Dublin Fringe Festival 2022: Back with its first large-scale programme since 2019, this year’s Fringe features 586 performances across 27 venuesI’m reading the Dublin Fringe Festival programme on a sunny day. It is hot pink, and brimming with thrills. There will be raging parties, unmissable art experiences, celebrations of the curious, the improbable and the self-consciously weird. Shows are both hyperlocal and far-flung.
Going for it, 2022-style, includes bringing thisispopbaby! to the party. Their calling-card show RIOT, described by one of its directors Philly McMahon as his generation’s Riverdance, first premiered at the Fringe in 2016 and soon wowed the world. Now they’re back with WAKE, which takes up residence at the National Stadium for the duration of Fringe. It promises “a howling, raucous, soul-stirring celebration of community, regeneration and the magic of collective catharsis.
“Big time,” she says. “When I talk about biggest and wildest ideas, I’m talking about artists being allowed to create in the full gesture of their vision. For some people that might not be something rowdy, it might not be something in a packed room. For a lot of artists it’s something quieter and more meditative.”
Fruits of Fringe’s Weft programme are also on show. They include a network-building programme for early-career black artists and artists of colour; Samuel Yakura’s The Perfect Immigrant; CN Smith’s Spear; and the Fringe-Festival-commissioned installation Filmore at the Teacher’s Club; and a gig at the Workman’s Club, all from Weft studio artists.