'There's so much creativity': Cork has a cut off its first Fringe Festival

Irish Examiner

05-05-2025

Does Cork need a fringe festival? With the inaugural Cork Fringe Festival taking place a month before the Cork Midsummer Festival (CMF), its directors, Daniel Cremin and Ineke Lavers believe there is a gap in the festival market for emerging developmental work that may not be ready for something like the CMF.
'It's an opportunity for artists to workshop new projects in a low risk environment and potentially, to maybe bring it to the CMF,' says Cremin. He describes himself as a magician, a performer and producer, having started playing with magic at the age of four. He now does 'psychological magic' in theatre-based shows.
Lavers is an arts producer working from Cork and Abu Dhabi. Locally, she has worked with the likes of CMF, the Cork Opera House and the Cork Theatre Collective. The two directors met while they were doing a masters in arts management and creative producing at UCC, in collaboration with Cork Opera House.
'There is so much creativity in Cork; so many groups of artists but they're all quite isolated from each other. The theatre people stay with each other, the music people stay with musicians. We feel there is huge potential for cross collaboration within the arts,' says Lavers.
Cremin adds that some Cork artists bring their performances to the Dublin Fringe Festival. 'They should be able to perform in Cork.'
When the call went out for acts to apply to the Cork Fringe Festival, Cremin and Lavers received 120 applications when they were only expecting about 40 expressions of interest. They have whittled down the applicants and over the three days of the festival, there will be 20 events across ten venues.
Fourteen of the events are produced by Cremin and Lavers. The other six events are produced by people that already stage events in the city and wish to do something specifically for the festival.
The Cork Fringe Festival is funded through ticket sales, private donations and sponsors. 'The Everyman [one of the venues for the festival] is a partner, helping us in terms of putting together budgets and making sure we have all our contracts in place.
Also, last August we went to the World Fringe Congress in Stockholm. There are over 300 fringe festivals around the world and every two years, people from them meet up in a different city for a week. We got to make really good connections and learned a lot about how to put together a fringe festival. We have a really good relationship with the Reykjavik Fringe Festival.'
Cremin admits that developing a fringe festival can be overwhelming when it hasn't been done before. 'The main challenge is that there are only two of us. I guess the biggest challenge we faced at the beginning was having to say 'no' to artists,' he says.
The artists will be paid from ticket sales with a 70/30 split. 'The 30% goes on organising the tech and marketing for the shows. Ineke and myself are working voluntarily this year. The hope is that next year through our Arts Council application, there will be a producers' fee included in that budget. We're operating on a minimal budget.
This year, it's really about getting the festival on its feet and having a proof of concept. The festival has a capability for about 1,700 people but we don't need to reach that audience figure to be able to sustain it.'
The festival is using both traditional spaces such as the Everyman, the Granary Theatre and the TDC (Theatre Development Centre) at the Triskel. Unconventional spaces include the Marina Market as well as art galleries, the Laneway and the Lavit, which will be the site of unusual events.
At the Laneway Gallery on Shandon Street, there will be an interactive game of 'trace the dot'. When a canvas is initially installed, it will be blank. As visitors trace a dot, an underlying image will slowly reveal itself.
There will be a double bill at the Everyman, as well as another show in the Everyman bar. At the Granary Theatre, a story about identity and road kill takes place, in a show entitled A Xerox of a Deer.
There's traditional fare at Forde's Bar near South Gate Bridge in an event called The 3 B's. Beamish, bodice and ballads will be on offer. 'By the end of the night, you'll feel like a true Corkonian,' they promise.
The Cork Fringe Festival takes place from May 9-11. See www.corkfringe.com.