Various venues, Kilkenny Aug 6-15 15-38 056-7752175 kilkennyarts.ie

You have to hand it to a festival for a city with two purpose-built proscenium arch theatres that decides to use neither of them for its theatre programme. But the thrust and inspiration of curator Tom Creed’s gathering of international and Irish work is that theatre can happen anywhere: in a pub, in somebody’s life, in an audience’s mind.

To that end, you are more likely to find yourself in a wheelchair this year than the stalls, blindfolded, bound and submitting to the Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed's extraordinary and sensory experience The Smile Off Your Face, or having your toes massaged by performance artist Adrian Howells in Foot Washing for the Soul. Both shows strike up an intimate rapport with one participant at a time, but whether they count as genuine human contact or a performance of it is a teaser that extends into Quarantine's disarming and entrancing Susan Darren, which puts a real-life mother and son onstage for something of a family party. Una McKevitt, meanwhile, revisits Victor and Gord, a documentary piece (pictured) about her sister and her one-time best friend.

Even the fictive finds familiar and real setting, with Belfast-based dance wags Ponydance working up a lather in a pub, while Bristol's Action Hero stay in the bar to create A Westernarmed only with rudimentary props and ketchup bottles. Now that sounds like theatre to me.

Can’t See That? Catch This

Vincent River Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast; Project Arts Centre, Dublin