When the Dublin Fringe Festival begins next weekend, almost half of the 100 or so shows will be Irish, the remarkable result of measures the festival has taken to encourage local talent. Sara Keatinglooks at some Fringe benefits
SINCE ITS FOUNDATION in 1995, the annual Dublin Fringe Festival has become a hotbed for emerging Irish talent. While it has always offered a platform for international artists to showcase their work in Ireland, over the last few years there has been an increased commitment to providing a platform for the work of new Irish companies. This year the programme features performances by 46 different Irish theatre and dance companies, with an overwhelming emphasis on new Irish writing in the shape of 25 new plays, as well as a series of rehearsed readings.
Programme director Jennifer Jennings says that the strength of this year's Irish element of the programme is more than accidental. It is a strategic part of Dublin Fringe Festival's development over the past few years, and one that both Jennings and the festival's outgoing artistic director, Wolfgang Hoffman, have been committed to fostering.
"We work as a platform for new artists," Jennings explains. "I suppose you could say we are a producing partner, giving support 'in lieu' to emerging artists - from inviting them to use office facilities to giving them a place in the festival programme to, more recently, providing workshops for developing work."
The series of workshops and advice clinics that the Fringe has invested in over the past few years, Jennings says, "have been an important part of strengthening the festival, but also of encouraging emerging artists, and it really has paid dividends. When I came in as programme director in 2006, I was very ambitious for new Irish work, and I have always thought that new work would be so much better if young artists had support and advice from established companies and infrastructures like the Fringe.
"Initially we worked with Fishamble Theatre Company and Annie Ryan to provide workshops for new writers and directors, but that workshop model has expanded to take in areas like production management, marketing, as well as an image and copy clinic, to help artists help us to make our annual brochure better. But this year we also held a pre-application workshop in February, where we shared our artistic, practical and marketing perspective, and where we took participants through the standards we expected of applications and the different methods of approach they could take. We wanted to make the act of applying a worthwhile enterprise in itself for them - to give advice that would work as a precursor for any application, really, whether the company was accepted for the Fringe or not."
One of the initiatives the Fringe hopes to develop over the next few years is to bring that new work beyond the festival. "We included a suggested provision for a touring circuit in our Arts Council application this year, where we would have a Fringe on Tour programme, made up of five or six of the most successful shows visiting different venues," Jennings explains. "It would help to give the work a life after the festival, which is crucial for them to really make their mark. But it would also help artists, because it would really take them out of their comfort zone. A Fringe audience is different to any other audience - it is a lot more generous - but experiencing other constraints will help companies to grow."
But Fringe on Tour is a venture for the future, and in the meantime the effort that Jennings and Hoffman have put into strengthening the quality of Irish applications to the Fringe is beginning to reap dividends. As Jennings puts it, it is a necessary element of the Fringe's continued success. "As a curated festival," she says, "we are a responsive festival - we can only respond to the work that is out there - so it makes sense that we invest in that work when we can and that we build relationships with emerging and rising artists. Because when it comes to programming it really pays off."
The vast amount of new Irish work in this year's programme indicates that, at least on paper, this has been a success, although it will be up to the artists to really prove it.
Below, Fringe veterans and emerging practitioners give their views on how the Fringe has fostered their work.
Love 2.0
(thisispopbaby)
For Phillip McMahon, actor, writer and producer with thisispopbaby, the Fringe has helped shape his rising career. This is his company's fourth venture in the Fringe over the past three years, and he talks about his experiences as "an accelerated learning curve". "With my first show, Danny and Chantelle," he says, "I didn't really know anything about producing theatre, let alone writing, and the Fringe was a baptism of fire. The show did really well and we won a Spirit of the Fringe Award, which was really important, because it gave us the financial support to put something new together for the next year's festival. With Danny and Chantelle our starting point had been a pub quiz, but now we had the promise of a venue and money to work with too. There is not really enough being done to encourage new Irish companies to make new work, and while there are limitations to what you can do in the Fringe - you often have to share a venue and technical staff with several other shows - it is a brilliant showcase. This year we are doing two one-act shows, which were put on as staged readings in the Abbey earlier this year; one written by me, the other by Belinda McKeon. One-act plays can very easily disappear, but the Fringe is the kind of place where work like this can find a home." ...
Love 2.0 is at the Project Cube, Sep 15-20, 6.15pm
Before Colour
(Wicked Angels)
Georgina McKevitt is an actor, writer and producer with Wicked Angels, which produced its first show, Waiting for Ikea, at last year's Fringe Festival. McKevitt says that there "is a certain comfort zone for new companies producing work at the Fringe. For me and Jacinta [Sheerin, co-creator of Waiting for Ikea], it was our first time writing anything and, to be honest, we never even thought of doing it without the support structure of the Fringe. On the one hand, you are sharing a venue and competing with 50 other shows, and there's a certain fear in that. But when you are included in their brochure that's great publicity and there's all sorts of other support, like the marketing and production workshops. You don't have any of that advice when you're producing work independently. Even the fact that we had to submit a sample script with the application, you know, that gave us the push to write the first scene, and we ended up being nominated for the New Writing Award. We wouldn't have got the profile we did without the Fringe, and we've had two runs of Waiting for Ikea since. We also had the confidence to put something together for this year, another new play, Beyond Colour. This time myself and Jacinta are taking a back seat, though. We're only producing and starring in it, instead of writing it as well this time."
Beyond Colour runs at Bewleys Café Theatre, Sep 15-20, 6.15pm
Appointment in Limbo
(Zelig Theatre)
"This is our first year at the Fringe," says Cathal, from Galway's Zelig Theatre, which is premiering a new play by Pat McCabe at the Fringe Festival this year, "although our company was born out of a similar Fringe-type festival in Galway, Project 06, which was a reaction to the lack of new work from Galway being produced at the annual Galway Arts Festival. With this production it was really important to us to open the show in Galway, but it is such a big and, in a way, prestigious project that we really wanted the energy of a festival behind it as well. A festival as big as Edinburgh would have swallowed it up, but the Fringe seemed perfect for giving us more exposure for our production than we would have had if we were producing it independently - even with a name like Pat McCabe. It can be difficult to sell new work, even when it is successful, and many new companies tend to die quite quickly after one or two shows. Festivals like Galway's Project or the Fringe help to alleviate that. The Fringe has been really helpful so far - always e-mailing us, updating us, giving workshops. They've even organised a meet-and-greet with the box office. But they aren't intrusive and we have free reign to do what we want artistically. I mean, this play is going to be controversial and, as we say on the publicity material, is bound to offend everybody, but for us that's its brilliance and the Fringe has still given us a platform for it."
Appointment in Limbo runs at Samuel Beckett Theatre, Sep 9-14, 6.40pm
Rock Paper Scissors
(Roundabout Youth Theatre)
For Louise Lowe of Roundabout Youth Theatre, the Fringe Festival has been particularly vital in the development of her work with the Ballymun-based group. "To be honest," she says, "it's not really the norm for youth theatres to take part in mainstream theatre festivals, but the Fringe has been very encouraging of our work and this is our fourth year at the festival. When we approached them in 2005 with the idea for our first show, Tumbledowntown, which was going to coincide with the festival, they were very open to including it in the programme. Then we won the Spirit of the Fringe Award, and that made a real impact, not only in giving us critical approval, but it gave us a commission worth €4,000 to develop a new project, and it was because of that support that we ended up back in the Fringe in 2006. Being in the Fringe is especially important for us as a youth theatre because it means that we have an audience beyond a normal youth theatre audience and beyond a Ballymun audience, though most of work continues to be site-specific. But it also makes us push ourselves and rise to the artistic challenge that the competition with professional theatre companies or more mainstream work brings. Rock, Paper, Scissors is out most challenging work yet, bringing together live art, installation, dance and theatre in a site-specific context. It can be difficult to find new work outside of the Fringe, so for us it is an important platform to create work with and for young people and to find an audience for that." ...
Rock, Paper, Scissors, runs at Old Ballymun Comprehensive, Sep 10-21, 7.30pm
All in the Timing
(Inis Theatre)
David Horan is something of a Fringe veteran, and this year he is bringing Inis Theatre, the company he runs with actors Iseult Golden and Carmel Stevens, to the festival for a third time. "I suppose you could say that the Fringe is a part of our company's history," he says. "There is a real buzz about town during the Fringe, and it attracts a younger, more diverse audience than you usually get at the theatre, which really complements the work we do. In fact, All in the Timing is the first piece we have done which hasn't been devised, although there are still elements of improvisation in the play that we have tapped in to. A Fringe audience is generally more willing to accept the risks that you want to take. But on a business level it makes sense too: there are more producers and venue managers around seeing shows, so it's a bit of a showcase for you, where you may find someone who wants to help your show have a longer life outside of the festival. When we did our first show at the Fringe it was very much a case that you just did your show and that was it, but it has really grown over the years and now they are hugely active in encouraging young companies - teaching them how to present themselves, organising workshops and meet-and-greets, and fostering interactions between companies which are artistic as well as practical, and that can be inspiring as well as just helpful." ...
All in the Timing runs at Bewleys Café Theatre, Sep 8-13 and 15-20, 8.30pm
The Dark Room
(Gentle Giant)
"I premiered my first play, Love in a Time of Affluence, outside the Fringe," actor-writer Neil Watkins of Gentle Giant says, "because I thought the Fringe was just too busy and I would be competing for an audience with far too many other shows. After its success, though, I managed to raise my profile, and the Fringe seemed a more viable option for me because I had a developed an audience for my work through Dublin's gay scene, and Alternative Miss Ireland and things, but I could tap in to the resources of the Fringe as well. My work isn't really mainstream [ The Dark Room is about superheroes battling the villain of HIV] and it is frustrating trying to find support when there isn't really a place for it in Irish theatre, when theatres just want to do their Shakespeares and their Oscar Wildes. But the Fringe is happy to support the more edgy, non-conservative work that might not be seen in other contexts. The support that the Fringe gives you is practical too: even just being in the brochure cuts your PR cost immediately. Plus you're pretty much guaranteed at least one review in a national newspaper, and that's another vital thing. The reviews help you to sell your show if they are positive, but even if they are negative at least that's feedback, which you don't really get as a new company at any other time of the year."
The Dark Room runs at Players Theatre, Sep 15-20, 9pm