Tent faces final curtain

Loved by audiences and performers for its intimacy, an amazing string of shows is planned for Spiegeltent's last appearance at the Fringe Festival, says ANNA CAREY

THERE’S SOMETHING slightly magical about a travelling theatre. One minute there’s an ordinary park and the next, as if from nowhere, a mysterious playhouse appears. The travelling theatre appeals to both our sense of wonder and our Enid-Blyton-fuelled fantasies of running away with the circus.

So it’s not surprising that the Spiegeltent, the ornate travelling showcase for all sorts of theatrical and musical performers, has proven so popular with audiences in this country since it made its Irish debut at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2003. Since then, Spiegeltents have won over festival audiences in Cork as well as Dublin, hosting performances from the likes of rock legend Nick Cave to chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan. But if you want to experience the delights of the Spiegeltent, you’d better move fast. This year’s Absolut Dublin Fringe Festival will be the Spiegeltent’s last trip to Dublin.

“It’s time to move on,” says festival director Róise Goan. “The Fringe is always about what’s new and what’s next. This is our sixth year of presenting the Spiegeltent – we were the first to bring the tent to Ireland, but since then other events have brought it over too. We feel that’s brilliant, but we need to shake it up, so it’s time for us to think of the next exciting experience in terms of live music and late-night entertainment.”

Although relatively new to Ireland, Spiegeltents (the name means “mirror tent”) have been around for a long time. They originated in the Flemish region of Belgium around the turn of the 20th century and moved from town to town, serving as mobile dance halls. Their circular shape and discreet booths created a sense of intimacy that lent the tents a reputation for debauchery that persists to this day.

“The Flemish nickname for the Spiegeltents translates roughly as ‘tickle garden’,” says Brett Haylock, producer of the hugely successful La Clique, an outrageous variety show originally created for the Edinburgh Spiegeltent in 2003. “People danced and then retired to the booths. These tents existed for the working class, and they were places with a slightly edgy and seedy reputation.”

Only about seven of the original Spiegeltents survive, including the Famous Spiegeltent, where Marlene Dietrich performed Falling in Love Again in the 1930s. After the second World War, the tents fell from favour. Their stained glass, velvet canopies and chandeliers were replaced by low ceilings and bright lights, and many became mobile discos, travelling around provincial Europe. But in the 1990s, thanks to Australian producer David Bates, who brought the Famous Spiegeltent to the Edinburgh Fringe in 1996, the tents began to enjoy a new lease of life as arts venues. Since then, more Spiegeltents have been built.

Unsurprisingly, performers love playing in a Spiegeltent. Camille O’Sullivan, who has played in Spiegeltents all over the world, remembers her first encounter in 2003: “I fell in love with it straight away. It’s a genuinely magical venue. I’m pretty emotional anyway, but I felt almost tearful when I first entered the tent. I want to buy one and live in it – I’d have a bath right in the middle.”

O’Sullivan, a former architect, even put together a balsa model of the tent to understand how it was made. “I can’t believe I did that, but I’m really in love with the Spiegeltent. And it’s a fascinating structure – there are no screws, the parts dovetail together.” She particularly loves the tents’ sense of history. “You can feel the ghosts of wonderful performers who were in the space in the past. I love knowing that someone has gone before you.”

None of the original vintage Spiegeltents have made it to Dublin yet, but Haylock says the new ones are just as magical. “Although the tents don’t have ghosts that travel with the old ones, they are beautiful structures made with great attention to detail. Actually, they’re often better suited to live shows. They’ve got better sight lines than old tents and, most importantly for festivals, they retain that intimacy while being slightly bigger to accommodate festival crowds.”

And those crowds can be surprisingly large – the Dublin Spiegeltent can fit up to 1,000. But the tents always feel like, as O’Sullivan puts it, “a little living room in the middle of the city that people can just walk into”.

Both O’Sullivan and Haylock agree that the tents create a special relationship between the performers and their audiences. “When La Cirque was created for the tent five years ago, audiences responded to how real it was,” says Haylock. “You can see every bead of sweat. It’s a perfect space for cabaret.”

“You’re constantly making eye contact with the audience,” says O’Sullivan. “You learn to put a lot of subtlety in your performance. I think people become more open emotionally in such a beautiful place.

Thanks to the charm of the venue, the audience are especially willing to be pleased. “When people come for the first time they’re so excited – it’s like visiting the circus for the first time,” says O’Sullivan.

The tents also allow the audience to interact with each other. “They’re doing what Spiegeltent audiences have done for almost 100 years,” explains Haylock. “The booths are the perfect environment to meet new people. And in the round space, it’s difficult to sit through a show and not make eye contact and connect with other people. I’ve seen things happen in the corner of dark booths I never thought I’d see.”

For Dublin, however, the era of the Spiegeltent is coming to an end. But it will say farewell with an amazing string of shows at George’s Dock in the IFSC, including performances by old favourites O’Sullivan and La Clique and newcomers such as music and art collective Synth Eastwood. Róise Goan is particularly excited about the debut Irish performance of Nico Muhly, a 20-year-old contemporary classical music composer who has worked with everyone from Philip Glass to Björk.