Theatre festivals are a good time to weave extra issues into productions, and such is the case with Opera Guerrillas' loquaciously titled Dr Scrontium's Mad Kahoogaphone and Homeless Medicine Show. Homelessness is the key theme of the show, and it is being supported by Focus Ireland, the organisation devoted to working with the homeless. Focus itself will not be receiving any money from the production, but it is confident that public awareness of the wretched and ever-increasing problem will be raised over the course of the run.
There are three different elements to Opera Guerrillas' show, which has been staged before. The Dublin Fringe Festival tends to provide an opportunity for shows which previously had short runs to reach a wider audience. The Kahoogaphone of the title is a huge construction made of junk and found objects, which sits atop a fantastical set of wheels called the Kahoogaphone Karavan. This will be wheeled nightly to the city's other Kahoogaphone on wheels - the Molly Malone statue in Grafton Street.
A five-piece percussion band, Bread and Circus, will play alongside the object, no doubt attracting many to the on-street site. This part of the show is free to everyone, but a ticket is needed to gain access to the next part of the performance, in which the audience will follow the band and Kahoogaphone to a covered city-centre location to see the main show.
"We want to increase the profile of the issue of homelessness," says George Higgs, the show's writer and composer. The main show, with performers Herb Dade, Lizzy Morrissey and Kristin Kapelli, features a homeless man and the reaction to him of wealthy passers-by - with a few surprises in the plot.
Dade is from New York, where homelessness is evident on a much larger scale. "The cardboard boxes haven't picked up here yet - you know, like refrigeration boxes that people live in," he muses. " I once saw one in Central Park that looked like a little castle. It even had a chimney."
"I wonder what the rent was on it," Higgs says laconically.
Morrissey's character is in a wheelchair. "It's bad enough being homeless, but imagine being disabled with it. And some people are," she says.
Today at 1 p.m., the company will be marching with Bread and Circus and the Kahoogaphone from O'Connell Bridge along the quays to a Temple Bar location, where they will hear from speakers about problems with rent control. There are layers of problems regarding lack of accommodation in Ireland. Many people are being forced out of their homes to places of lower quality because of soaring rents .
Ironically, Higgs himself may soon face eviction, his rent having increased beyond what he can afford; it went up 15 per cent last year, and another 15 per cent this year. The company's stage manager, Saidhbh∅n Bhreatnach, received an eviction notice last week, apparently for no reason other than the fact that she was working on props for the show in her apartment.
The last time the company did the show, its Kahoogaphone was stolen from the city centre at the end of the run. You have to wonder where it ended up: it was enormous. What do they plan on doing with this large, technically useless object on wheels at the end of this run?
"We haven't decided yet," Higgs says. "Perhaps we'll destroy it ritually afterwards, like a mandela."
What will certainly remain after the show comes down and the Kahoogaphone is dismantled will be the people sleeping in doorways, and those struggling to pay their rent.
Dr Scrontium's Mad Kahoogaphone and Homeless Medicine Show, October 1st to 13th, starts at 7.30 p.m., at the Molly Malone statue, Grafton Street. Dublin Fringe Festival, information and bookings: 1850-374643
