OUR STORY
BLEEDING THEATRE
BLEEDING THEATRE
THe pop legacy
With Dublin forever in her soul and Ireland on her sleeve, theatrical sensation THISISPOPBABY has become a global phenomenon. Celebrating two decades of change-making with an ever-growing powerhouse of international visionaries and newly discovered talent under her wing, she continues to champion new voices, new works and new forms.
“THISISPOPBABY occupies a unique, dynamic cultural empire between traditional theatre and the mad anarchy of the original raves. Their shows are invariably joyous, subversive affairs, which issue the greatest opportunity performance art can offer us - to witness something you haven’t quite experienced before.”
– Irvine Welsh, Author
Out of the ordinary
Over the past twenty years, as the world has turned, burned, evolved and revolted, THISISPOPBABY has exploded across dancefloors, raved and raged on stages of authority, stormed international barriers and occupied the hearts of the hundreds of thousands who have succumbed to the mirrorball of her experience.
“THISISPOPBABY has managed to simultaneously hold, reflect, respond to, and be at the vanguard of Irish cultural, political and social creativity. This is a wild thing to achieve, for a theatre and live performance company to be the prism through which the energy of a place and its ideas and aspirations travels, gets refracted, reflected, redirected, reorientated. But there you have it, the mirrorball nucleus of Irish cultural life.”
– Una Mullally, Author and Journalist
ART & CULTURE
THISISPOPBABY turns theatres into nightclubs and nightclubs into theatres. They bring poets, playwrights and politics onto dancefloors and drag queens and DJs onto traditional stages. They kick down the doors of theatre for a much wider audience, who follow them from underground basements to festival fields and from black box theatres to west end stages and rock & roll stadiums…and back again.
“THISISPOPBABY has done more than imagine new worlds—it has built them from fragments of memory and glimmers of hope, forging an aesthetic language that has transformed how we think, see, hear, move and feel. Few artists or collectives can claim to have so boldly redefined what counts as both national and radical culture in twenty-first-century Ireland.”
– Dr Fintan Walsh, Author & Theatre Scholar
BOLD AND DAZZLING
With fearless new writing such as 0800-CUPID, Octopus Children and Sweet Caroline as her beating heart, the company is best known for pioneering large-scale shows such as WAKE, RIOT and Alice In Funderland, incendiary multidisciplinary festivals Where We Live and Queer Notions, iconic underground performance clubs WERK, Salty & POPTOPIA, and the decades-long collaboration with drag revolutionary Panti Bliss.
“From illegal dance floors to the main stage of the national theatre; from playing a part in changing Ireland’s constitution to becoming an international sensation. We never waited for the culture to catch up – we made the culture ourselves” – Panti Bliss, National Fucking Treasure & THISISPOPBABY Associate Artist
company MILESTONES
September 2006
Our founders meet on the dancefloor of the PoD nightclub during Dublin Fringe Festival.
January 2007
THISISPOPBABY is founded. Our first production Danny & Chantelle is staged soon after at Project Arts Centre.
September 2008
THISISPOPBABY’s legendary POPTOPIA venue has it’s first of three outings at Electric Picnic Music and Arts Festival.
April 2012
Alice In Funderland sets Dublin City alight at the Abbey Theatre.
September 2016
RIOT barges into the Irish canon and
becomes a huge hit in Ireland, Australia,
America & Canada.
September 2022
WAKE is a knockout at Dublin’s National Stadium. It’s the beginning of a big life for the show, which includes stints on the West End and Manchester’s Aviva Studios.
March 2023
Conversations After Sex by Mark O’Halloran takes home Best New Play at Irish Theatre Awards, the second new play award to Mark following THISISPOPBABY’s production of Trade in 2012.
SEPTEMBER 2025
The extraordinary Octopus Children, told through the queer, Irish Nigerian lens, takes home two Fringe awards and is nominated for four more.
