This year's Dublin Fringe Festival takes some risks, but only in the right places, director Wolfgang Hoffmann tells Belinda McKeon

It was hardly as if Wolfgang Hoffmann had a window in his schedule last summer, when the job of directing the Dublin Fringe Festival came up for grabs. As artistic director, choreographer and performer with the acclaimed German theatre company Fabrik, he was in the middle of a frantically busy international tour, travelling from Sydney to Edinburgh, from Canada to Singapore, from San Francisco to Eastern Europe with his Pandoro 88, a piece of dance theatre partly inspired by Brian Keenan's memoir. An Evil Cradling.

The decision to hit the road with the production had been prompted by a decline in funding in the company's native city of Potsdam - "mad spot spelt backwards," as Hoffmann wryly describes it - and had been a successful one; premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe, it proved a huge hit, and the offers from venues worldwide came pouring in. Funding was no longer a problem; the venues covered the costs.

For Hoffmann, who founded the company as a 22-year-old in 1990 when the Berlin Wall came down, the experience was rewarding in more ways than one."The whole point with touring was that we didn't want to rely on funding any more," he explains. "And to try to make money with the work we created. And after years of going from one project to the next, and always having your hands out for funding . . . " He shrugs. Clearly, this touring success was a relief.

So, coming to Dublin to take over a sprawling festival deeply reliant for its existence on funding from the Arts Council and the City Council: the next logical step? "No," grins Hoffmann. "Actually, we had a great thing going in Potsdam."

What, then, pushed Hoffmann to post that job application - the first, incredibly, of his 15-year career in the arts? His Wexford-born wife, Fionnuala, becoming pregnant with their first child (Noah, now 13 months) was part of it, he says. "I was on tour so much that I thought, I need to create work where I am more stationary. But it hasn't quite worked out like that. I tried to create a job where I would direct more, but then the directing work also involves you going away somewhere."

So what was the clincher? "Vallejo e-mailed me," he says, referring to Vallejo Gantner, his predecessor at the Fringe. "And he said, this job is going. I read it, and I went, ah no, not really. It felt a bit too much like starting over. And there was this feeling about the quantity of the work, that I wouldn't be able to put as much attention into the work as I'd like to do."

The Fringe Festival is certainly multi-faceted, and in its 2004 manifestation represented a gathering of theatre, music, dance and visual art that threatened to overwhelm even the most seasoned of festival-goers. But Gantner knew he was the man for the job, and knew the tactic that would make him reconsider. "He wrote an e-mail back, and it just said, 'ah, go on'," says Hoffmann, beaming openly. "It made me laugh. 'Ah, go on.' It made me consider, and I put my CV together, and . . . " He shrugs. A few short months later, the Hoffmann three were packing their things for Dublin.

Quite apart from the culture-shock of coming to live in this city - he still practically pales as he talks about the horror of the cost of living here - the change of career tack which the Fringe job represented was a dramatic one. But he's accustomed to radical change. Before the wall fell, he worked as a toolmaker in East Germany, albeit one with a secret desire to become a dancer.

"I suppose the fascination with dance had to do with the censorship at the time," he says. "Not only that, but it had to do with a more holistic view of life, where you needed to engage not only with your intellect, but with your whole self, basically. But also, in terms of making art in the theatre, there was a duty to tick certain boxes; to make pieces that were about the great Russian Revolution or the development of the working class, or whatever. And in dance, you could escape this."

Unsurprisingly, given his expertise in the area, the dance strand of this year's Fringe programme looks particularly rich, peopled by heavyweight visitors from Canada, Portugal, Israel, Austria and the US, among other impressive-looking Irish and international companies. A collaboration between Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, and the contemporary dance artist Cindy Cummings, as well as a piece which will see the Samuel Beckett turned into a swimming pool (Earthfall UK's At Swim Two Boys, inspired by the Jamie O'Neill novel) and pieces of dance merging the virtual and the physical from Cie Laroque (Austria) and Bridgman/Packer (US) are among the most promising offerings.

But what Hoffmann is truly excited about is Rumble, produced by the German company Renegade Theater, which mixes Romeo and Juliet with breakdancing. "It's a great blast of energy," he says. "The movement is jawdropping, it's a simple story, done without words. And because it's so universal, there's no fear of it not being understood."

The argument about the accessibility of dance and physical theatre is one with which Hoffmann is wearily familiar, but he has a frank solution - mix accessibility with high quality in some shows, tip the hat to the highbrow in others. These forms are never going to be hugely popular, he points out, but that's no reason why they shouldn't reach the audiences that exist for them.

In the dance section, as in every section of the programme, Hoffmann adds a note and a set of recommendations by way of an introduction. It's a personal touch, and one which works well; along with a considerable trim on the number of productions from last year, it does much to rein in the vastness and scope of the programme.

In the theatre section, Hoffmann draws attention to the work of international companies in particular, mentioning the Indian storytelling performer Salim Ghouse, Exile, the Swedish company Teater Slava's take on Greek tragedy, and the Norwegian company Jo Stromgren.

There is plenty of attractive international work in here - El Conquistador, the tale of a Bogotan doorman, The Timekeepers, an Israeli company's story of gay love in a concentration camp, and new work from the Romanian company Green Hours, whose productions were, for many, the hit of last year's Fringe. Bedrock, Calypso, Rough Magic and Semper Fi are among the Irish companies producing work, along with several new and younger companies and individuals presenting in venues across the city. It's a seductive mix, but one that seems less risky, less of a gamble, than in previous years. At least with the international work, he explains, this is no surprise.

"My heart sank when I saw the box office figures for last year," he admits. "Mainly because I thought my expertise was in bringing international work of importance, international work that hasn't been seen here at all, or well enough.And when I saw the attendance to shows last year that were from Iran or Romania, I thought, how can I convince anyone to come here with work, when that's the prospect?" Audience figures for international work last year, he says, were shockingly low.

"And so with the international programme, the thinking was different than with the Irish one. The Irish work is mostly created specially for the Fringe, so we are going by reading applications of scripts, and trying to find out if the idea is something that would work . . . there is a certain amount of risk involved, making decisions on the background of the performer. But in terms of the international work, I didn't want to take any risks. So we basically have invited only proven work. Which I know to be good."

Will that be enough to draw the audiences in? He sighs briefly. "First of all, I think the work needs to be good, in order to convince people. You can have all kinds of magic tricks, but if the shows are not actually living up toit, then it won't work. So the main thing is to get good work here, and then trust that some part of it will sell itself."

Working with a limited marketing budget has presented a challenge to this hope, he admits. But one simple act should make the process of communicating to audiences a lot easier. This year's programme is much clearer, much more to the point, and frankly much more readable than was last year's collection of nods and winks. Arriving in November of last year, more than a month after the festival had ended, Hoffmann was somewhat bewildered by the descriptions of productions of which he attempted to get a mental picture, and this year he has made changes accordingly.

"I felt that last year's strategy was like, take a risk, and I don't feel that people are so much into risk-taking," he explains. "You know, this idea of 'take a risk, buy a ticket, it's cheap, it might be good'."

But doesn't the elimination of the risk factor eliminate also the essence of Fringe? No, says Hoffmann; it's not the elimination of risk on the production side that he's talking about, merely the elimination of the risk that the audience will lose interest even before they get to the end of the programme.

"You have to have information about what you're choosing. And that's what we have tried to change. That if you take your time to read the programme, you'll find something you can engage with and that matters to you. And then hopefully, that entertains you, moves you, pleases you."

Hoffmann has made other changes - there's a more conscious focus on productions for younger audiences, in a separate Young Fringe strand, and a commitment to a greater impact of the festival on the streets as well as in the by-now-familiar Spiegeltent, so that the city might become aware that it is actually hosting a Fringe.

He has also brought the timing of the festival forward, so that it starts on September 12th and runs for three weeks, only overlapping with the Dublin Theatre Festival for its last weekend.

Hoffmann has ambitions, unrealised for this year's festival but in the pipeline for the next, to set up firmer partnerships between Irish and international companies so that the experience of coming here for the latter group might be a more memorable and productive one.

Hoffmann has made his changes. But he's no complainer. Personable and light-hearted, he reserves his most baffled expressions for himself, and for the predicament in which he finds himself, having taken on this mammoth task with such "hopeless optimism".

His wife and son live in Cork, where he visits whenever he can between sleep-defying bursts of preparation for the festival, and the company he founded dances on and beyond its "mad spot" in Germany.

Slowly, surely, Hoffmann is learning the code for a life in the Irish arts.

"I thought at first, I can't function like this. You make a commitment with someone, and two months later they don't remember . . . I thought, why don't Irish people mean what they say? I found it hard to understand, being German and literal, that when people say they will come along to something, it is only a figure of speech." He smiles, with another baffled shrug. "I start to understand the way it seems to work . . . that you have to have this kind of period of being checked out, of being only a visitor, of someone who will soon be gone. It's kind of a learning curve. But I always feel it's going to get easier once people get to know you, and trust you."

That, or he could take the quicker route, and become just as flaky as everyone else? Hoffmann laughs; it's a delighted laugh, but a disbelieving one. Not just yet, it seems to say. Not when there's a Fringe to be launched, a programme to be seen through to the end, another to be plotted from the start. Not just yet, you sense. Hoffmann's sticking to his guns.

The Dublin Fringe Festival runs from Sept 12-Oct 2. www.fringefest.com 1850-374643 (1850-FRINGE)

DANCE: Knots, an exploration of love and insanity from the winners of last year's Sexiest Production award, CoisCéim. On the international menu, Les chemins de traverse, an improvised blend of dance and music, featuring guest musicians from every genre.

THEATRE: Catch the Rough Magic SEEDS showcase of Sarah Kane's brutally honest play Psychosis or I Have Before Me, Calypso's follow-up to Master Harold & The Boys. The Masterpiece is set in Mountjoy Prison, or Bed & Breakfast, from Germany.

LIVE ART: Karl Him's Audience for Two and Operation SeeSaw's Music Odyssey are among the eye-catchers; for brave souls, the complete darkness of Edge 21's aural experiment Who I Become should prove a thrill.

MUSIC: The Spiegeltent rocks, sways, and sambas through another festival of electrifying evenings, and for most of the Fringe's music programme, this is where it's at; catch everything from Mary Coughlan to Mongolian throat-singing, with Pirate Puppet Punk Opera too ...

VISUAL ART: A celebration of the endangered wonderland that is Moore Street, a group show of young artists from IMMA, and a work-in-progress based on the movements of Fringe performers.