LASTA Festival 2025 brings bold new voices to the Belltable stage this October

LASTA Festival 2025 brings bold new voices to the Belltable stage this October. In Collaboration with Belltable Theatre

Ireland’s only youth-led arts festival, LASTA returns for a fourth year, bringing new theatre, dance, music, and film to the Belltable for October 2025

Belltable Theatre will be a hive of creativity this October with the return of LASTA Festival, celebrating its fourth year of promoting up and coming talent.

With shows set to take to the Belltable Stage between Wednesday, October 15 and  Saturday, October 25, last will bring bold new theatre, dance, music, and film to Limerick.  As well as in Limerick, LASTA is taking place nationwide throughout the month and is Ireland’s only youth-led national arts festival, placing young curators and artists at the heart of the programme.

This year’s lineup promises a mix of performances which bring together the creativity and courage of emerging voices in theatre, from comedy to social commentary, and music to Halloween treats.

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

Opening on Wednesday, October 15, LemonSoap Productions’ “Boyfriends“, written by Ultan Pringle follows a three-month affair between two anonymous men, charting the ups and downs and roundabouts of a modern situationship. A witty, heartfelt look at the ups, downs and roundabouts of a modern “situationship.”

On Saturday, October 18, Isolde Fenton takes to the Belltable stage with “In A Bad Way“, a fast-paced, darkly comic one-woman show that dives into the world of hypochondria, self-diagnosis, and the universal human search for reassurance and understanding. Sat in a GP on Dame Street, Grá (Isolde Fenton), with The Doctor (for the fifth time this month), and she won’t rest until she has a diagnosis.

The festival continues on Thursday, October 23, with Stretched On Your Grave: A Tribute to Sinéad O’Connor, presented by Deirdre and David Clare.  Come along to hear Deirdre and David perform “Nothing Compares 2 U”, “I Am Stretched on Your Grave”, “Black Boys on Mopeds”, and other hits. There will also be readings from various Limerick-based performers.

A gothic highlight follows on Friday, October 24, when Threedumb Theatre brings One Man Poe to Limerick — a spine-chilling, tour-de-force performance of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, brought to life by Stephen Smith.  To commemorate the 175th anniversary year of Edgar Allan Poe’s mysterious death in 1849, Stephen Smith performs four of the American author’s most spine-chilling classics, back-to-back and unabridged: The Tell-Tale Heart; The Pit and the Pendulum; The Black Cat and The Raven.

The festival closes on Saturday, October 25, seeing William Keohane’s Boxing Day returning to the Belltable, in a new translation by writer and actor Matthew O’Rourke. The Boxing Day performance is a year of a life, condensed into an hour of time. There are 52 poems. One for each week of the year.

LASTA is a unique, youth-led national arts festival with programmes created by young curators chosen through a competitive annual open call.

At Belltable and Lime Tree Theatre, this year’s curators are Eoin Gilmartin, a performer and theatre maker from Tipperary, and Matthew O’Rourke, a Limerick-based writer and performer. Together, they have assembled a Limerick programme that’s diverse in style, rich in storytelling, and deeply connected to the spirit of the city.