Process at Cork Theatre Collective

Process exists to support Cork’s artist community; to experiment, gather, and connect with the festival artists who are here with us this summer, raw, bold, and unapologetically in-progress. Process is where ideas take their first steps in front of an audience.

Fresh voices take centre stage through an Open Call welcoming artists who have never shown work at Cork Midsummer Festival – because every great show starts somewhere. Step off the beaten path with site-specific works-in-progress, turning unexpected corners of Cork into stages.

Get in the room for Nightshift at the CTC Studio – an intimate, charged evening where theatre, dance, spoken word, music, and performance of every kind collides live, in the moment. Wake up with Movement Mornings, hosted by dance/theatre artist Emily Terndrup – a chance to start your festival day by getting into your body, connecting with fellow artists, and shaking loose something new.

Festival Artists Workshops- hands-on sessions led by the festival’s own programmed artists, open to the wider Cork artist community. 

Friday 12 June, 4pm & 5.30pm Claudia Caamano - work in progress

The Secret Life of a Cleaner

An immersive theatre work exploring migration, labour and artistic identity through the intimate space of a private home. The audience witnesses a cleaner carrying out her daily tasks while gradually revealing the inner world of a migrant actress trying to rebuild her life in Ireland. As she cleans, she discovers traces of the house owners, and the house slowly becomes a mirror where past and present collide. Humour, exhaustion and imagination coexist as she questions who she has become through migration, displacement and labour.

€5 (booking required)
30 mins
Meeting Point: Bradleys, North Main Street

Sunday 14 June, 5.30pm Ayoub Tomi - work in progress

144 000 : 1

I SPENT 10 YEARS OF MY LIFE IN A RELIGIOUS CULT. WHEN I SAY THE WORD CULT, WHAT DO YOU IMAGINE?

144 000 : 1 is a one-man show exploring freedom, how it is lost and reclaimed, through the lens of life inside a high-control religious group, blending comedy, confession, multimedia, movement and music to reveal the lived reality of psychological control. Rooted in personal experience yet widely resonant, the work transforms a painful past into an urgent, human reflection on autonomy in a world at risk of becoming Plato’s Cave.

The show has been made with the help of Ankur Vikal, Bernadette Cronin, Inma Pavón and Cormac O'Connor

€5 (booking required)
35 mins followed by Q&A
Studio CTC at Triskel Arts Centre

Monday 15 June & Saturday 20 June, 10.30am - 11.30am Movement Morning with Emily Terndrup

Stretch, twist, and wake up— no experience needed!

Morning Movement Sessions are a gentle, energizing guided practice for every body, whatever your age or fitness level. Tune into your muscles, your senses, and how good it feels to simply move. No steps to memorize, no partner needed— just you, moving at your own pace. Come as you are, and leave feeling awake, uplifted, and ready for the day.

Free (no booking required)
60 mins

Wednesday 17 June, 5.30pm Cheryl Walsh - work in progress

Healed

Today in group therapy, we'll uncover your deepest truths, identify what's actually wrong with you and establish who's really to blame once and for all. Guided by an award-winning unveiler of truth, we invite you into this safe space to share, grow, learn and heal. Only if you're open to being fixed. Part comedy, part intervention and part horror at the flagrant diagnosis of self. Welcome to your healing journey.

€5 (booking required)
Meeting point: Sent to ticket holders in advance

Friday 19 June, 1pm Young Critics

The Young Critics are coming to Cork! One of Youth Theatre Ireland’s most popular and innovative programmes, the Young Critics recruits 14 young people from youth theatres across the country. Full details here.

Friday 19 June, 5.30pm Julie Kelleher - work in progress

Dream House

Dream House as Work In Progress: A theatrical adaptation of acclaimed literary memoir In The Dream House, by American writer Carmen Maria Machado. 

Director Julie Kelleher is working with designer Aedín Cosgrove and three performers to craft an adaptation of In the Dream House, which is the story of Machado’s first-hand experience of domestic violence perpetrated by her ex-girlfriend, in the home that they shared together. The book places a dramatic and often disturbing narrative of trauma alongside an incisive cultural critique of how we learn from the cultural artefacts all around us to silence ourselves.

€5 (booking required)
30 minutes followed by Q&A
CTC Studio at Triskel Arts Centre

Saturday 20 June, 10pm - late NIGHTSHIFT

Clock In for the Nightshift. 

Circus. Theatre. Music. Poetry. Dance. Maybe magic. A cabaret with a spiegeltent spirit. Festival artists and local acts on the roster, hosted by Comedian Seán Ó’Dáiligh. 

Resident DJ John Bosteels on the decks and surprise guests when you least expect them. 

BYOB. All welcome. Don't be late.

€5 (booking required)
Meeting Point: Bishop Lucey Park fountain 

Saturday 21 June, doors 7pm RUIN Nation

RUIN Nation is a large scale transdisciplinary performance and research project from artist Peter Power examining dereliction not simply as an architectural condition, but as a psychological, social, cultural, and political reality within contemporary Ireland. Through site specific performance, community engagement, interviews, walks, sound, text, and immersive installation, the project explores how abandonment manifests across housing, infrastructure, memory, identity, and public life. 

Join the artist and the extended team in Plugd on 21 June from 7pm for an informal evening of conversation, wine, and presentation surrounding the ongoing development of RUIN Nation. The event will offer updates on the project’s research into dereliction, urban neglect, memory, and cultural infrastructure, alongside open discussion with artists, researchers, community members, and invited guests. The evening is intended as a relaxed space for dialogue, reflection, and exchange around the social and human realities of dereliction in contemporary Ireland. The team will also be discussing the inclusion of the local community in interview, advocacy and art, and what further plans there are for RUIN Nation. 

In addition, the artist and creative team invite you to immerse yourself in Cork City’s historic core through #WalkTalkChalk with performers Jude Sherry and Frank O’Connor on Saturday 20 June at 4.30pm and 6.30pm with special guest Peter Power, RUIN Nation (€5 - advance booking advised).

Join them on an urban exploration of Cork - sharing stories around the many vacant and derelict buildings, provoking conversations on the city’s inequality, the lack of public luxury and biodiversity, the decaying heritage, housing crisis, lost potential and politics of the day. 

These unique experiences are curated to inform, challenge, inspire, critique and empower citizens to take ownership of their place, to use their individual and collective power to create inclusive, sustainable environments where everyone has a home, a place to play and create and access to meaningful work.