Over the next two weeks, the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre festival, now in its 53rd year, will present 363 performances at 22 different venues around the city.

This year, the international festival will showcase Polish theatre with director Krystian Lupa’s look at Andy Worhol in “Factory 2,” Grzegorz Jarzyna’s “T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.,” and Jan Klata’s “The Danton Case.”

Lupa’s “Factory 2” is a marathon theatre event clocking in at seven-and-a-half hours, with two intermissions and a dinner break. The Dublin Theatre Festival seems to have a penchant for epic theatre. In 2008, it presented Elevator Repair Service’s six-hour long “Gatz,” an enactment of “The Great Gatsby” in its entirety. (For those stateside, “Gatz” is opening at the Public Theater in New York this fall.)

Other noteworthy (non-Polish) productions are Peter Pan Theatre Company’s “The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane,” in which three actors audition in front of the audience for the role of Hamlet; “The Relish of Language,” Gate Theatre’s four production exploration of the connections between Beckett, Pinter and Mamet; Abbey Theatre’s “John Gabriel Borkman” starring Alan Rickman and Fiona Shaw; Lucy Prebble's “Enron;” and a new adaptation of Racine’s “Phaedra” from the Rough Magic Theatre Company.

The festival also features special events, including readings, panel discussions and a theatrical networking exchange.

The Dublin Theatre Festival opened last week and will run through October 17.

For more information, click here.