Festival Club Blog!

If you haven’t been at the Festival club then you are missing out! 11 nights into the Festival and the antics and fun have been spilling over from the theatres and into the Odessa Club, the official Festival club. Located in the city centre, in close proximity to all the venues, the Odessa has opened the doors to our participating artists and companies, festival staff, volunteers and our patrons and supporters. Open Sunday to Thursday until 12.30pm and late nights on Friday and Saturday, the Odessa has been home to informal chit chat about all that is happening in the Festival. Whether you are performing on stage, backstage or watching what is happening on stage, the Odessa is the perfect place to continue your Festival fun.

We kicked off our dancing shoes over the opening weekend with our first company night on Saturday, Many of our hard working artists arrived to let their hair down and dance the night away. With the music pumping, we had the boys from Black Watch showing off their Scottish reels, Coisceim showing people why they are one of our top dance companies and everyone throwing shapes and moves late into the night. Sunday was a more subdued affair as we toasted goodbye to the hard working and talented cast and crew of ‘Gatz’ and ‘England’ and ‘Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’.

The festivities carried on through the week, with our Friends of the Festival on Monday, eager to meet one another and discuss all they had seen over opening weekend and to compare notes about what they had left to see. On Wednesday we had another company night which meant more dancing and late night madness! This past weekend brought our busiest nights so far, with the majority of companies in town, either with shows up and running or preparing to kick off for this week.

So, if you have not made it to the Odessa yet, be sure not to miss out this week! I expect that we will be busy again so arrive early in the night to guarantee entry and to be part of the unofficial theatrics of the festival that only occur after hours and behind the closed doors of the Odessa!

Sarah Baxter
Festival Club Host

Festival Events!

Finally the festival has begun! Opening night was a huge success. Dodgems a co-production between Coiscéim and the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival in the O’Reilly Theatre was packed to the rafters. Once the show came down, to rapturous applause, guests happily made their way down to the Hugh Lane Gallery where the opening of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival was celebrated in style in the beautiful surroundings of the gallery.

Now that the festival is truly underway we are very busy making sure that our Friends of the Festival and Sponsors are enjoying the festival as much as we are! On Monday we had our informal friends’ night in the Odessa Club, which was a very enjoyable night. As always it was great to catch up with the Friends of the Festival, both old and new! There was much animated chatter about festival highlights. Those who caught Gatz at the weekend were mesmerised and those with tickets to The Year of Magical Thinking were eagerly looking forward to the performance.

We’re also busy organising corporate entertainment for our Sponsors and Corporate Friends at the moment. The Westbury Hotel, Balzac and The Shelbourne Hotel are among the prestigious venues for our various corporate entertainment evenings over the course of the festival. DAA and Ulster Bank both had very enjoyable nights at The Year of Magical Thinking earlier this week at the Gaiety Theatre.

The first of our Corporate Friends Nights is taking place tonight and all those going are thrilled about the prospect of seeing Vanessa Redgrave. Those who would prefer something a little lighter are holding off until next Tuesday when we will be hosting our second night at The Cripple of Inishmaan in the Olympia Theatre. Either way both nights are guaranteed to be very enjoyable and a great way to entertain!

With still well over a week of the festival left there is lots of activity still to come in the Development Department!


Gemma Duke
Development Manager

Director's Update!

And suddenly it’s September. But no panic! Things are in good shape. Very good shape if you use our crudest measure of success – box office takings! Sales are currently up almost 50%, even on last year’s record takings. This is very reassuring indeed, particularly in ‘the current financial climate’.

Nevertheless, I’m struck by what a crude measure box-office takings are, and how we tend to reduce a festival’s success to the level of growth in ticket sales. I was interested to read the press coverage following the recent resignation of the Director of the Edinburgh Fringe – one of the indicators cited being the fact that box office takings fell for the first time in many years. Booking issues aside (the Fringe changed Box Office systems this year with disastrous consequences), many people agree that the Edinburgh Fringe is already a victim of its own success and its huge sprawling programme could do with some judicious pruning and a lot more focus. This on-going need to announce epoch defining box office records year on year, might not be in the artistic interests of many festivals. Or, as Carrie Bradshaw might say, when it comes to festivals is size the only thing that matters?

And yet we’re obviously delighted that the programme is selling so well. My annual obsession with daily (ok, hourly) booking trends continues unabated this year. I’m delighted to see some of my favourite productions selling consistently well - Black Watch, Waves, Gatz, That Night Follows Day, While We Were Holding it Together and England. It looks like they will all sell out pretty soon, joining a list of sold-out (or almost sold-out shows) including The Year of Magical Thinking, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Caligula, First Love and Heart of Darkness.

And in other news, we’re delighted to announce that 17 artists have been chosen for The Next Stage artist development initiative. The chosen artists are here . These artists will see 18 productions over the course of the Festival and will participate in a series of workshops and talks with visiting artists over the entire 18 days of the Festival. With 66 applications, the selection was particularly difficult this year. The final participant, the Fringe Wild Card, will be announced as part of the Fringe Awards ceremony. The Fringe started on Saturday 6th (check out Wolfgang’s Hoffman’s last wonderful programme on www.fringefest.com) - so stay festival fit as there’s a lot of theatre to come over the next five weeks!

Loughlin Deegan
Artistic Director

Festival Box Office Opens its Doors!

It’s already been over a week since opening our doors here at the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival and tickets are selling out fast. Our Box Office has been taking bookings over the internet, by fax and email and in person for some of our amazing shows such as Black Watch, The Cripple of Inishmaan and Metamorphosis. There were queues down the street on our opening day and this year has been undoubtedly the busiest in the fifty one years of the Festival!

The Festival Box Office in Temple Bar has been inundated with bookings for The Year of Magical Thinking starring Vanessa Redgrave. This show is almost sold out, so if you haven’t booked your tickets already, then pop on down to us on 44 East Essex Street or give us a call on 01 677 88 99. Alternatively you can visit our website at to read all about our wonderful shows that we have on offer this year. Each show has something truly special, offering the very best of international theatre.

If you’re looking for somewhere to take the family when the weather is bad, then why not go and catch a performance of The Magic Flute at the Gaiety Theatre. This particular performance is an exciting one for the festival as the performers singing talents were developed through church choir groups, and using African and contemporary instruments. It is definitely for people of all ages. Dodgems, an Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival co-production with Coiscéim, who are one of Ireland’s leading dance companies, is promising to be an exciting and innovative production, set on a real bumper track, it will sweep you into an exotic world. Don’t miss out on your chance to purchase tickets, it promises to be a carnival theatrical extravaganza!

Michelle Cleary & Fiona Leamy

Festival Box Office

And we're off!

It’s already a week since we’ve launched, hard to believe we’re at this stage already! After our press launch with some of the cast from the amazing Dodgems in Merrion Square, we launched in style in the very funky Science Gallery - wine and canapés for all! The programme hot off the presses, was unveiled and our campaign “feel” came into its own. This year, feeling is the new thinking where we explore how theatre affects us all emotionally and how the Festival can touch every one of us is such different ways. After all the months of planning there are no more secrets!

This year we have a bumper Festival topping the amount of performances from last year to 286 altogether. A busy 18 days it will be! 27 shows from 12 countries in 16 venues, we will be pushing out the boundaries like never before, presenting performances in unusual spaces like apartments and art galleries, adding new thematic strands to the Festival shows, and a special events section bursting with more panel discussions, initiatives and performance than you can shake a stick at! Not to mention that Vanessa Redgrave is coming to town and that we have secured the biggest show in the world at the moment - Black Watch is one not to miss!

Take a look at the website, soak it all in, plan like you've never planned before. Box Office opens August 20 but if you want the best seats in the house, you can book now and become our Friend

Shauna Lyons

Acting Marketing Manager
Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival | September 25 – October 12

2008 Festival - so close you can almost smell it!

Time is staring to run away on us as we race to the Festival programme launch at the end of the month. How did it come to time of the year so quickly? The Festival offices are bursting with energy as they fill to the brim with new Box Office, Production, Admin and Marketing staff.

The brochure is being put to print, website redesigned, and box office installed. Not to mention the finishing touches to a programme which this year is so eclectic it almost escapes definition. Our Artistic Director Loughlin Deegan has been travelling extensively over the last 12 months in order to secure a programme of the highest calibre. After the success of the 50th anniversary programme last year, we didnt think 2007 could ever be beaten in its quality, scope and diversity - well it has! Two weeks today, we can finally tell the world when we launch in Dublin's funkiest venue...watch this space or sign up for email updates to get the news first!


Now, back to work!



Shauna Lyons
Marketing Manager


Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival

Sept 25 - Oct 12 2008
http://www.dublintheatrefestival.com/

Post Festival Blues...

It’s all over. The fat old lady has sung! At our rap party in The Cobalt Café on Sunday night the wonderful Young@Heart Chorus gave us their disco set including three Irish numbers they’d rehearsed just for us – Dirty Old Town, Teenage Kicks and a particularly salty version of An Poc ar Buile. We partied until late and woke up with a hang-over and a gnawing sense of anxiety – weren’t we supposed to be somewhere, hosting a reception, welcoming a delegation, opening a show?… nope… it’s all over. The old ladies and gents are on a bus to Ennis, Kretakor are on a plane to Budapest, and the hundreds of international artists whom we’d befriended for oh-so -brief a time have returned home. How we will miss them all.

I’ve heard a lot about the down that follows the Festival high, but I was having none of it. I had paced myself fine, got as much sleep as I could and knew what to expect. But oh no, come Monday morning I could hardly speak. I had a tightening in my chest and I lacked the will to live. But why the depression when things had gone so well? We had surpassed even our own ambitious box office targets (taking over €1 million at the box office for the first time in the Festival’s history), presented over 33 productions, almost all of which were warmly welcomed by audiences and critics, and we had achieved our overall goal of dramatically increasing the impact of the Festival on the city. Why so glum?

The received wisdom is that it’s to do with the adrenaline that courses through your body at Festival time. The only way to get through the madness and continue to function at such a hectic pace is to push your body and mind further that it naturally wants to go. Your system responds by declaring a state of emergency, and when the emergency passes, your system crashes. Nothing to be done about it. I said in an earlier blog that festivals are a drug and we’re their junkies – and as with all drugs, you must eventually come back down to earth with a bump.
So now we must find the motivation to begin the clean-up. Numbers to be crunched, loose ends to be tied off. And then it’s holidays for me before I begin the rounds of my travels again in search of next year’s programme. First up is a trip to the Festival D’Automme in Paris, followed by Speilart in Munich, then the Impulse Festival of experimental German work, and a national Israeli showcase in Tel Aviv. No rest for the addicted. Forever chasing that high that we crave so much. See you in October 2008 then, when we’ll be recklessly soaring skywards once more!

Loughlin Deegan
Artistic Director / CEO