan Theatre debuts Dick Walsh's play Newcastlewest under the direction of Gavin Quinn - a comedy about indeterminacy, randomness and the role of fate.

Gavin Kostick's At The Ford concludes Rise Productions' Dynasty & Destiny Trilogy. Following its multi-award-winning hits Fight Night and The Games People Play, the company once again interrogates modern Irish society through the lens of Celtic Mythology.

FESTIVAL ON TOUR

Fishamble: The New Play Company received widespread acclaim for Guaranteed!, an unswerving drama documentary about the bank guarantee by playwright and journalist Colin Murphy. In their latest collaboration with the writer, Fishamble will premiere the next chapter in the tale, Bailed Out!, charting the tale of how Ireland fell into the jaws of the Troika, at the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire.

At Draíocht, Blanchardstown, Moonfish Theatre Company's Star of the Sea, which sold out at Galway International Arts Festival 2014, is an adaptation of Joseph O'Connor's best-selling novel.

Gillian Grattan's Hooked!, starring Tina Kellegher and directed by Don Wycherley, tours to axis:Ballymun, Civic Theatre Tallaght, the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire and Draíocht, Blanchardstown.

INTERNATIONAL WORK

Dublin Theatre Festival continues to champion international work from across the globe, bringing burgeoning, thought-provoking productions of excellence to Dublin.

The National Theatre of Great Britain's seven-Olivier Award-winning and five-Tony Award-winning production The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time makes its Irish debut at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in October.

Also from the UK come Quarantine, a company renowned for exploring what makes theatre real and reality so theatrical. In Wallflower, three performers undertake the task of remembering every dance they've ever danced; the joyful, awkward and forgotten ones.

Belgian theatre collective tg STAN have built an international reputation for their lucid and beautiful interpretations of classic texts since the 1980s. They perform in Dublin for the first time with a new production in English of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard.

10 audience volunteers are taught a poem "by heart" each night in By Heart by Tiago Rodrigues from Portugal. This is a performance about how words and ideas are stowed away and smuggled in our memories, minds and hearts. 'Once 10 people know a poem by heart, there's nothing the KGB, the CIA or the Gestapo can do about it. It will survive.' (George Steiner)

FRENCH FOCUS

Corps Diplomatique, a work devised by Halory Goerger - one of the creators of 2013 festival hit Germinal - enquires what might happen if artists were left to drift in space for a few thousand years, to write a play.

Pascal Rambert stunned audiences at the Festival d'Avignon when he premiered Clôture de l'amour. Dublin Theatre Festival is proud to present this award-winning work in Ireland for the first time - a raw and intense look at a couple in the final stages of a broken relationship.

French Focus also includes two Festival+ events:

"Conference company" SuperTalk create lectures that incorporate music, film, image and sound. They will take listeners on 12,000km trans-American journey, and explore the countless ways we are wirelessly tied to the world.

In collaboration with Hard Working Class Heroes and DJ and Music Blogger Nialler9, Quoi De Neuf? is a late-night party on Saturday 3 October featuring music from Kilkenny-born multi-instrumentalist Rarely Seen Above Ground (R.S.A.G) and French producer and label owner Cosmo Vitelli, together known as Teleoke.

FAMILY SEASON AT THE ARK

The festival's ever-popular Family Season presents four beautiful and dynamic shows for children aged 3 and upwards, created by world-class theatre-makers and curated by Maria Fleming, Theatre Programmer at The Ark.

Award-winning WillFredd Theatre Company and The Ark present BEES!, a musical filled with laughter, dance, song and a chance to learn about some of the world's 20,000 different types of bee! Renowned Dutch Theatre Company Teatergroep Kwatta introduce audiences ages 6+ to Manxmouse - the strangest, bravest and most extraordinary little mouse you've ever seen. In Up to Speed, Rosalind Sydney will show viewers 8+ how being the odd one out can be fun. And our youngest theatre fans aged between 3 and 7 can follow little Elliot across countries and kingdoms on an adventure in Paper Moon from Denmark's Giacomo Ravicchio.

FESTIVAL+

The Festival+ programme complements the work the audience will see on stage, with a series of talks, critical events, exhibitions, tours and work-in-progress showcases.

In addition to SuperTalk lectures and our late-night party at The Grand Social, Quoi De Neuf?, the line-up includes "In Development" presentations by ANU Productions, The Little Museum of Dublin Director Trevor White, the Performance Corporation / Boca Del Lupo and UMCK Productions in this important festival strand which supports theatre artists in presenting their work to the public at a critical phase in its development.

Belvedere Youth Club present a rehearsed reading at Project Arts Centre - the culmination of a three-year youth and community development project led by Dublin Theatre Festival with support from The Ireland Funds. The Next Stage, a partnership with Theatre Forum, offers valuable artist development and networking opportunities to Irish and international theatre practitioners, and together with Irish Theatre Institute, the International Theatre eXchange invites international theatre presenters to Ireland to see the best of Irish theatre.

For full details of all Festival+ events visit dublintheatrefestival.com

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