You may think the festival season is over, but you'd be very wrong. Edinburgh may now be but a distant memory but the upcoming weeks are crowded with events from the Fierce festival, which opens in Coventry and Birmingham at the end of next week, to the Spill festival, which takes over Ipswich at the end of October, and Tempting Failure in Bristol a week later.
The brilliant-sounding Fun Palaces weekend at the start of October could be seen as a nationwide pop-up festival celebrating the legacy of the visionary Joan Littlewood and reminding us that everyone can be an artist. Many venues have become adept at programming festivals, including the Arches in Glasgow, whose Arches Live festival – a real marker for emerging talent – also begins next week.
Dire predictions – including my own – that theatregoers will eventually suffer fatigue as festivals proliferate have so far proved unfounded. The appetite still seems to be there. While I agree with enthusiastic theatre-festivalgoer Jonathan Holloway – artistic director of the Perth international festival in Australia – that festivals are like Christmas and you wouldn't want one every day, I also think they make us braver as theatregoers, and more likely to sample shows that we probably wouldn't see outside of a festival context. Passes at Arches Live or Spill that give you a chance to see a number of shows on a single ticket really encourage audiences to take risks.
I'm rather sad that for various reasons I won't be attending one of my favourite festivals this year: the Dublin theatre festival, which opens today. It's not only the oldest European theatre festival but to my mind one of the most successful in the way it balances an international programme with homegrown work, so you get an interesting tension as the two bounce off each other.
It also takes place against the backdrop of a city small enough that you can walk everywhere, and one that is endlessly hospitable, knows how to throw a party (an essential element of any festival) and is always up for heated and informed discussion on the role of culture and what is happening in the world. The festival is big enough to offer the opportunity to see four shows a day, but not so big that you have to kill yourself trying to get round everything. Those are my criteria; tell us what you think makes a great festival, and which theatre and arts festivals around the world are worth visiting.
