Dublin Gay Theatre Festival : Queerguru's Top Picks of Must Sees

The International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival returns to the stage (and bar) for its 19^th year from May 2-15 with the best of LGBTQ+ artists from Ireland and abroad. This year’s festival offers a total of 23 productions, 4 free readings, and other events in venues throughout Central Dublin, including The Teacher’s Club, Players Theatre Trinity, The Ireland Institute/The Pearse Centre, Street 66 bar, and Pennylane Bar.

The festival was founded in 2004 in order to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Dublin-born Oscar Wilde in his native city and to encourage and develop concepts of gay theatre. The image of Oscar Wilde was first used as the official festival logo in 2006 and remains so today.

The ambition of the Festival remains the same as it works to create a welcoming and inclusive place for all LGBTQ+ artists, so they can showcase their work over two weeks filled with solidarity and celebration. Their commitment is to keep the Festival accessible, so they have decided to maintain their ticket prices at pre-Covid levels. Moreover, free events will be featured in the program, including seminars, play readings as Gaeilge (in Irish), and new Irish dramas.

Here are Queerguru’s own picks of MUST SEE EVENTS @ THE FEST:

A double-bill of free play-readings to open this year’s Festival. HALF OF NOTHING plus PORN! where A and B make adult content together. The money is quite good. Their relationship is not.

Brother’s Keeper is about courageous survival. This is William’s journey, from aged ten years to middle age. Like many LGBTQ+ youths, he suffers brutal abuse in school just because he is ‘different’. Brother James, his priest, takes a “special” interest in William. What damage is done when a priest sexually abuses boys? How do predators justify this? Some victims survive. Others perish.

333, In 1981 several bathhouses in Toronto were brutally and violently raided in one of the largest mass arrests in Canadian history called “Operation Soap”. The resulting protests, rallies and demonstrations have been credited with launching the Pride movement in Canada. Room 333, in a bathhouse, is the setting to retell these historical events through the eyes of three fictional characters caught up in these raids.

TAKE DESIRE AWAY The queer sensibility of A.E.Housman, in his own words.

Mansel David revives his acclaimed show about A.E.Housman, the classics scholar whose self-published 1896 poem cycle ‘A Shropshire Lad’ became a publishing phenomenon and connected deeply with thousands of young men.
David brings a clear, queer eye to Housman’s words – his wistful poems and very funny letters – and discovers the yearning and passion burning beneath them.

THE REAL BLACK SWANN: CONFESSIONS OF AMERICA’S FIRST BLACK DRAG QUEEN Les Kurdendall presents the true story of William Dorsey Swann, a former slave who became the Queen of Drag in Washington DC in the late 1800’s. Swann fought racism and homophobia and was one of the first LGBTQIA activists in the US. Swann’s bravery paved the way for members of the gay community today .
This is a historical trip, prompted by a contemporary medical experience, that you don’t want to miss.

Four short LGBTQ+ plays coming from Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Madame Executrix
Natalie has one job after her brother’s death – give away his beloved possessions according to his will. But Natalie has better ideas. Will her brother be able to stop her from the afterlife Written by Doug Asher-Best | Directed by Margaret Van Sant | Starring: Tommy Walsh, Joe MacDougall and Ellen Rubenstein

Look What You Made Me Do Grace and Brenda have everything going for them – great jobs, a beautiful apartment in Manhattan, and enough red-hot passion to make the snow melt. But can their marriage survive a pandemic?
Written and Directed by Lynda Sturner | Starring: Tia Scalcione and Vanessa Rose

The Black Eye
When an aging gay man asks a street-wise kid if he needs a lift home, is he prepared to go where the dangerous young man is about to take him?Written and Directed by Jim Dalglish | Starring: Joe MacDougall and Tommy Walsh

Pulse Everyone who loves Isabelle knows exactly how she should deal with life after Pulse – her mother, her father, her friend, and her nurse. Everyone except for Isabelle herself. Written and Directed by Margaret Van Sant | Starring: Vanessa Rose, Tommy Walsh, Tia Scalcione, and Joe MacDougall

5 Irish language mini-plays under development by playwrights from the queer Irish-language arts collective AerachAiteachGaelach. It was founded by Ciara Ní É and Eoin Mc Evoy in the Abbey Theatre in 2020 and has over 60 members who represent a wide variety of art forms – playwrights, writers, musicians, drag performers and visual artists. AerachAiteachGaelach provides development opportunities, a support network and an audience for our artists to encourage them to continue working through the medium of Irish.
Read more about us at www.aerachaiteachgaelach.net and come find out what our playwrights have been cooking up!