The 2008 Cork Midsummer Festival is an arts festival for the 21st century, featuring gigs and performances for everyone over an action-packed 21 days in summer. A 'Festival of the Senses', Cork Midsummer Festival will bring the city and county to life with visual treats like site-specific theatre from Corcadorca and Compagnie Dakar; aural sensations with music ranging from Camille to legendary band The Fall; tempting touch with the human powered funfair Sensazione and sumptuous tastes and smells with the inaugural Taste of Cork weekend that will take place as part of the festival. Including events such as the Spencer Tunick installation, the Abbey production of The Seafarer and The Irish Examiner Spiegeltent, there is something to tickle everyone’s senses!

Continuing Cork Midsummer Festival’s commitment to site-specific work, the organisers are delighted to welcome back Corcadora with a highly anticipated version of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, as well as the Irish premiere of Braakland by Compagnie Dakar, which will be brought to the Festival in association with Corcadorca, along with Audio Detour, a site-specific audio piece from Fiona Hallinan and Alex Synge that takes you on a journey through public and private spaces, using the architecture of the city. Other events taking performance to people include eco-funfair Sensazione in Youghal and Cork City, the Festival opener the ever-popular Lord Mayor’s Picnic in the Park and the fantastic finale Robodock, which will see life-sized robots invade the docklands.

Exciting international performances will include the Irish premiere of Propositions 1 & 2, by Victoria, one of the most innovative theatre companies in Europe, Lebanese theatre with Make Me Stop Smoking by Rabih Mroué, which reconstructs the landscape of his war torn homeland, and highlight of the Edinburgh Festival last year You’ve Got to Love Dancing to Stick to It by Julian Fox.

Supporting the best home-grown talent, the Cork Midsummer Festival will produce the premiere of The Magic Tree by exciting young writer/director Ursula Rani Sarma, who studied in Cork, before it goes to the Edinburgh Festival, as well as commissioning Hammergrin’s K: The Iwoa Project, a hilarious homage to Philip K. Dick. Other local work includes Snatch Comedy who will improvise a play; Defult’s production of Generic, a performance/installation set in an office; the Irish premiere of internationally renowned Romanian playwright, Paul Ioachim's bittersweet comedy, End of the Line, presented by Magnet; Cleaner, an alternative adult fairytale about a woman who falls in love with her sweeping brush by Asylum; Maireann croi eadrom i bhfad – A Light Heart Lives Long by Croi Glan Physically Integrated Dance Company a performance company comprised of both disabled and able-bodied dancers, as well as dance piece The Bicycle Ballet, performed by No Frontiers Dance Company in collaboration with local young people skilled in urban vehicle freestyle. Other Irish highlights include The Abbey’s production of The Seafarer by Conor McPherson and Life Shop Til You Drop, a satiric study on self-help by Wonderland.

Music lovers will be well catered for during the festival, with Scullion’s 30th anniversary tour, US Roots band The Hunger Mountain Boys, described by Mark Lamarr as “one of the best things I’ve ever heard” and a host of delights in The Irish Examiner Spiegeltent from jazz to rockabilly to gypsy punk to rock. The Irish Examiner Spiegeltent will take up residence on Emmet Place, with exciting acts like The Fall, Faust, Camille, The Frank and Walters, Mick Flannery, Stanley Super 800 and more. All new for 2008, The Irish Examiner Spiegeltent will feature the hilarious festival club The Last Resort with David Hoyle, including events such as Yurah Langer, a talent show for the truly talentless!

For families there will be a performance by the Púca Puppets, comedian David O’Doherty’s I Can’t Sleep and Aesop’s Foibles and Fables which will be brought to hilarious life by members of the Working Actor's Workshop of Theatre Makers, as well as events for all the family like the Lord Mayor’s Picnic in the Park and Robodock.

Add to all of this, the sensation of the summer, internationally renowned artist Spencer Tunick with his photographic installation of nudes, and there really is something for everyone in Cork this summer!