Dublin Theatre Festival

People celebrating the independence of Ireland on O’Connell bridge before midnight on Easter Sunday, April 17th, 1949. Photograph: Larry Burrows/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

The Party to End All Parties: There is a lot going on in one-and-a-half smallish packages

Dublin Theatre Festival review: Summoning the despair of an urban space in the time of Covid

Looking for América review: Memory tells a different kind of truth

Looking for América review: Memory tells a different kind of truth

Federico Julián González’s effortlessly engaging solo performance is personal but also has deep political resonance

The Great Hunger review: ambitiously staged, with scenes of rare beauty

The Great Hunger review: ambitiously staged, with scenes of rare beauty

The setting at IMMA – the scope of sky and the breadth of landscape – brings to life a new theatrical version of Kavanagh’s poem

To be a Machine review: Experimental format well-suited to play’s core theme

To be a Machine review: Experimental format well-suited to play’s core theme

Self-conscious experiments complement the exploration of transhumanism

Óró…: This immersive production is a feast for the senses

Óró…: This immersive production is a feast for the senses

Galway 2020 production defies categories, incorporating music, dance and theatre

‘This image of a man tarred and feathered, driving a train out of rage, just haunted me’

‘This image of a man tarred and feathered, driving a train out of rage, just haunted me’

Deirdre Kinahan on her site-specific play about the 1920 munitions strike

A Thousand Ways – A Phone Call review: An experience for two strangers

A Thousand Ways – A Phone Call review: An experience for two strangers

Dublin Theatre Festival: Audience members meet through a guided phone call about their lives

Experience O’Connell Bridge: A Focal point for revolution and change

Experience O’Connell Bridge: A Focal point for revolution and change

The Party To End All Parties is an interactive piece created against the backdrop of Covid-19

Irish National Opera returning to stage after summer of shifting sands

Irish National Opera returning to stage after summer of shifting sands

Pandemic forced young company to revamp plans and find ways of performing online

Dublin Theatre Festival 2019

Sopro: Tiago Rodrigues has created a gentle portrait of one theatre, built in nostalgic moments

Sopro review: Memoir of an invisible woman

Dublin Theatre Festival: The backstage view becomes a way of seeing the world in Tiago Rodrigues’ elegant piece of metatheatre

The Haircut!: Thommas Kane Byrne (centre) with Berginald Rash, Nicola Ciccarelli and Lioba Petrie. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

The Haircut! review: King Labhraidh Loingseach gets a makeover

Dublin Theatre Festival: This perfectly paced production for ages eight and up retells the Irish folk tale for a new audience

Collection of Lovers: Raquel André gives not so much a performance of love as a parody of it

Collection of Lovers review: Can’t a woman can’t take a bath with a stranger any more without them getting the wrong idea?

Dublin Theatre Festival: Raquel André has, to date, gathered together 245 strangers to manufacture and document the illusion of intimacy. Where will it all end?

Removed: as Adam, Conor O’Donnell shows the importance of programming challenging work in community spaces

Removed review: Children on the edge, told with integrity and grit

Dublin Theatre Festival: Fionnuala Kennedy’s play stays true to the experiences of young people in care

Real Magic: canned laughter, tense music, ticking clock. Photograph: Hugo Glendinning

Real Magic review: A ludicrous Groundhog Day gameshow

Dublin Theatre Festival: This never-ending gameshow is bleak, painful, playful and sometimes funny

Us/Them: Gytha Parmentier and Roman Van Houtven give impeccable performances in Carly Wijs’s production

Us/Them review: A story for children that no child should ever have to hear

Dublin Theatre Festival: Bronks stages a powerful, politically charged account of the Beslan massacre

Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation: that Tim Crouch compares his fictive strategies to the darkest manipulations of politics seems bleakly grandiose. Photograph: Mihaela Bodlovic

Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation review: A read-along adventure to apocalypse

Dublin Theatre Festival: Tim Crouch’s new play compares playwrights to cult leaders and dictators. Are we all on the same page?

Your Words in My Mouth: the show makes us not just consider but also represent a distant stranger’s perspectives

Your Words in My Mouth review: What’s not to love?

Dublin Theatre Festival: Turning watchers into performers, this unusual show finds a subtle route into theatre’s fundamental aims

Pike St: Nilaja Sun portrays life in a New York tenement. Photograph: Teresa Castracane

Pike St review: A storm threatens Manhattan – and a family

Dublin Theatre Festival: Nilaja Sun plays three generations of characters with ease

A Love Like That: the play is filled with allusions to myth and legend. Photograph: Brendan Foreman

A Love Like That review: Wistful drama teeming with myth and legend

Dublin Theatre Festival: Billy Roche’s new play turns modest characters into legends in their own lifetimes

Walking to Jerusalem: a fascinating story which highlights a worthy cause. Photograph: Mark Kensett

Walking to Jerusalem review: A personal and political one-man travelogue

Dublin Theatre Festival: Justin Butcher serves as an energetic guide along the Roman roads out of Europe

Travis Alabanza calls the oppression and violence that trans people face ‘terrifying’. Anti-trans hate crimes are on the rise and suicide rates in the community are shockingly high

One man hurled a transphobic slur and a burger. Nobody did anything

Anti-trans violence: ‘This is a matter of life and death,’ says Travis Alabanza, whose one-person show Burgerz tackles the issue head-on

$Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster: Nicola Gunn’s performance evokes a fractured society. Photograph: Maria Baranova$ Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster review: Poirot, Maeterlinck and a stoned duck

Dublin Theatre Festival: Nicola Gunn brings ceaseless motion to a restless meditation

Faultline: this immersive performance is thrillingly immediate. Photograph: Pat Redmond

Faultline review: Immersive journey through a societal upheaval

Dublin Theatre Festival: This absorbing new work remembers a faultline in the early days of Irish gay rights

Hecuba: a compelling staging of the Greek myth. Photograph: Ste Murray

Hecuba review: Perspective and psychology brought to an ancient tale

Dublin Theatre Festival: In Marina Carr’s version of Hecuba, the scale of tragedy is made rivetingly intimate

Pasolini’s Salò Redubbed: it aims for the jugular but comes across as self-indulgent. Photograph: Luca Truffarelli

Pasolini’s Salò Redubbed review: Aims for greatness but falls significantly short

Dublin Theatre Festival: Despite the talented ensemble, neat staging and challenging concept, this production appears unconsidered

Mám: Ellie Poirier-Dolan and Kirk Patrick in Teac Damsa’s new dance production. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

Mám review: Stirring, sensuous showcase of the physical form

Dublin Theatre Festival: Michael Keegan-Dolan’s new dance production is 90 minutes of ritualised ecstasy

Using chalk and string, the actors reconstruct the school gymnasium as though they are playing a demented game of hopscotch or Double Dutch.

Carly Wijs: ‘You can’t turn away from the horror. You keep watching’

Brussels-based playwright hopes Us/Them about Beslan siege will enlighten children

The Alternative: who will save Ireland, on the eve of an in or out referendum? Photograph: Publicis Dublin

The Alternative review: Sly thought experiment which unpicks threads of history

Dublin Theatre Festival: In Fishamble’s new production, all of Ireland remains in the UK and now faces a referendum on whether to stay

How to Win Against History: Historical research, speculation and fantasy. Photograph: Damien Frost

How to Win Against History review: Glittery musical cabaret full of energy and irony

Dublin Theatre Festival: A celebration of theatrical conventions that reclaims the hidden history of a cross-dressing aristocrat

Last Orders at the Dockside: the music ranges from Irish ballads to 1980s socialist anthems. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

Last Orders at the Dockside review: Celebration of a way of life no longer with us

Dublin Theatre Festival: Dermot Bolger’s social drama offers a window into history, but may struggle with contemporary audiences

The Bluffer’s Guide to Suburbia: a piece of sensory, stimulating theatre. Photograph: Colm Hogan

The Bluffer’s Guide to Suburbia review: Returning emigrant dissects his home in sprawling style

Dublin Theatre Festival: Ray Scannell’s ambitious musical drama is performed with aplomb but lacks focus

Mary Merritt’s baby was taken from her to be adopted. This picture shows the only time she held her baby daughter

Magdalene survivor: ‘I was raped by a priest. I want to tell my story. It is with me always’

Mary Merritt still wakes up crying at night and is now telling her story in You Can Leave at Any Time

Eloïse Stevenson as Pegeen Mike and Michael Shea as Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World. Photograph: Mark Stedman

The Playboy of the Western World review: A freshly unsettling journey

Dublin Theatre Festival: It seems like a game that has spun out of control, where murder can be applauded if it is told well enough

The Beacon: Jane Brennan plays a fascinatingly severe visual artist, Beiv. Photograph: Robbie Jack

The Beacon review: Absorbing, intelligent and grimly funny

Fascinated with ideas of art and ambiguity, Nancy Harris’s play sees long hidden secrets dredged up

Beckett’s Room: no performers in this Dead Centre and Gate Theatre co-production. Photograph: Kyle Tunney

Beckett’s Room review: A play with no performers and plenty of magic

Dublin Theatre Festival: Dead Centre’s ambitious new work depicts Beckett’s formative years in Nazi-occupied Paris

Oonagh Murphy: ‘I grew up doing musical theatre so I’m not allergic in the same way that other people are’

Oonagh Murphy: On My Culture Radar

The director on Aisling Bea, the renewed relevance of Cabaret, and the joys of a Dyson fan

Dublin Theatre Festival: How to Win Against History

Dublin Theatre Festival gets its history on

Whether it’s looking back or casting forward, this year’s event is rooted firmly in the now

Playwright Nancy Harris: Her new play The Beacon opens at the Gate Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw/The Irish Times

Nancy Harris: ‘Plays are kind of cool now’

With two new plays opening simultaneously in Dublin and London, the playwright lays bare both a family and a political drama, full of art and ambiguity

Aislín McGuckin

Aislín McGuckin: On My Culture Radar

The actor on Azurmendi in Bilbao, Mark Ruffalo’s talent, and sources of inspiration

Writers and co-directors Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd

The play with no performers: Beckett’s Room is something between a conjuring act and a weird dream

As the world that made Samuel Beckett who he was becomes magically apparent, the point of Dead Centre’s unusual approach begins to makes sense

Marina Carr: ‘There’s a whole world of women’s work that isn’t being seen’

The playwright comes full circle with the Irish premiere of Hecuba at Project Arts Centre

Director of the Dublin Theatre Festival Willie White: ‘It is getting more and more difficult to make art in the city. . . There are fewer theatres in Dublin than 20 years ago, studios are closing and clubnights are disappearing. Photograph: Dave Meehan/The Irish Times

Theatre festival director calls for diverse, creative city, and more venues

New Playboy, bunch of world premieres lined up for this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival

From the archive

Willie White, director of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Photograph: Dave Meehan/The Irish Times

Who is Dublin for? Who do we want to share it with?

Peter Crawley

Dublin Theatre Festival director Willie White on Arts Council rows and Ireland’s cultural deficits

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Macnas, whose parades are a core part of their work, receive this year’s special tribute award. Photograph: Brian Arthur

Irish Theatre Awards Find out who won this year, plus all our other coverage

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