Fermented Dreams (Dublin Fringe Festival, 2024)

Fermented Dreams is a darkly comedic and emotionally vulnerable musical play by Jess Kavanagh that blends piano-centric soul, spoken word and theatre. The show follows Noelle, a 40-year-old musician grappling with the negotiation of her hopes and dreams — confronting self-sabotage, validation, ageing and creative identity through music, monologue and raw vulnerability. Fermented Dreams is a hybrid theatre piece created from a body of original music by Jess Kavanagh — essentially transforming a set of songs and an EP into a one-woman play that interrogates the shifting relationship between creative aspirations and lived reality.

TEAM

• Writer and Producer: Jess Kavanagh

• Co-Director: Laura Sheeran

• Original Music: Jess Kavangh, Geoff Warner-Clayton

• Performed by: Jess Kavanagh and Louis Younge

• Production Assistant: Paul Brennan

• Lighting Design: Sarah Jane Shiels
  

Dublin Fringe Festival — Bewley’s Cafe Theatre — 9–14 September 2024

Reviews

“A darkly comedic and vulnerable play about hope, creativity, vocation and confronting your dreams — are they dead and rotten, or just smelling funny and salvageable?” — Festival description

“Fermented Dreams is about a renegotiation of Noelle’s dreams as she reaches middle age, and how we negotiate our hopes and our dreams as we reach a certain age.” — Hot Press

“A smart, introspective meditation on creative identity and self-worth.” — Audience feedback

“Blends music and storytelling to powerful, funny effect.” — Fringe review