A Wilde Weekend is set to take place from August 2 to 5 in locations across Enniskillen, including Oscar Wilde’s former school Portora Royal School (now Enniskillen Royal Grammar School.)

Created by curators Sean Doran and Liam Browne of Arts Over Borders, A Wilde Weekend is the second of three international bio festivals taking place this summer in celebration of Irish literary greats Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and Brian Friel.

Across the weekend the festival will showcase a host of events based on the much-loved works and life of Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde, including talks, music, film, song, readings and more.

The highlight of this year’s festival, following its successful debut at the original Wilde Weekend in May 2015 and an award-winning revival in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York in 2016, will be ‘At Home with Oscar Wilde.’ A site specific, promenade performance, ‘At Home with Oscar Wilde’ will showcase excerpts of Wilde’s plays performed at the school he once attended, Enniskillen Royal Grammar (Portora). Conceived and directed by David Grant, this production is a witty and poignant telling of Oscar, Constance, Speranza (and Bosie) “at home” again, this time in the characterful and historic surroundings of Portora.

“We are delighted to actually be able to bring it to Portora because obviously given that Wilde was at school there himself we’ve literally got a sense of the audience following in Wilde’s footsteps,” said David about the revived ‘At Home with Oscar Wilde,’ which was originally performed in the setting of Florence Court House.

Explaining the concept of the production, David said: “So what we do is take many of the most popular scenes from Wilde’s work, from ‘The Importance of being Earnest,’ ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’ and from the novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and the actors perform those scenes in different parts of the school.”

He continued: “Some of the scenes take place in the old headmaster’s house, but we’re also going out into the grounds and into the Steele Hall and indeed one of the scenes takes place in what they call the Stone Hall at Portora and there are references in the biographies of Oscar Wilde to how he would entertain his school friends in the Stone Hall on dark winter nights.”

David added: “We hope the audience will start to make a connection between the things Wilde wrote about and his own life because obviously there was a great tragic ending to his life so much of his work does look at the hypocrisy of society on falls from grace.”

Speaking highly of the actors performing in ‘At Home with Oscar Wilde,’ many of whom performed as part of the original cast in 2015, David highlighted the “strong Enniskillen connection” in that Stefan Dunbar, the nephew of actor Adrian Dunbar, performs one of the key roles in the production.

Noting that it is “very exciting” to perform in a space “so associated” with Oscar Wilde, David wanted to pay tribute to Enniskillen Royal Grammar School and Sally Rees for facilitating and allowing the production full access to the building.

“It’s just so exciting being somewhere that has the blue plaque on the wall as you go in stating Oscar Wilde studied here,” added David.

Over the course of the weekend, ‘At Home with Oscar Wilde,’ will be performed three times daily at varying times. More information and bookings can be made at www.artsoverborders.com.