Dublin Fringe Festival at The Complex | September

The Complex is a proud partner of Dublin Fringe Festival. Dublin Fringe Festival is a curated, multidisciplinary arts festival and a year-round artist support organisation. It runs from the 6th to the 21st of September this year. The full programme can be found here.

The Complex has three events programmed for Dublin Fringe Festival this year; Clash At The Quays, Roots In Every Room and This-Topia. Read on for more information and to book your tickets.

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Clash At The Quays II: LOKOMANIA | Ahmed with Love

Location: The Depot at The Complex, 12 Mary's Abbey, Smithfield, Dublin 7, D07XR70

Date: 6 September

Time: Doors 6pm, Show 6.45pm

Tickets: €25 + fees, here

The Complex is delighted to welcome back Ahmed, with Love for Clash At The Quays II: LOKOMANIA.

Lokomania is running wild!  

Clash At The Quays! is BACK for another round of hard-hitting tunes and harder  hitting slams! One night. One ring. Join some of Ireland’s finest musicians; Ahmed, With Love, Sloucho, VaticanJail, Julia Louise Knifefist, Lil Skag, Curtisy and Kibo, as they take to the ring to settle some scores. Expect musical rivalries, wrestling blood-feuds, and suplex-level silliness as live music collides with the wacky world of professional wrestling.  

A sequel to the award-winning 2023 show, LOKOMANIA aims to raise all the bars set at the last show, from presentation to performances, theatrics to talent, and overall tongue-in-cheek absurdity. Musical rivalries, wrestling blood-feuds and much more will be settled inside the squared circle at the grandest stage of them all on September 6th. 

This is the WrestleMania of dumb wrestling-based music events!

Fuelled By Four Loko. 

Supported by Dublin Fringe Festival’s Weft initiative.

IMAGE: Paula Trojner

Please note, contains depictions of violence. This event features excessive loud noise/music, contains the use of smoke machines and strobe lighting.

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Roots In Every Room | Anna Doran

Location: The Gallery, 21-25 Arran St E, Smithfield, Dublin 7, D07 YY97

Performances:

• 6 Sept, 3pm (preview)

• 6 - 8 Sept, 7pm

• 7 Sept, 3pm

• ISL Interpreted Performance

  7 Sept, 7pm

Duration: 60 mins

Tickets: From €12, here

The Complex welcomes Anna Doran's Roots in Every Room, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, 2025.

Roots in Every Room is presented by SoFFt Productions. It is written and performed by Anna D. In collaboration with Greg Purcell and Peter Power. Directed by Eftychia Spyridaki.

‘The roots, untangled, become the tree.’

This powerful live performance blends spoken word poetry, film and sound to tell a profound story of healing and ancestral reckoning.

The title comes from the last dream Anna’s grandmother had before she died. She dreamt that Anna had a massive tree growing through the middle of her house with roots growing throughout every room. It is a stark contrast to her own mother’s repetitive dream of finding bare, unknown, secret rooms in her home.

The dream has come to symbolise Anna’s need to heal her maternal lineage, reclaiming her ancestral feminine power and fulfilling the suppressed potential of all the women who went before her. Roots in Every Room is a response to this need. An attempt at cycle-breaking. A raw and unashamed declaration of self. An unchaining of the dark feminine to confront and rebalance masculine domination. It is one woman’s vulnerable disclosure of the challenges and inherited emotional demons she has overcome and the radical hope she carries and shares generously.

CREDITS:

Writer and Performer: Anna Doran

Director: Eftychia Spridaki

Producers: Caroline Duke, SoFFt Productions & Rua Barron

Production Manager: Meghan Bartual Smyth

Film: Greg Purcell

Sound Designer: Peter Power

Lighting & AV Designer: JJ Sim

Supported by Fingal Artists Support Scheme, Dublin Fringe Festival, SoFFt Productions, Backstage Theatre Longford, The Complex Dublin, and Poetry Ireland.

Photo: George Hooker

Please note, it contains references to mental health and depression.

The Gallery is wheelchair accessible.

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This-Topia | Meltybrains?

Location: The Depot at The Complex, 12 Mary's Abbey, Smithfield, Dublin 7, D07XR70

Date: 20 - 21 September

Time: Doors 7.30pm, Starts 8pm

Duration: 75 mins

Tickets: From €20 + fees, here

The Complex welcomes cult-favourite Meltybrains? for Dublin Fringe Festival. The Irish band returns to the fest after seven years with a visceral, genre-smashing live show exploring 21st-century digital life through a collaborative ritual of fear, escapism, addiction, collective catharsis and transcendence.

This explosive new work fuses high-octane music with dance, visuals and surreal theatricality. It’s not just a comeback; it’s an ecstatic act of resurrection and a dive into our apocalyptic ideation.

Absurd and sacred in equal measure, This-Topia is part theatre, part rave, part group therapy - a meltdown in motion that asks what happens when identity unravels, and what is waiting on the other side.

Funded by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

IMAGE: Mark McGuinness

Note:

Contains references to mental health and depression. This event features excessive loud noise/music, smoke machines, and strobe lighting. This is a standing gig, seating available if needed.