Celebrating Stoker by Interrupting the Ordinary

Macnas return to Dublin for the Bram Stoker Festival and the scale of the performance is epic. 

You'd think it was an ordinary day in Dublin: mellowing outside a Temple Bar café, elaborate coffee in hand. Then a pale fellow donning a crimson overcoat, with more than a smidgen of blood dripping from his mouth, thoughtfully says hello with a flash of his fangs.

An agent of Dracula perhaps? Or maybe Jo Mangan, theatre director of The Performance Corporation and artistic leader of the Bram Stoker Festival. Sending these vampiric figures (Anthony Kinahan and Camille Ross, sticking their charismatically deformed necks out) to scour the streets is one of Mangan's methods to engage the wider city, which is surely a challenge. The broad programme of events including a fancy-dress Shapeshifters Ball at IMMA, a VampWire zip-line in Wolfe Tone Square, and a range of readings and lectures seems intent to draw blood from that figurative stone.

City of Culture to Increase Visitors to Limerick but is it Engaging with Theatre in its Locality?

Production image of Tom MacIntyre's What Happened Bridgie Cleary by Bottom Dog - one of several Limerick-based theatre companies who could benefit from inclusion in Limerick City of Culture

In July 2012 Jimmy Deenihan, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, introduced the National City of Culture initiative, wherein a designated city will host arts events all year round in hopes of increasing visitors to the locality as well having a long-term effect on the development of arts in the area.

Hosting duties were given to Limerick, a decision which couldn't have been more timely. It's been a difficult year for theatre companies in the city as the closing of the Belltable Arts Centre dealt a serious blow to the city's artistic infrastructure. When the government delivered the budget last month they announced €6m to go into Limerick for City of Culture. But from the reveal of the programme on Monday it was obvious that almost all of that money is going towards importing artists from outside the area. There's no doubt that the initiative will draw visitors to Limerick but it risks severely missing the opportunity to generate audiences and resources for the companies who will be working in the city after this ceremonial year is over.