Four spoken word performances to catch at Dublin Fringe Festival 2026

Spoken word forms a significant strand of this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival programme, appearing across music theatre, solo performance and multidisciplinary work throughout September.

Among the productions are Samuel Yakura’s SOAK: The Perfect Man, Belema Art House’s Muster, TAN & JWY’s GRETEL and Cutting The Stone by Soria Reilly, Gweynn, Adam Sinclaire and Glasshouse Music. While differing considerably in form and subject, each places poetry, spoken language or voice alongside music and performance.

SOAK: The Perfect Man

Samuel Yakura’s SOAK: The Perfect Man brings live music and slam spoken word together in a contemporary music-theatre production examining masculinity, grief and inherited silence.

Part concert, part confession and part reckoning, the work centres on the emotional burdens men carry but struggle to articulate. Through music, poetry and performance, SOAK considers vulnerability, connection and the possibility of healing.

The production runs at Project Arts Centre’s Cube from 4th to 12th September, opening with a preview performance on September 4th.

Performances: September 4th at 6.30pm (preview); September 5th - 9th and 11th at 9.15pm; September 12th at 1.15pm.
Venue: Project Arts Centre, Cube
Tickets: €20 full price, €18 concession, €16 preview

Cutting The Stone

Poetry takes on a different role in Cutting The Stone, a collaboration between Soria Reilly, Gweynn, Adam Sinclaire and Glasshouse Music.

Bringing together voice, electronics, flute and strings, Cutting The Stone responds to the fragmentation and intensity of Pizarnik’s writing through a composition developed between artists based in Ireland and Berlin.

The one-night performance takes place at Dublin Unitarian Church on September 9th.

Performance: September 9th at 8pm (doors 7.45pm)
Venue: Dublin Unitarian Church
Tickets: €18 full price, €16 concession

Muster

Produced by Belema Art House and created by Dagogo Hart, Muster turns its attention to Black masculinity, male friendship and the difficulties of expressing vulnerability between men.

Presented as a live concept album, the production blends spoken word, rap and storytelling, using hip hop as both a musical and theatrical language. At its centre is a question about brotherhood and emotional intimacy: how can men call one another brothers while keeping parts of themselves hidden?

Muster runs at The New Theatre from September 9th to 12th.

Performances: September 9th at 8.30pm (preview); September 10th at 8.30pm; September 11th at 2.30pm and 6pm; September 12th at 8.30pm.
Venue: The New Theatre
Tickets: €19 full price, €17 concession, €15 preview

GRETEL

The story of Hansel and Gretel is relocated to the concrete jungle in GRETEL, produced by TAN & JWY.

The solo spoken word performance places a live DJ on stage, combining rhythmic language with bass, silence and sound. Rather than treating music as accompaniment, the production uses its relationship with the spoken text to create an experience in which the story is intended to be felt as well as heard.

Performances: September 16th at 6.45pm (preview); September 17th - 18th at 9.15pm; September 19th at 1.30pm and 9.15pm.
Venue: Dublin Municipal Theatre at Smock Alley, The Black Box
Tickets: €18 full price, €16 concession, €14 preview.

Across the four productions, spoken word moves beyond the conventional poetry performance format. It becomes part of a live album in Muster, meets music theatre and confession in SOAK, works alongside a live DJ in GRETEL, and enters into dialogue with experimental composition in Cutting The Stone.

Together, the works point to the range of forms contemporary spoken word is occupying on the Fringe stage, while placing the spoken voice at the centre of stories concerned with identity, relationships, grief and the experiences that can prove difficult to articulate.

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