The Dublin Fringe Festival is a 16-day and night, citywide, event. Unique as a festival, the Dublin Fringe Festival offers works from various disciplines, including music and theatre. It is a fun-filled, action-packed event with a little of everything – it is the Japanese meal of the festival form.

Hosted every year in Dublin city, the Dublin Fringe Festival is always a much-anticipated event; its schedule is always packed with the latest shows from the contemporary arts and music scenes; and much, much more.

The event is spread throughout various Dublin city venues, from car parks and theatres to warehouses, art galleries, and schools. Every year in the month of September, Dublin city is hijacked by the Fringe festival. Barely any area of the city is left vacant, with shows and events springing up across the capital. Audience participation is always encouraged; the Dublin Fringe Festival is a truly interactive event.

With both home grown and international artists showcasing their talents across the diversification of venues, there will definitely be something to satisfy even the most obscure of tastes. The Fringe festival is known in the industry for its avant-garde attitude, challenging the everyday and subverting norms. Autumn is an excellent time to visit Ireland, with its gentle temperament and winds that have been warmed up by the summer months. To get the most out of your trip, book your car hire in Dublin airport and take to the streets of Dublin during the Dublin Fringe Festival, a truly exciting time in Dublin’s calendar.

So, what can you expect to see exactly? Be prepared for snakes, hoopla, contortionists, lions and other exotic animals, music and theatre productions …, expect the unexpected! Each year of the Fringe is unique, visitors never know what will happen next, but one thing is for sure, it will be exhilarating, edgy, contemporary, and most of all FUN!

De Valera was a leader of Ireland’s struggle for independence from the Britain, and the anti-Treaty. He opposed Michael Collins in the ensuing Irish Civil War (1922–1923), but was defeated. In 1926, he founded Fianna Fáil, and became prime minister (1932-48, 1951-54, and and 1957-58). His political creed evolved from militant republicanism to a social and cultural conservatism that reflected his pious Catholicism. As Bew (2007) concludes, in the Constitution of 1937 he was “trying to placate left-wing Republicans with national phrases and pious people with expressly Catholic bits” and “patriarchal Catholicism.”

Keeping the peace with Britain, De Valera used military tribunals and the newly created Army Volunteer Reserve to thwart efforts of both the Irish Republican Army and the Army Comrades Association during the 1930s.

Assessments of De Valera’s career have varied; he has often been characterized as a stern, unbending, devious, and divisive Irish politician. Biographer Tim Pat Coogan sees his time in power as being characterised by economic and cultural stagnation, while Diarmaid Ferriter argues that the stereotype of De Valera as an austere, cold and even backward figure was largely manufactured in the 1960s and is misguided.

Abraham “Bram” Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.

Before writing Dracula, Stoker spent several years researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires. Dracula is an epistolary novel, written as a collection of realistic, but completely fictional, diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship’s logs, and newspaper clippings, all of which added a level of detailed realism to his story, a skill he developed as a newspaper writer. At the time of its publication, it was considered a “straightforward horror novel” based on imaginary creations of supernatural life. “It gave form to a universal fantasy . . . and became a part of popular culture.”

Gráinne Ní Mháille

It is difficult to pin point Grace’s exact birth and death but she was thought to have been born around 1530 and died in approximately 1603. Grace O’Malley or Gráinne Ní Mháille (was also known as Granuaile, Gráinne Mhaol, Gráinne Ui Mháille, Gráinne Umhaill, Grany O’Maly, Grany Imallye, Granny Nye Male, Grany O’Mayle, Granie ny Maille, Granny ni Maille, Grany O’Mally, Grayn Ny Mayle, Grane ne Male, Grainy O’Maly, and Granee O’Maillieor sometimes even “O’Mealey” is an important figure in Irish folklore, and a historical figure in 1600 Irish history. O’Malley is sometimes known as “The Sea Queen Of Connaught”.

Gráinne Ní Mháille was born in Ireland around 1530, when Henry VIII was King of England and (at least in name) Lord of Ireland. Under the policies of the English government at the time, the semi-autonomous Irish princes and lords were left mostly to their own devices. However this was to change over the course of her life as the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland gathered pace.

She was the daughter of Eoghan Dubhdara Ó Máille, chieftain of the Ó Máille clan and a direct descendant of its epynom, Maille mac Conall. The Ó Máilles controlled most of what is now the barony of Murrisk in South-West County Mayo and recognized as their nominal overlords the Gaelicized Anglo-Norman Burke or de Burgo family who controlled much of what is now that county. Her mother, Margaret, was also a Ní Mháille. In the Irish language surnames have a feminine and a masculine form. Ní Mháille is the femine form corresponding to the masculine form Ó Máille. Although she was the only child of Dubhdara and his wife, Gráinne Ní Mháille had a half-brother, called Dónal na Piopa (Donal of the Pipes), who was the son of her father.

Unusual among the Irish nobility of the time, the Ó Máilles were a seafaring family and taxed all those who fished off their coasts, which included fishermen from as far away as England. Their leader bore the ancient Irish title of “An Ó Máille” (“The O’Malley”, or “The O’Mealey” – as the name is also anglicised).

According to Irish legend, as a young girl Ní Mháille wished to go on a trading expedition to Spain with her father, and on being told she could not because her long hair would catch in the ship’s ropes, she cut off most of her hair to embarrass her father into taking her, thus earning her the nickname “Gráinne Mhaol” (Irish pronunciation: [ˈɡrɑːnʲə veːl]; from maol bald or having cropped hair). The name stuck, and was usually anglicised as Granuaile.

As a child she most likely lived at her family’s residence of Belclare and Clare Island, but she may have been fostered to another family since fosterage was traditional among Irish nobility at the time.

Ní Mháille was probably formally educated, since she is believed to have spoken in Latin with Queen Elizabeth I at their historic meeting in 1593. Because of her extensive travels and trade, she may have spoken some English, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic, and French as well.

Even as a young woman Gráinne Ní Mháille was involved in the business of sailing ships and international trade. She probably learned the business from her father, Eoghan “Dubhdara” Ó Máille, who plied a busy international shipping trade. It is known that she always wanted to join his fleets, but he always refused. Bunowen Castle, where she lived with her first husband, Dónal an-Chogaidh O’Flaherty, was situated on the most western point in Connacht, and was apparently the first base for her shipping and trade activities. By the time of Donal’s death in the early 1560s, she commanded the loyalty of so many O’Flaherty men that many of them left the area when she did, and followed her to Clare Island in Clew Bay, where she moved her headquarters.

Michael (“Mick”) Collins (Irish: Mícheál Ó Coileáin; 16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922) was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance and MP for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919, Director of Intelligence for the IRA, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Subsequently he was both Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army.[1] Throughout this time, at least as of 1919, he was also President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He was shot and killed in August 1922, during the Irish Civil War.

Although most Irish political parties recognise his contribution to the foundation of the modern Irish state, supporters of Fine Gael hold his memory in particular esteem, regarding him as their movement’s founding father, through his link to their precursor Cumann na nGaedhael.

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish writer and poet, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Along with Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and others, Joyce was a key figure in the development of the modernist novel. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922). Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

Though most of Joyce’s adult life was spent in continental Europe, his fictional universe does not extend much beyond Dublin and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the real streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete. His parents were successful Dublin intellectuals, and from an early age he was tutored at home, where he showed his intelligence, becoming fluent in French and German. He attended boarding school for six years, then matriculated to university at seventeen years of age. Reading Greats, Wilde proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Trinity College, Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. After university, Wilde moved around trying his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems and toured America lecturing extensively on aestheticism. He then returned to London, where he worked prolifically as a journalist for four years. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde was one of the most well-known personalities of his day. He next produced a series of dialogues and essays that developed his ideas about the supremacy of art. However, it was his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray – still widely read – that brought him more lasting recognition. He became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London with a series of social satires which continue to be performed, especially his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest.

At the height of his fame and success, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall in a sensational series of trials. He sued his lover’s father for libel, though the case was dropped at trial. After two subsequent trials, Wilde was imprisoned for two years’ hard labour, having been convicted of “gross indecency” with other men. In prison he wrote De Profundis, a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long, terse poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.