This year's Dublin Fringe Festival announced its line-up last night, concentrating its 116 shows into 16 days in September.
Director Wolfgang Hoffman, having cut its ties with the Dublin Theatre Festival last year, has now reduced the length of the festival from three weeks last year to two weeks, including weekends at each end, in order to make it "more sustainable, more a festival than a season, and keep the buzz going".
Despite having five fewer days, the number of productions has only slightly reduced, and Hoffman said more artists were involved.
The festival, now sponsored by Magnet Entertainment, has a big focus on outdoor and free entertainment this year, starting with a spectacular fire installation around George's Dock and over the Liffey on September 9th and 10th, to open the festival.
A co-commission between the fringe and the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, it involves lots of fire, 400 lights and 3,000 candles, and is described by Hoffman as a "poetic spectacle".
Other original performances include the Vending Machine Project, where people can slot a coin into a vending machine in the city for one of 600 original works of art.
The Lantern Project will see 150 custom-designed lanterns winding between Ha'penny Bridge and George's Dock along the Liffey boardwalk.
Other unusual venues for fringe shows include traffic lights, commuters' car, the pub, the dentist, the Liffey and a shopping centre.
Los Gemolos Lombard, the high-energy hip-hop and tap-dancing identical twins from Argentina, performed at the launch last night, which was in the unusual setting of the Camden DeLuxe Hotel Pool Lounge.
Irish companies at the fringe this year include Barabbas, Fabulous Beast Dance Company, Rex Levitates, Performance Corporation and Landmark Productions.
• More information is available from the festival website www.fringefest.com or by phoning 1850- 374643.
Festival's line-up
• The bigger (800 standing; 500 seated) Spiegeltent at George's Dock this year has two shows a night, including Young Blood Brass Band, Meteor winner Laura Izibor, FourTet's Kieron Hebden and Steve Reid.
• US company SaBooge Theatre returns with Every Day Above Ground, an adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's collected works of Billy the Kid.
• Part musical theatre, part drag show, part multimedia installation, Oz: A Fairytale Plot by DoppleGäng promises sumptuous costumes, surreal sets, big shiny production numbers and a gender-bending cast.
• Following last year's controversial The Bull at the DTF, Fabulous Beast Dance Company present The Flowerbed, based loosely on Romeo and Juliet, directed by Michael Keegan-Dolan and fresh from the Barbican.
• Participating artists are from Argentina, Canada, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, France, Brazil, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Lagos, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain and the UK.
• The Fringe this year includes shows in Dundrum, Ballymun and Dún Laoghaire.
