I've been in and out of the Dublin Fringe Festival this weekend. Friday night I saw a horrendous production that insultingly called itself a play. I wouldn't patronize such an empty ego-driven smattering of non-existent content again if someone payed me €50 to pretend to find it legitimate. I did talk to some interesting people before and after the show. Met a Polish guy named Igor who is living on the dole in Ireland. I talked with a German film student after him. Finally I met one of the extras in the play and talked about Ireland and the like. Great guy.
That aside, I had a great day in Dublin yesterday. Again I was at the Fringe Festival; this time the location was the Absolut Fringe Center, a church on Smock Alley in Temple Bar that they turned into a lobby with two adjacent performance spaces. (Nothing makes a Pittsburgh actor/South Sider happier than a church transformed into a something else creative. It's how some of the most unique spaces in Pittsburgh got their origin.) I saw a dance piece called "12 Minute Dances" that was nice. I enjoyed it.
BUT!
Later on that night I saw an ABSOLUTELY FAN-TASTC and BRILLIANT play called "This Is Not A Drill." I walked into the space, the basement of this church, some chair lying on the actors' space and ready-made stadium seating for the audience, two projectors flanking the upstage limits. I fell in love with the space, and then the play started and I only got happier from there. It's a post-apocalyptic social commentary featuring four neutrally-dressed actors playing multiple unnamed roles. The themes were the familiar anti-materialism, pro-skepticism, Thoreuian modernist mantras, but the way they presented them was brilliant. They had these two projector screens that they assumedly experimented with a while back ans showed the end results of their experience in the show. Had the script been weaker, the projectors would have been clever at best, but since they played so soundly into the themes, their playtime was extraordinary. I'm going to go back again. I sat in the back corner, so when I was the only person to shoot up for a standing ovation at the end nobody saw me or was able to follow my standing, but next time I'll be front and center.
I went on a "walk" (hike) with Martin, one of the teachers, and three of his friends this morning. We went to the Wicklow Mountains. We left the car, crossed a stream, ad headed directly UP. After this we turned ad headed directly DOWN. So I sent this morning doing some mountain hiking I haven't seen the likes of since Philmont.
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