International Bar

Three Men Talking About Things They Kinda Know Aboutis not a play but a spoken-word performance, in which three writers – Colm Keegan, Kalle Ryan and Stephen James Smith – use the format of a slam-poetry session to document their real-life experiences of fathers, fatherhood and falling in love.

On a small stage hung with photographs, each of the men brings their own energy, tone and distinct poetic style to the composite structure – aggression, resignation, romance. Their overlapping narratives reveal a modern Irish masculinity in crisis, one struggling for definition against a legacy of betrayal and grief. Between turns, the performers sit at the side of the stage, and their slumped postures and downward-turned heads reveal a vulnerability which is as moving as anything confessed in their poems.

Runs until Saturday

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