A central part of our mission is to support the future of contemporary Irish-based theatre artists at every stage of their career, helping to elevate and celebrate their work.
The Futures Fund
2022 Futures Fund Donors: Kathy Gilfillan, Cinzia Hardy, Ibec, ReputationInc
2020 & 2021 Futures Programme
During the pandemic we invited theatre-makers based in Ireland to apply for awards to fund the development of new ideas for performance that responded to our contemporary moment and that navigate the challenges to presenting live work during a pandemic. This initiative gave artists and their collaborators the resources to access time, space and materials to develop ideas. Thirteen projects were chosen.
A young man called Joseph Grace is catapulted from a small farmhouse on the bogs of Meath to the grim trenches of WWI. Deirdre Kinahan's dazzling new play follows his extraordinary odyssey through the brutality of war, the sexual liberation of the Weimar Republic, the suffocating conservatism of mid-twentieth century England, and back again. From Landmark Productions.
No Woman is an Island is an investigation into the contemporary experience of solitude and isolation, asking whether in a highly connected world we can embrace solitude as being alone well.
Poguemahone by renowned author Pat McCabe tells a whirling, winding story of an Irishman in 1970’s London, and is told in the style of beat-poetry, weaving music and a vast array of characters throughout its deeply-layered narrative.
Seaside Conversations will begin with a series of multi-sensory encounters by the sea with adult disability service users in Bray, County Wicklow. Led by the participants' responses and input, Jody and Carl developed a piece of work that makes visible and articulates their experiences during the time of Covid-19.
TAKE ME SOMEWHERE is an encounter, an adventure and a quest into what touch means in our lives. It’s a story of a woman and a story of a memory. The story of how connection and touch shapes us and how we live in the world.
Co-productions premiering as part of Dublin Theatre Festival in recent years have toured Ireland and prestigious international venues and festivals, including Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Sadler’s Wells London, St. Anne’s Warehouse New York City, and Schaubühne Berlin.
“Being supported by Dublin Theatre Festival .... means being supported at the most crucial stage of the creative process: the start. To have institutional backing, and financial commitment, from the very beginning gives artists the confidence and courage to do their job. Dead Centre would not have been able to make Chekhov’s First Play without this valuable and invaluable support. Thank you!” Bush Moukarzel, Dead Centre
Bringing together the virtuoso, Irish traditional concertina player Cormac Begley, the European classical, contemporary collective, s t a r g a z e and twelve international dancers from the Teaċ Daṁsa company, MÁM was a meeting place between soloist and ensemble, classical and traditional, the local and universal.
Following the success of his acclaimed re-imagining of the world-famous ballet, Swan Lake/Loch na hEala (2016), Michael Keegan-Dolan and Teaċ Daṁsa, returned to the festival in 2019 with a new mythic yet timely production that acknowledged how life's polarities can on occasion come together and find resolution.
Co-produced by Teaċ Daṁsa, Dublin Theatre Festival, Sadler's Wells London and New Zealand Festival.
Swan Lake / Loch na hEala is the first production made by Teaċ Daṁsa, a company founded by Michael Keegan-Dolan in 2016 as a means to forge deeper connections with the traditions, language and the music of Ireland and to continue the tradition of ground-breaking productions for which Michael is reputed.
Premiered at the 2016 Dublin Theatre Festival, Swan Lake / Loch na hEala has toured the world including to Sadler’s Wells London, Stuttgart, Wellington, Sydney, Seoul, Toronto and Moscow.
It won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best production in 2017 and the 2018 UK National Dance Award for Best Modern Choreography.
During the turmoil of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Maria Chekhov, Anton’s sister, placed many of her late brother’s manuscripts and papers in a safety deposit box in Moscow. In 1921 Soviet scholars opened the box, and discovered a play.
The title page was missing. The play they found has too many characters, too many themes, too much action. All in all, it’s generally dismissed as unstageable. Like life.
Chekhov's First Play premiered in September 2015 at Samuel Beckett Centre, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival. It then went on to tour internationally including performances as part of Brisbane Festival, Australia, Alexandrinsky Theatre, St Petersburg and BAC, London.
In 2015, Dublin Theatre Festival supported Landmark Productions and Wide Open Opera with their production of The Last Hotel. This contemporary opera united two of Ireland’s most fascinating artists, one of the most thrilling writers of our generation Enda Walsh (Once, The Walworth Farce, Ballyturk), and internationally acclaimed composer Donnacha Dennehy, in a new opera about life, death, duty and guilt.
This hotly anticipated production came to Dublin following rave reviews from its premiere at the 2015 Edinburgh International Festival and then went on to thrill audiences at The Royal Opera House, London, St. Ann’s Warehouse, New York and Les Théâtres de la Ville, Luxemburg.
Waiting for Godot was named ‘the most important play of the 20th century’ by The New York Times. Beckett’s first and funniest play, it brought the writer fame and introduced his work to a worldwide audience.
In 2013, Dublin Theatre Festival co-produced a new production of Waiting for Godot with Gare St Lazare Players Ireland, the foremost interpreters of Beckett’s work.
After premiering at The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in October 2013, the show toured to The Lyric Theatre for Belfast Festival at Queens, to Boston to perform at Arts Emerson The World On Stage Series in November 2013. In 2014 the show toured to Shanghai as part of the ACT International Festival of Contemporary Theatre at Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (SDAC) and Skirball Center in New York.