Ahead of Another Sold-Out Run, Aoife Dunne on Love, Loss and Laughter
Photo by Julia Dunin
The Galway comedian and rising star added the extra dates to her 2027 tour after her initial line-up sold out in no time, an experience she's described as a “dream come true.”
The new dates include a show in Leisureland, Galway, as well as the Olympia in Dublin, the National Opera House in Wexford, Cork Opera House and University Concert Hall Limerick. If you're quick enough, you might just nab one!
Here, Aoife takes a break from a busy few months of touring to tell us why she’s light on life, but serious about comedy.
Aoife Dunne flips her phone, eager to show me the blue sky view out the window of the café she is settled in for our video chat. I’m still composing myself as I admire the scenery – minutes before, I was blubbing away to one of her Instagram videos. Disarmingly raw, honest and sincere, she has racked up over 230k followers with her mix of comedy sketches and no-holes-barred pieces to camera.
I tell her how much I admire the easy confidence in her posts, and she is quick to tell me it was something she had to push through. “I thought confidence was something that you slowly learned how to be, and then when you get to the stage of confidence, then you can go and do the things that you’ve wanted to do,” she confides. “And so I waited and waited… but I kept never getting struck by this lightning bolt of confidence, and I was like, okay, maybe I’ll never be ready.”
“I realised I could spend my whole life waiting, and that thought alone crippled me,” she continues. “I was like, oh my God, I could die waiting. And how sad would that be?”
Tired of holding herself back and “bullying myself out of rooms that maybe I deserve to be in”, she decided she was going to try and put on a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. That was just over a year ago, and the rest, as they say, is history. Her show, Good Grief, which explores how the death of her mum at just 23 impacted her life, has played to sold-out theatres across Ireland and the UK and is currently on a sure-to-sell-out extended tour in bigger venues.
An intoxicating mix of comedy, vulnerability and hard-won wisdom, Aoife regularly shares screenshots on Instagram of the messages she receives from attendees, who describe it as “hilarious, honest and healing”, “poignant and moving” and “beautiful and relatable”.
Through her radical honesty, she can slowly help everyone let their guard down and explore their own vulnerabilities. “Someone said that it felt like they were getting access to a private WhatsApp — that there was something almost salacious about hearing someone’s innermost thoughts and inner secrets just unveiled for the world to see,” she grins. “People felt like they had permission to cry and laugh.”
That potent alchemy of honesty, humour and heart has helped propel her to new heights, and adds a spark of magic to her shows, tapping into what she calls “aliveness”. “I think so much of the antidote to everything that’s wrong in this world is to stay alive — alive to everything, to experience, to love, to affection, to hopes and dreams. I think we’ve forgotten how to stay alive."
“My whole recovery through grief has been holding on to aliveness... We focus on living, right, because that’s about health and keeping going. But aliveness is the spark. And that’s so different.”
Online, she gives equal weight to the highs and lows, and you can’t help but fall in love for her infectious enthusiasm and zest for life.
Throughout our interview, Aoife has been passionate and effervescent, but never more so than when she is talking about her hometown of Kinvara. “I couldn’t write the show without Kinvara,” she asserts. “It’s home, it’s community. It has shaped me, it has helped me find my voice, and it has held me when I’ve been totally lost.”
“Kinvara has shaped me, it has helped me find my voice, and it has held me when I’ve been totally lost.”
The Kinvara community helped her in ways that are both practical and profound. When Aoife’s brother was a baby, he was diagnosed with a rare cancer, and his treatment required her parents to effectively relocate to Dublin for two years. With no income, Kinvara stepped in — fundraising to cover living costs and train fares. They did the same years later when Aoife’s mother died, organising a collection to ensure her younger brothers could finish their education while the family navigated months of financial and legal limbo.
Growing up in Kinvara also meant that Aoife also had access to a surprisingly rich creative ecosystem — BBC writers and musicians who had settled in the area ran pantomime groups, wrote original music and staged full productions for local children, with classes usually costing just €1.50.
“I’m so grateful to have grown up where I grew up at the time that I grew up,” she reflects. “If I was raised from the socio-economic background that we were from in Dublin, I don’t know if I would have been able to access all of that.”
“I think so much of the antidote to everything that’s wrong in this world is to stay alive — alive to everything, to experience, to love, to affection, to hopes and dreams.
Galway City is also a treasure trove of memories: “I used to work in Shop Street in Quay Street Kitchen as a waitress during Race week. I worked there a year after mum died — I had no idea what else to do with my life. And I met such amazing people there. It gave me a sense of grounding that I was desperately in need of, and silliness and fun.
But that same street — I walked up there when I went back for the Galway Arts Festival, and I was like, this is the same street I walked up drunk with my friends during Rag Week. It’s the same street I ran after my first boyfriend because he wanted to break up with me. And it’s the same street I walked up lonely with mum’s boyfriend — both of us decided we were going to get tattoos two months after she died,” she recalls.
“And I just thought, oh my God, all the many versions of me that existed in this city that held me.” And no doubt the city is excited to welcome the versions of her to come.
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