Pose, please. Oh, OK. They prefer to kiss. Marie Jensen from the Netherlands and Axel Rothoux from France are getting married in Oslo this week. (Readers will note the distinct sound of wedding bells . . . eh, pealing through the column this week. Something is in the air.) The two met, got engaged and now they're kissing in the Globe. Really . . . it's . . . well, it's the launch of the Dublin Fringe Festival.
Mark Gawry, the festival's first visual arts curator, is from Mullingar in Co Westmeath, and no, he doesn't know any girls with "beef to the heel like the Mullingar heifer". He knows only beautiful girls. Cue Ali Curran, the Belfast-born artistic director of the festival, in a pink paisley number, who is kissed and congratulated as she makes her way slowly through the throng to make her speech. With "a record number" of venues this year, audiences are going to be treated to "a festival of the coolest and sexiest of national and international work," she says.
Some of the main men from Limerick are here also. Actor Myles Breen, playwright Mike Finn and director Terry Devlin discuss the success of Finn's play, Pig Town, which has been seen by 12,000 people already, he says. Finn's also rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of heading off to Iowa University on the International Writing Programme scholarship shortly, but he promises them that he's going to fly back for the opening night of Pig Town in early October at the SFX.
Actors Ingrid Craigie and Gerard McSorley, who will be starring in Asylum Ball as twins, are talking to Brendan Conroy. Adam Green and Eamonn Doyle are spreading the word about Datsincredible, an interactive audio installation in a car, which will sit in Temple Bar Square between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. each day from Tuesday to Saturday throughout the festival, bringing people on "a drive through a musical landscape". Motoring on, we meet composer and pianist Roger Doyle and actor Alan Smyth discussing the return of Salome to the Gate next week. The fringe festival runs from Monday, September 25th to Saturday, October 14th.