Queer production company powerhouse THISISPOPBABY will curate and produce the upcoming multi-disciplinary arts festival – Where We Live. Taking over the Project Arts Centre in Temple Bar for 11 days in March as part of the St Patrick’s Festival, Where We Live is a ferocious response to the theme of home.

Made up of red-hot theatre, exhilarating musical collaborations, rapid-response performance, playful and evocative visual art installations, THISISPOPBABY describe the festival as a “kaleidoscope of stories about what it feels like to live in Dublin and Ireland today, telling urgent stories with some of the best storytellers on the island that galvanise diverse communities and engender positive change.”

SO WHAT CAN AUDIENCES EXPECT?

• Four new and original theatre pieces commissioned specifically for Where We Live 2020.

• A series of work-in-progress showings telling stories from the margins featuring The Complex Roots Women’s Drama Group, The Line-Up Choir and more.

• An immersive exhibition from Peter Maybury curated by Eamonn Doyle, Niall Sweeney and David Donohoe

• An incendiary talks series curated by Willie White of Dublin Theatre Festival and Emma Dabiri, author, television presenter and visual sociology researcher

• A collaborative music production from Crash Ensemble and Mango x Mathman

• IMMA’s Club Chroma on Tour.

Particular stand out events include Contentious Spaces a theatre piece by Rosaleen McDonagh about a disabled woman and a young trans man taking refuge in the same bathroom. A fierce dialogue ensues about who has the right to use what bathroom, about privilege and pain, history and politics, identity and loss - about how we treat each other.

Tilt is a performance by queer choreographer, pole dancer and contemporary dancer Tara Brandel, and Nicholas Nwosu, street dancer extraordinaire. Juxtaposing their very diverse experiences, skills and ages, Nicholas and Tara play with being off-balance - using it as a metaphor for instability and change in a shifting world.

As if all that isn’t enough, in a once-in-a-lifetime pop-up art market, Tonie Walsh will sell all of his records! 40 years after his first DJ gig at legendary gay club Flikkers, Tonie is selling his vinyl collection. Thousands of 12” singles and albums (many first editions and rarities) lay bare one of the longest and much lauded DJ careers in Ireland.

From original Donna Summer singles and New Order special pressings to cult clubbing white labels and rare orchestral and jazz music, this is a record collectors’ nirvana with an extra dollop of storytelling and special guest DJ sets on the side. Accompanying the pop-up art market will be a sample of Tonie’s extensive club flyer and poster collection spanning the period 1979-2019.

THISISPOPBABY Co-Directors Jenny Jennings and Phillip McMahon share: “This year we bring together over 80 incredible artists in an even deeper investigation of the world around us today. The festival is passionate about fairness, about inclusivity and about the power of stories to provoke conversation, to foster connection, to make us pause, rethink, reframe.... and have a great night out in the process. It’s exciting to be able to bring these conversations to a national and international stage as part of the St Patrick’s Festival programme, where we collectively imagine and re-imagine what our city and country could be.”

Visit www.projectartscentre.ie for ticketing information.