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30,000 spectators will see nearly 500 artists and
performers acting, singing, dancing, talking, and doing God knows what else, for 16 days, and we’re going to guide you through the programme, let you know what’s unmissable for your tastes, and hopefully direct you to a few things you wouldn’t otherwise have looked twice at. Celebrating its 30th birthday this year, the Fringe has gone big, with comedy, cabaret, club nights, and pretty much anything else that counts as live performance. The Dublin Fringe is always a special time, as parts of the city sparkle with the buzz of live performances, fulfilled dreams, and the introspection that powerful theatre and performance can provoke. On that stretch from the Fringe office on Sycamore Street to Smock Alley on Exchange Street Lower, past the Project Arts Centre and the New Theatre, there won’t be a night in late September where you don’t experience that electricity that can make city living so special, as audiences and performers flit from pub to theatre to pub. Dublin has had a tough few years, as anyone reading this will know all too well, but this makes it even more important to celebrate and share in the unique transcendence, beauty, diversity, and inclusion that makes live performance worthwhile. The Fringe promises to bring audiences the extraordinary, and this of course means different things to different people. It can be a confrontation with a harsh truth, or a brief interlude of joy and freedom from the mundane, or worse, of everyday life. This embracing of diversity is plain in the programming, with shows focusing on broad themes including race, technology, identity, housing, art, and global affairs. For Festival Director David Francis Moore, there are a number of throughlines in this year’s programme, that interact and overlap throughout: “Healthcare, human rights and personal agency; the complexity of individual identity and societal expectations; tradition; sexual exploration, liberation, and relationships are some of the key ideas that recur across the programme. And a big, big theme is queer resistance, reclamation, and revelry; there’s a lot of work that’s been created and produced by artists from the queer community that speaks to the lived reality of being queer in Ireland today”. This is evident from a quick glance through the bright pink programme, with cabaret and drag throughout, including SexyTadhg’s Television (Project Arts Centre, 1-8, 11-13 September) and Who Robbed Annie Queeries? (11-12, 14 September) from Play Not Funny: Sasha Shame & GoblinsGoblinsGoblins. In 30 years the Fringe has come along way, from 40 shows in 1995, when it was founded under the banner of the Dubin Theatre Festival. Moore is passionate in evoking the heritage and status of the Fringe, pointing out that playwrights Conor McPherson and Enda Walsh were produced in its early years, and that companies such as Pan Pan, the Corn Exchange, Loose Canon, and CoisCéím have all worked with and been 14