NEWS & STORIES

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FRINGE FIVE: Comic Marise Gaughan on her show Drowning

Marise Gaughan brings her show Drowning to the Fringe and its set to be one of the stand-outs of the festival. The topic alone stops you in your tracks. In 2014, Marise’s father killed himself. Her show takes us through how it set off a chain reaction in her life that began with her placement on an ISIS watch list in Amsterdam and ended with her sharing a psychiatric ward with Kanye West in LA.

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FRINGE FIVE: Camille Lucy Ross, Dublin Fringe Award judge

CAMILLE LUCY ROSS – actor, writer and artistic director of Brazen Tales Productions is a previous First Fortnight Fringe Award winner (our annual award for an outstanding festival production with mental health-related themes). This year, she’s back as a judge for the Dublin Fringe festival, currently running in several venues until September 23.

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FRINGE FIVE: Hannah Mamalis, of Dreamgun Film Reads

Hannah Mamalis is a prolific comic, writer and performer who is very active on the comedy and theatre scene, as well as a regular at the Edinburgh Festival. Some of you will have caught her acclaimed one-woman show in last year’s First Fortnight festival, the surreal The Egg Is A Lonely Hunter, and this week she takes part in the always very funny Dreamgun improv show Film Reads at the Dublin Fringe – it begins tonight in Smock Alley Theatre and runs until September 16. She’ll also be on MC duties for the First Fortnight Fundraiser quiz scheduled for October (watch this space).

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FiveOnFriday with Sarah Conway

The gentle rhyme of Sarah Conway’s staggering poem ‘Never Give Up‘ allows the words to flow like a fairy tale. Within the piece though, lies a life story which reveals itself in uncompromising entirety; petals, thorns and all.

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QUINTON CAMPBELL: ‘When shit wasn’t going right for me it was almost impossible to envisage ever being happy again’

It’s 5.30pm on a Wednesday evening and pretty clear that most people have banished all thoughts of tomorrow in favour of today’s summery pint. Quinton Campbell is squinting through the late May rays at a terrace table across from the National Concert Hall. At this point in the calendar, we’re (foolishly, in retrospect) assuming that this is one of those rare slivers of sunshine to be savoured, so it seems fitting that the unexpected heat spurs his first thought: “I think external factors, good or bad, really aren’t as important as they seem. What’s important is how we choose to process them.”

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FiveOnFriday with singer songwriter Lisa Loughrey

Lisa Loughrey is a Kildare singer songwriter, formerly a member of six-piece alt-folk outfit The Mariannes, whose solo project has taken flight with an EP, Plans and Schemes, launching in the Vintage Room of the Workman’s Club tonight, Friday, July 13th.

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FiveOnFriday with Constance Keane

Fears is the solo project of the 25 year-old musician from Dublin, Constance Keane. Earlier this year she released “h_always”, written during her time spent in St Patrick’s Mental Health Services where she found a comforting hub in the music room facilities. This became a significant part of her recovery process.

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VIDEO: Sean Cooney on how cycling helps his mental health

OUR own Sean Cooney tells how how keeping fit has helped him appreciate and improve his own mental health.

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A chat with filmmaker Paul Duane

First Fortnight caught up with director Paul Duane to talk about his hypnotic film on Greek folk music and tracing the steps of the KLF

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Opening Doors Film Festival shines a light on homelessness

This year World Homeless Day falls on October 10th, which is also World Mental Health Day, and since these issues are often interlinked, First Fortnight was interested to see that Ireland’s first film festival dealing with themes of homelessness, the Opening Doors Film Festival, is running in the Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield from Monday, October 8th-Wednesday, October 10th