Driving Miss Daisy

World premieres, lm screenings, exhibitions, discussions and more are on the agenda at this year’s Dublin Dance Festival, which runs from 17 to 28 May.The festival is the leading dance event on the Irish arts calendar, bringing together dancers and choreographers from all over the world.This year will see performers from the USA, Canada, Greece, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, France, the UK and Ireland take to stages all over the city for an extravaganza of dance.This is the rst festival from new festival director Benjamin Perchet, who promises audiences “an inspiring journey of aesthetic pleasure and intellectual stimulus”, exploring themes of migration, mobility and transformation.

When Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy premiered Off-Broadway in 1987 it was an instant success, earning him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1988 and going on to become an Oscar winning lm starring Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy. Now this heartwarming tale of friendship premieres in Ireland, with a stellar cast set to take the Gaiety stage from 4 - 28 May.

Founded in 2004 by Brian Merriman to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of OscarWilde,the International Dublin GayTheatre Festival is now the biggest festival of its kind in the world. Running from 2 - 15 May, the festival’s aim is to celebrate positive LGBT identity through theatre and the contribution of gay people to the arts. By the time this year’s festival is nished, they will have presented over 3,500 performances since their inception 13 years ago - a phenomenal achievement and testament to the great work done by the team of volunteers who run the festival every year.There’s always a great range of theatrical productions on offer and this year is no exception.

Very rarely does a city have a commemorative statue that stands so much out of the ordinary that it becomes a ‘must-see’ for visitors and citizens alike. Copenhagen has its Mermaid and Brussels its Manneken Pis. However, I believe one stands head and shoulders above all the others, both literally and metaphorically. It is Dublin’s great salute to its own brilliant son, Oscar Wilde. Sitting high on its massive 30- ton granite perch, the statue of Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde looks thoughtfully, even arrogantly, from its own corner of serene Merrion Square Park across to his childhood home, number one Merrion Square.