Wolfgang Hoffmann has heard various opinions on whether the Child of Prague should go out the front or the back of a house the night before a big event. He has even heard tales of a mythical musician who can fiddle rain away.

For the director of the Magnet Entertainment Dublin Fringe Festival, weather has become something of an obsession. If the clouds open tomorrow night, the Fringe's spectacular fire display could end with an oily hiss of paraffin flame-throwers drenched out of existence.

A dancer and choreographer from Germany, this is Hoffmann's second year as festival director, though he feels this is truly his first year as "last year I was just holding on by my fingernails". One hundred and sixteen events across 34 venues are planned in the next two weeks.

Living in Dublin for the last two years with his wife, Fionnuala, and their two year-old son, Noah, Hoffmann spent last month commuting from Scotland, where he runs the Aurora Nova venue at the Edinburgh Fringe.

"Once the festival is up and running, it's really enjoyable," he says. "It's like putting a train on the tracks - lots of work in the build-up and then it has so much momentum you can't stop it."

This year it is not just the artistic elite who will see the Fringe. Hoffmann has planned a number of public events, kicking off with the fire installation tomorrow and Sunday at George's Dock. French company Carabosse will light thousands of candles, fill flowerpots with paraffin and hang an enormous chandelier over the River Liffey "so there will be light in the air and light in the water". Pipes fixed in buckets of paraffin will shoot flames.

"It will be very poetic and magical and it will transform the space," says Hoffmann. Weather permitting.

Other forms of guerrilla art will see cleaners dressed in chambermaid outfits popping up at traffic jams in the city and trying to clean up the traffic, DJs performing on Nitelink buses, and lanterns hung on the streetlights over the boardwalk in an effort to turn the river back into "a meeting point and not a dividing line".

In the throes of a boom, Dublin only has time for "bite-sized" art, Hoffmann says. "We will try to put things in people's way and make them smile and see another side of life, and think that there's more to life than mortgages."

• Compagnie Carabosse's fire installation event is free and will take place at George's Dock from 8pm to 11pm tomorrow and Sun; www.fringefest.com - Catherine Cleary